☰

Empresas y finanzas

"Flash crash" a record day at TD Ameritrade: CEO


    NEW YORK (Reuters) - The jarring "flash crash" on May 6 yielded a record trading day at TD Ameritrade Holding Corp , although some customers were upset with the market breakdown that day, the U.S. online brokerage's chief said on Thursday.

    "Like everyone else, that day was a big day for us," CEO Fred Tomczyk said at the Sandler O'Neill conference here. "We had a lot of trades. We don't talk too publicly about the number, but that day was a record day for us."

    With Europe's debt woes already weighing on the Dow Jones industrial average May 6, it plunged that afternoon some 700 more points in minutes before sharply rebounding, rattling investors globally and touching off a series of regulatory changes in the equities markets.

    "Not every investor or trader was happy with their execution because of what happened in the markets and market structure," Tomczyk said. "But our technology held up very, very well that day. We did not have any outages."

    TD Ameritrade is the second-largest U.S. discount broker and operator of the largest retail trading platform. It and its peers are expected to report May trading volume, known as daily average revenue trades, or DARTS, later this month.

    The sharp volatility last month is expected to give the industry a big boost.

    (Reporting by Jonathan Spicer, editing by Maureen Bavdek)