Financial Sites Crumble Following Stock Market Tumble

Posted 05/10/2010 at 4:49am | by Paul Lilly

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The stock market wasn't the only thing to come crashing down last Thursday. So too did several financial sites such as Yahoo Finance, Fidelity.com, and Google Finance, all of which buckled from the increased traffic as panicked investors hopped online to make trades and keep an eye on their portfolios, Infoworld.com reports.

Fidelity noted near-record peak transaction volumes, which resulted in a site slowdown but no interruption during the day, said Vin Loporchio, a Fidelity spokesman. That may not be entirely true. Several people complained that they weren't able to use Fidelity's website, some of which claimed that the downtime caused them to lose money.

"I also have been warning for months that our regulators need to better understand high frequency trading, which appears to have played a role today when the US market dropped 481 points in 6 minutes and recovered 502 points just 10 minutes later," said Senator Ted Kaufman, a Democrat from Delaware, in a statement. "The potential for giant high-speed computers to generate false trades and create market chaos reared its head again today."

Kaufmaun's remarks were prompted by the 1,000-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average last Thursday afternoon.