**Off Topic**
biz.yahoo.com
Wednesday February 3, 12:34 pm Eastern Time
E*Trade trading disrupted by power outage
NEW YORK, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Some customers of E*Trade Group Inc., the third largest Internet brokerage, on Wednesday morning were unable to trade stocks because of a system failure, a spokesman for the Palo Alto, Calif. brokerage said.
The outage started at around 1100 EST/1600 GMT and was not fixed by 1215 EST/1715 GMT, the spokesman said. The brokerage is investigating the problem, which was first reported by financial news network CNBC, and will put out a statement shortly, he added.
Most Internet brokerages recently have reported system failures and glitches because they sometimes failed to accommodate the surge in cyberspace trading volumes. Investors funneled a record 340,000 trades a day through the Internet in the fourth quarter, up 38 percent from the third quarter, and trading volumes rose at the same clip in January, according to industry reports.
''We apologize for any delays you may be experiencing accessing some of our services in your account,'' a message posted by E*Trade on its Web site read. E*Trade's stock fell 2 -1/8 to 56-1/8 in early afternoon trading Wednesday . |
