aiki14
02-08-2008, 08:00 AM
In light of recent troubles some folks here noted, here's an article from todays IBD:
Brokerages' Online Sites Can Still Lag
BY DOUG TSURUOKA
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 2/7/2008
When it comes to coping with big market swings, only some Web brokers have learned from the past.
That's what a study found after the market's vertigo-inducing moves last month.
The Dow swung 659 points on Jan. 22, falling 464 points in the first minutes of trading before ending down 128. It had a swing of more than 800 points the next day, and seesawed the rest of that week.
Web site performance data for online brokers such as Charles Schwab (SCHW) and TD Ameritrade (AMTD) show that some investors had to wait more than two minutes to make trades that day.
Eliminating wait time gets more important as more folks trade online. Forrester Research expects 12 million U.S. households to be trading online by 2011, a 48% increase from 2007.
Many online brokerage sites also had troubles during the market meltdown on Feb. 27, 2007, when the Dow fell 416.
Matt Poepsel, a vice president at Web performance tracker Gomez, says Feb. 27 provided a benchmark that some online brokers used in the intervening months to invest in new technologies and ways to cope with traffic spikes.
"Some that performed poorly the last time sailed smoothly through" on Jan. 22, Poepsel said, but others still had problems.
The problems aren't always technical, he says. At times, it's the fault of corporate cultures that interfere with or complicate the quality of service delivered to clients.
Poepsel says Fidelity and Vanguard performed well on Jan. 22, though both had slowdowns in February 2007.
Fidelity's Web site, which made investors endure an average response time of 93.4 seconds between 3 and 4 p.m. EST on Feb. 27, made investors wait 7.91 seconds between 9:30 and 10 a.m. EST on Jan. 22.
Banc of America Investment Services also did well. Clients waited an average of 10.29 seconds between 9:30 and 10:30 a.m. EST on Jan. 22 vs. 81.67 seconds between 3 and 4 p.m. on Feb. 27.
Ameritrade and Charles Schwab didn't fare as well.
Ameritrade slowed from 6.1 seconds at 9 a.m. EST before the market opened on Jan. 22 to an average 165.4 seconds by midday. Ameritrade spokeswoman Katrina Becker told reporters that day that the firm's online trading system suffered from "temporary slowness" when trading opened, due to unusually high volume. She said the snafus included delays logging onto the firm's trading system, with waits that at times exceeded five minutes.
Just days earlier, Ameritrade had unveiled plans to upgrade its system to better handle crunch times.
Schwab posted an average wait time of 44.2 seconds on Feb. 27, and a still-slow 28.28 seconds between 9:30 and 10:30 a.m. EST on Jan. 22.
Schwab spokesman Greg Gable says the company did have slower-than-normal Web response times on Jan. 22. He says that was because of the extremely high volume of clients logging on. "But there was no outage of service," Gable said.
Gabriel Dalporto, chief strategy officer of privately held discount broker Zecco.com, says that often removing one technical glitch causes another bottleneck.
"You have to go systematically through the entire trading system to remove all bottlenecks," said Dalporto, a former E-Trade Financial (ETFC) executive.
Copyright 2000-2008 Investor's Business Daily, Inc.
Brokerages' Online Sites Can Still Lag
BY DOUG TSURUOKA
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 2/7/2008
When it comes to coping with big market swings, only some Web brokers have learned from the past.
That's what a study found after the market's vertigo-inducing moves last month.
The Dow swung 659 points on Jan. 22, falling 464 points in the first minutes of trading before ending down 128. It had a swing of more than 800 points the next day, and seesawed the rest of that week.
Web site performance data for online brokers such as Charles Schwab (SCHW) and TD Ameritrade (AMTD) show that some investors had to wait more than two minutes to make trades that day.
Eliminating wait time gets more important as more folks trade online. Forrester Research expects 12 million U.S. households to be trading online by 2011, a 48% increase from 2007.
Many online brokerage sites also had troubles during the market meltdown on Feb. 27, 2007, when the Dow fell 416.
Matt Poepsel, a vice president at Web performance tracker Gomez, says Feb. 27 provided a benchmark that some online brokers used in the intervening months to invest in new technologies and ways to cope with traffic spikes.
"Some that performed poorly the last time sailed smoothly through" on Jan. 22, Poepsel said, but others still had problems.
The problems aren't always technical, he says. At times, it's the fault of corporate cultures that interfere with or complicate the quality of service delivered to clients.
Poepsel says Fidelity and Vanguard performed well on Jan. 22, though both had slowdowns in February 2007.
Fidelity's Web site, which made investors endure an average response time of 93.4 seconds between 3 and 4 p.m. EST on Feb. 27, made investors wait 7.91 seconds between 9:30 and 10 a.m. EST on Jan. 22.
Banc of America Investment Services also did well. Clients waited an average of 10.29 seconds between 9:30 and 10:30 a.m. EST on Jan. 22 vs. 81.67 seconds between 3 and 4 p.m. on Feb. 27.
Ameritrade and Charles Schwab didn't fare as well.
Ameritrade slowed from 6.1 seconds at 9 a.m. EST before the market opened on Jan. 22 to an average 165.4 seconds by midday. Ameritrade spokeswoman Katrina Becker told reporters that day that the firm's online trading system suffered from "temporary slowness" when trading opened, due to unusually high volume. She said the snafus included delays logging onto the firm's trading system, with waits that at times exceeded five minutes.
Just days earlier, Ameritrade had unveiled plans to upgrade its system to better handle crunch times.
Schwab posted an average wait time of 44.2 seconds on Feb. 27, and a still-slow 28.28 seconds between 9:30 and 10:30 a.m. EST on Jan. 22.
Schwab spokesman Greg Gable says the company did have slower-than-normal Web response times on Jan. 22. He says that was because of the extremely high volume of clients logging on. "But there was no outage of service," Gable said.
Gabriel Dalporto, chief strategy officer of privately held discount broker Zecco.com, says that often removing one technical glitch causes another bottleneck.
"You have to go systematically through the entire trading system to remove all bottlenecks," said Dalporto, a former E-Trade Financial (ETFC) executive.
Copyright 2000-2008 Investor's Business Daily, Inc.