Robinhood says its 24-hour trading ‘currently operating’

Amid reports suggesting that Robinhood halted its 24-hour trading, the company has declared that the service is currently intact.

“Our overnight trading session is currently operating,” a spokesperson for Robinhood told Cointelegraph when asked to confirm or deny the 24-hour trading service halt.

The spokesperson did not answer further questions about whether Robinhood experienced any platform issues amid market volatility and other details Cointelegraph.

Introduced in May 2023, the Robinhood 24-hour market service allows customers to invest on their own schedule. The platform is available from Sunday 12:00 am UTC to Friday 12:00 am UTC.

Multiple Robinhood users reported the trading suspension

On Aug. 5, multiple posters on X claimed that Robinhood suspended 24-hour stock trading on its platform amid massive volatility across most equity markets and alternative assets.

“Robinhood has suspended 24-hour stock trading on its platform due to elevated volatility,” wrote Jesse Cohen, a global markets analyst at Investing.com.

"Feels like March 2020 or September 2008,” Cohen added, referring to the stock market crash in 2020 and the financial crisis of 2008.

Other social media reports also suggested that Robinhood halted 24-hour trading due to huge market volatility.

“They have suspended all 24-hour trades until further notice,” Rawsalerts posted on X at 7:00 AM UTC.

According to another post by Rawsalerts, Robinhood is just one of many brokerages that have faced issues due to the massive market volatility. Other firms reportedly facing outages due to the market turbulence include Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard, TD Ameritrade, E-Trade, UPS, CenturyLink and others.

"While centralized platforms retain the power to halt trading on a whim, they can’t prevent crypto traders from accessing onchain markets which have continued to operate as intended during the market crash," Ran Yi, a co-founder at Orderly Network, told Cointelegraph. He added:

"True crypto doesn’t have an on off switch: it’s designed to operate around the clock through calm and chaos alike."

Japan’s Nikkei sees the biggest drop since 1987 Black Monday

The alleged trading halt on Robinhood came amid carnage in the global stock market, with Japan’s Nikkei seeing its most significant decline since Black Monday.

The Nikkei share average shed a staggering 12.4% amid recession fears on Aug. 5. That was Nikkei’s worst performance in percentage terms since the Black Monday, which was the worst stock market crash in global financial history that took place in October 1987.

US stocks also fell sharply on Monday as part of a global market sell-off centered around US recession fears, with Nvidia and Apple tumbling 9%.

According to Fox Business, over $1.93 trillion has been wiped out from the US stock market today as the Nasdaq has dropped over 1,000 points. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which had been outperforming, fell 2%.

The latest stock market crash came in response to poor jobs figures in the US last Friday, which triggered concerns over a potential economic recession and calls for an interest rate cut. According to some industry insiders, emergency rate cuts are coming soon despite the US Federal Reserve reportedly deciding against cutting interest rates last week.