OK, so over on the trading forum I follow, it seems there have been some folks that have had problems getting to their online brokerages (mainly TD Ameritrade it seems) and they are understandably ticked off over the situation. (It’s not like today’s volume in the markets is unprecendented, and one would reasonably expect that the site could handle it.)
Here is someone’s comment on all this:
Do people not understand volume that has hit the markets today? It is not necessarily the company you trade with, but more than likely your computer or router. The amount of data streaming into a personal computer will close certain ports if it exceeds what the computer sees as safe. The problem is on you, and your equipment, and your connection….not the multimillion dollar broker systems. Try using some common sense, and blame your mistakes and lost profits on the user.
Why on earth would E*Trade be sending me any more data when I log in today than it would any other day? OK, there is that one extra hyperlink on the home page so I can read the list of financial companies that can’t be shorted for a while (pdf), but somehow I don’t think that is enough to shut down the ports on my computer and keep me from the website.
If a site is overloaded, it’s overloaded.
I wonder if he’s trying to justify upgrading his computer and buying a T1 line to his wife…
September 19th, 2008 - 1:56 pm
You made me look. I rarely log onto my Ameritrade account cause I have my little handful of stocks on my google home page but it seemed pretty darned speedy to me. On the other hand, I think a T1 line would be fun! hehehe
September 19th, 2008 - 2:38 pm
LOL, I forgot you were with them. Didn’t mean to spook ya!
September 22nd, 2008 - 3:58 pm
Since I’ve been up to my elbows in the inner working of network traffic of late I’m going to have to say he’s full of it.
Traffic never shuts down ports. In a certain sense, when talking about web traffic, the statement doesn’t make sense since your side of the communication is taking place on a dynamic ‘ephemeral’ port.
When two computers start communicating they start slow and ramp up the speed until they achieve the maximum speed both can sustain. Heavy news days are sort of like backbone events. Somewhere between your computer and your brokerage account is a system that is wants to use several times its normal bandwidth this causes it to slow down communication with everyone.
Major news sites have contingency plans for major events. On the geekier sites post 9/11 there were deconstruction on how those contingency plans worked and how sites were able to keep people informed. If brokerage accounts are slowing down, it is because they don’t have contingency plans in place to handle a spike of requests an order of magnitude larger than their normal traffic.
You can do all you want to your computer and even your bandwidth, it won’t help unless you somehow arrange a leased line between your house and your brokerage firm.