I’m hearing a lot of stories from Interactive Brokers (IBKR) customers that lost their connection yesterday afternoon. 

Interactive Brokers (Nasdaq:IBKR) stock chart 

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 You are not alone.  It happened to me too.  At around 2:15 Central / 3:15 Eastern, my Trader Workstation screen began showing only sporadic quotes.  Trades didn’t appear to go through at all when I hit "transmit."  Then the dreaded pink lines appeared on the price grid, signaling a lost connection. 

Fortunately, I didn’t have any huge positions on at the time.  But I did have a smallish day trade in silver futures that I wanted to close.  Restarting Trader Workstation didn’t help at all.  Other applications were working, so the problem was clearly on IB’s end. 

The natural inclination at times like this is to call the broker’s voice number and try to get a registered rep to close the trade.  That works great for individual problems, but in fast markets or widespread technical problems, phone lines tend to jam up.

If you call a broker when the system is down and get stuck in a queue, immediately go to plan B.  Every good broker has numerous means of access.  Try them all until you get one that works.  Both of the brokers that I use daily — Interactive Brokers and TD Ameritrade, have at  least 5 methods of placing trades:

1. trading application: Interactive Brokers has its well-known Trader Workstation.  TD Ameritrade has a number of standalone trading apps, including the recently acquired ThinkOrSwim platform, StrategyDesk, and QuoteTracker. 
2. web interface: always a good backup
3. interactive voice (IVR): automated telephone menus.  I hate these but they work in a pinch.
4. human rep-assisted trades: if you can get through, great.
5. mobile web trading platform: usually a last resort but this might be up even if the main web trading interface is down.

I used Interactive Brokers’  Web Trader to close out my positions, and it worked like a charm. 

 DISCLOSURE:  Still a customer of Interactive Brokers.  No position in IBKR stock.

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