Brokerage Problems in Perspective

7 Recommendations

I'm not a shareholder in TD AMERITRADE (Nasdaq: AMTD), but I'm a customer. So it was with particular interest that I read about an "outage" experienced by my brokerage. The Reuters report said that the broker "was hit on [Jan. 22] by an outage in its Web-based trading system, but it was resolved shortly after noon, the company said."

So the outage lasted a few hours. Anyone who had trouble accessing their accounts online was able to access them via phone and to place trades over the phone. The company charged customers the lower online rates for trades made over the phone during this period.

This event is probably enough to worry many customers -- and to make some would-be customers think twice. It might drive some to competitors such as Schwab (Nasdaq: SCHW) or E*Trade (Nasdaq: ETFC).

But I don't think it should worry you. The problem was resolved quickly. If you needed to place a trade order, you just had to use the phone.

Meanwhile, ask yourself whether it's really important to be able to place a trade order whenever you want to, to have that ability for many hours each day, five days a week. My hero, Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B), has mused that he wouldn't mind if the stock market were open just one day a year.

That sounds crazy until you think about it. After all, our money in the stock market should be long-term money. Whether a stock is up or down a percentage point or two (or 10) between today and tomorrow isn't of much importance, compared to where it is on the day we sell, which will ideally be many years down the road, after much capital appreciation.

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