Traders clog the Net during wild stock market ride
Nov.
2, 1997
By JIM BROOKS
It's been a wild ride for stock market investors the last week
-- though users of online brokerages have had frustration thrown
into the mix of emotions.
Record volumes of trades taking place sent investors who used online
brokerages to their PCs to initiate sell-offs or purchases -- but
many were stuck in a virtual traffic jam with no place to go.
Customers of online brokerages like Charles Schwab's eSchwab service
and ETrade reported difficulties accessing their accounts due to
the tremendous crush of other online traders on both Monday and
Tuesday.
Usenet newsgroup postings reported the bad news: Customers reported
losses in the thousands of dollars due to investors being unable
to access their accounts by computer.
Some ETrade users reported spending more than an hour trying to
access a live representative by telephone when their online accounts
were inaccessible.
In spite of the trouble investors faced access their online accounts,
ETrade still managed to execute more than 50,000 trades on Monday,
the company said in a press release.
Charles Schwab spokesman Glen Mathison said in a Reuters report
that the heavy volume on their computer servers kept others locked
out for a time. The company recorded an average of 10,000 simultaneous
account log-ins throughout the day Monday -- a huge increase from
the usual average of 175.
Company spokesmen said the trading halt that took place late Monday
added to the problems for online brokerages because it created a
massive backlog of trades for the first thing Tuesday morning.
The message for online investors is clear, one analyst said. Make
sure your online brokerage has a solid backup plan to handle trades.
"People are not going to run away from online services after
today," Harry Fenik, vice president of Internet commerce marker
researcher Zona Research Inc. said. "But they are going to
think about a backup plan, like walking down to their broker's office."
WEB CRESTING? A new research report stated this week that
the users of online services had dropped for the first time in 11
years.
The story posted on the Los Angeles Times Web site said that the
number of users of online services -- including the likes of America
Online and CompuServe -- dropped about 3 percent in the third quarter.
The survey of 28 online service and Internet access providers found
20.5 million people signed up to use the services -- down slightly
from earlier this year.
Part of the decline may be related to the loss by online pioneer
CompuServe of 23 percent of its subscriber base since June. Part
of the services assets were recently acquired by America Online.
Prodigy's customer base remains stable at just under one million
customers, while the Microsoft Network counted some 2.3 million
subscribers.
Other subscriber figures include AOL, reporting 9 million subscribers
in June and AT&T WorldNet with 950,00 subscribers.
APPLE SLIPS. Apple Computer's market share has dropped --
again.
That's the news found in a report published this week by the Internation
alData Corp. of Framingham, Mass.
The worldwide computer market in grew 16 percent in the last quarter,
IDC figures said. But Apple's share of the world market pie dropped
to 3.3 percent -- down from 5.5 percent just a year ago.
Apple's sales for the third quarter were down 30.5 percent from
a year ago.
The drop in market share may push Apple from the top 10 list of
computer makers, according to the IDC.
Apple held the no. 4 spot in the top 10 issued last year by the
IDC.
The U.S. computer market grew by 20 percent over the past year,
according to IDC figures.
Compaq is still the top PC-maker worldwide, followed by Dell Computer
Corp.,
Packard Bell-NEC, IBM and Hewlett-Packard.
AOL OUTAGE. A minor outage knocked out e-mail for thousands
of America Online customers this past Wednesday.
The glitch was blamed on the services' hardware and software problems
related to its e-mail service.
Hardware was also blamed for keeping many AOL members from logging
on to the service.
AOL remains the largest Internet connection for most U.S. PC users,
with more than 9 million subscribers.
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