Power outage strikes Internet stock trading company

ST. LOUIS -- Some Internet stock traders with Scottrade accounts experienced brief glitches Friday after a two-minute power outage that affected the company's headquarters in suburban St. Louis, the company's marketing director said.

Scottrade, an online brokerage with about 1.1 million accounts, experienced a local power outage at 2:41 p.m. Friday, said spokesman Bruce Morton.

"We did lose market data on our JAVA-based system and our Windows-based system," he said. "We never lost trading; we just lost market data."

One customer, Tim Moore, 39, in Honolulu, was watching one of his stocks by following streaming quotes on his computer. He said he noticed a temporary, dramatic rise Friday. "Luckily, I didn't sell it. I had just bought it that morning," he said.

Moore called in to a Hawaiian office to see if something was amiss. He said he was concerned that others might have made Internet trades based on incorrect stock prices.

Morton said the company's call center did not experience an increase in calls, though he didn't know how many individual brokers received.

He said anyone who experienced a problem should contact the nearest of 201 Scottrade offices.

"They should call their broker, and explain the situation," he said. "Each one is a different circumstance."

Customers may have experienced problems for longer than two minutes, if they didn't then restart the application, Morton said.

Moore estimated he saw what appeared to be the wrong quotes for about 20 minutes.

Morton added that the company makes it clear in business agreements that continuous trading is not guaranteed, though he said Scottrade has an uninterrupted power supply system in place. He said Scottrade is double-checking the supply to figure out why there was the brief power delay. He said traders can expect reliable service on Monday when the markets open.