Robinhood suspends 24-hour trades for 8 hours

Cryptocurrency-friendly stock trading app Robinhood saw its 24-hour market’s execution venue, Blue Ocean ATS (BOATs), suspended for overnight trading on Aug. 6.

Robinhood’s support account, AskRobinhood, took to X on Aug. 5 to announce that BOATs halted overnight trading on Robinhood from 12:00 am UTC to 8:00 am UTC on Aug. 6.

“You may cancel your order at any time, and can still place an order for another trading session,” Robinhood’s support wrote, adding that all open trades as of 12:00 am UTC would be routed for execution in around eight hours.

Robinhood allegedly halted 24-hour trading for two days in a row

Robinhood’s latest 24-hour trading halt followed another alleged overnight suspension by BOATs on the previous day, with multiple users reporting on the issue on Aug. 5. The alleged suspension came amid a global stock market crash on Monday, with Japan’s Nikkei seeing its most significant decline since Black Monday in 1987.

Robinhood didn’t explicitly admit the trading halt to Cointelegraph on Aug. 5, only stating that the platform was operating at the time of communication.

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

Introduced in May 2023, the Robinhood 24-hour market service allows customers to invest outside traditional trading hours. For its 24-hour market, Robinhood uses BOATs to execute overnight trading orders.

According to a support page on Robinhood, BOATs has its “own risk controls to prevent stocks from trading more than 20% above or below the price established near the end of an extended hours trading session.” The page added:

“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.”

According to social media reports, Robinhood wasn’t the only brokerage platform experiencing issues due to the stock market volatility. Other brokerage platforms, such as Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard, TD Ameritrade, E-Trade, UPS and CenturyLink, have reportedly experienced trading outages as well.

Multiple Robinhood users complain about canceled trades

Multiple disgruntled investors publicly complained about canceled trades on X in response to Robinhood’s suspension announcement.

“What about my shares of Nvidia that I purchased last night, which were up nearly 10% before you clawed them back this morning?” one alleged Robinhood user, @YodasMaster13, wrote on X.

According to a screenshot shared by the investor, Robinhood sent him an email that all trades executed during the suspension period would be “canceled due to an issue experienced by Blue Ocean ATS.”

A number of investors also called on United States regulators to check whether the trading halt was in accordance with US laws.

“How is any of this even legal?” another disgruntled investor wrote on X, asking Robinhood to provide the reason for turning off the 24-hour trading execution.

One alleged Robinhood investor, who reported losing $500 due to the BOATs’ suspension, also stressed that the platform had “zero record” of its purchases during the suspension period.

“I wonder what FINRA would have to say about stealing my profits,” the user wrote.

Cointelegraph approached Robinhood for a comment regarding the latest halt on its 24-hour trading venue but did not receive a response at the time of publication.