A wave of panic swept through financial markets on Monday as both cryptocurrency and traditional assets experienced significant drops. This left investors grappling with uncertainty and caused service disruptions at major brokerage firms.
Downdetector, a platform that tracks service outages, reported a surge in complaints from Fidelity and Vanguard customers on Monday morning. Over 2,800 Vanguard users and nearly 4,000 Fidelity users reported issues accessing the platforms’ services as markets plunged. This service disruption coincided with a major downturn in the cryptocurrency market, with Bitcoin and other digital assets experiencing substantial losses.
A Deeper Look at Crypto Black Monday
The total cryptocurrency market cap dipped below $2 trillion, reflecting an 8% decline in just 24 hours according to CoinGecko data. The drastic downturn, dubbed “Crypto Black Monday” by some market observers, saw a more pronounced decline than traditional markets, although the S&P 500 and Nasdaq also recorded losses of 2.66% and 3.12% respectively during the same period.
🚨#BREAKING: Multiple brokerages, including Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard, TD Ameritrade, E-Trade, UPS, CenturyLink, and Interactive Brokers, are currently down and reporting errors amid market crashes. pic.twitter.com/H2htHnXynT
— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) August 5, 2024
Robinhood, another prominent brokerage platform, opted to suspend its 24-hour trading services, citing “elevated volatility” in the global market, as reported by Investing.com on Monday. While the exact cause of the service disruptions at Fidelity and Vanguard are unknown, it occurred against a backdrop of heightened investor anxiety surrounding a potential U.S. recession.
According to a recent Bloomberg report, economists at Goldman Sachs raised their recession probability forecast for the U.S. to 25%, up from 15%, within the next 12 months.
