E*trade is Just Awful...Unbelievable..
E*Trade customers hit by online service outage
NEW YORK, July 9 (Reuters) - Customers of E*Trade Group
Inc. <EGRP.O> on Friday morning could not place stock trades
through the Web site of the nation's second-largest Internet
brokerage for several hours because of a service interruption.
"Following a successful market open, during which we did
execute the majority of trades, we experienced a service
interruption for a few hours," E*Trade spokesman Greg Xenakis
told Reuters. A "communications interruption" crashed the Web
site's trading function, but was fixed by the afternoon,
Xenakis said, adding he was unable to give further details.
It is not the first time E*Trade, which pioneered the
online brokerage industry, suffered an outage. The Palo Alto,
Calif., firm's site was down for three consecutive days in
February, frustrating online investors and spurring
industry-wide calls for regulations.
E*Trade's competitors have all suffered outages, glitches
and delays this year. The widespread popularity of online
trading and Americans' continued fascination with the stock
market stretched many online brokers' computer capacity to the
limit. Investors funneled a record 575,000 trades a day through
the Internet in the second quarter, according to analyst Bill
Burnham of Credit Suisse First Boston.
Online brokers have raced to add capacity. Industry leader
Charles Schwab Corp. <SCH.N>, for one, increased its capital
and development spending by 35-40 percent this year to around
$630 million, after a series of brief outages.
Customers could still place trades through the firm's live
brokers, E*Trade's Xenakis said. The firm's Web site remained
up and running throughout the day, and the company had fully
restored online trading functions by the afternoon, he added.
E*Trade's stock fell $1.38 to $39.81 in Friday afternoon
trading.
859-1725--))
REUTERS
Rtr 16:41 07-09-99
Copyright 1999, Reuters News Service
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