Users say Robinhood's overnight trading service went down after Israeli attack

MW Users say Robinhood's overnight trading service went down after Israeli attack

By Steve Goldstein

During the height of uncertainty over Israel's retaliatory attack against Iran late Thursday, users of the Robinhood trading platform users say they were unable to trade.

Shortly after news of the Israel attack hit newswires, a number of users on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, shared screenshots purporting to show that Robinhood had suspended 24-hour trading.

Robinhood offers what's meant to be a 24-hour trading service, offering the ability for investors to trade outside of not just normal U.S. trading hours, but even outside typical premarket and after-hours trading.

Robinhood's trades during the overnight session are placed through an alternative trading system called BOATS, provided by a firm called Blue Ocean to other brokers as well. BOATS offers access to U.S.-listed stocks between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. Eastern, which matches the most active trading period in Asia.

Messages to Robinhood and Blue Ocean were not returned.

One client of Blue Ocean says it didn't receive any outage notifications, but that there is a circuit breaker where volatile prices lead it not to provide a price until the pre-market session starts. That client noted conditions are usually thin and illiquid at the best of times, so that Robinhood may have decided to pull the plug on risk management grounds.

Robinhood's terms and conditions do note that it can suspend overnight trading at any time.

Action in futures markets certainly reflected volatile movement, with the contract on crude oil (CL00) rising as much as 3%, and S&P 500 index contracts (ES00) dropping nearly 2%. Crude peaked around 11 p.m. Eastern.

U.S. stock index futures pointed to a weaker start on Friday, but futures have moved well off their lowest levels of the day.

In premarket trade, Robinhood shares slipped 0.5%. The stock has surged 34% this year.

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- Joseph Adinolfi contributed to this report

-Steve Goldstein

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April 19, 2024 07:55 ET (11:55 GMT)

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