Robinhood Suspends 24-Hour Trading for Eight Hours

Robinhood has announced the suspension of its 24-hour trading platform, Blue Ocean ATS (BOATS), which includes specific risk controls to prevent stock prices from fluctuating more than 20%.

Details of the Trading Suspension

On August 6, Robinhood’s Blue Ocean ATS was temporarily halted for overnight trading. The company’s support account communicated on August 5 that the trading would be suspended from 12:00 AM UTC to 8:00 AM UTC the following day.

During this period, users could cancel their orders but were informed that any trades open at 12:00 AM UTC would be executed roughly eight hours later.

Previous Trading Halts

This recent trading suspension follows another reported halt on August 5, with multiple users expressing concerns. This coincided with a significant downturn in global stock markets, including Japan’s Nikkei, which faced its largest drop since 1987’s Black Monday.

While Robinhood did not openly acknowledge the previous halt, they maintained that their platform was functional at the time.

“Our overnight trading session is currently operating,” said a Robinhood spokesperson when asked for clarification.

The 24-hour trading feature, launched in May 2023, allows users to engage in trading outside of standard hours, utilizing BOATS for order execution.

According to Robinhood’s support documentation, BOATS employs specific risk controls to prevent drastic price changes, stating:

“Public exchanges have similar controls to prevent extreme price movements during market hours, including limit up and limit down halts […] This means individual securities in the 24-hour market won’t trade outside these pricing bands. BOATS may also reject orders with limit prices outside these price bands.”

Reports suggest that Robinhood wasn’t alone in experiencing trading issues amid market volatility, as other firms like Charles Schwab, Fidelity, and TD Ameritrade also faced outages.

User Reactions

Following the suspension announcement, several users took to social media to voice their frustrations over canceled trades.

• One user mentioned their disappointment over trades related to Nvidia, which were reportedly affected due to the suspension.
• Another participant called attention to the legality of the trading halt, questioning regulatory compliance.
• Some users reported substantial financial losses and expressed concern over the lack of record-keeping for their transactions during the suspension.

Robinhood had not provided a comment regarding these recent issues at the time of this report.