Zerodha customers complain of glitches on Monday morning; NSE, BSE says systems running smooth

India’s largest brokerage house Zerodha was again making headlines on Monday morning, facing customer ire over complaints that prices and trading froze on its trading platform, resulting in losses to users of the discount broking service. HDFC Securities also reported glitches and blocked trading in NSE cash due to the said glitch. Customers took to social media websites to complain about the platform. Both, National Stock Exchange (NSE) and Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) were immediate to respond, claiming that their platforms were running smoothly, dousing concerns of another trading conundrum.

Zerodha’s customer complaints on Twitter ranged from frozen prices, F&O update lag, and even order placement errors on Kite. Along with Zerodha, other discount brokerage firm, Angel Broking was also facing some hostility from customers who reported similar glitches and problems in trading on NSE.

Traditional brokerage firm HDFC Securities too was among those who faced glitches. “We have blocked trading in NSE cash due to a technical glitch. We request our customers to place cash orders on BSE. All other segments are working fine. Apologies for the inconvenience caused,” HDFC Securities said in the tweet. However, both NSE and BSE said their operations were running smoothly. The trading halt on NSE, placed by HDFC Securities, continued for nearly 20 minutes on Monday morning.

Last week’s ghosts resurface

The outage on various platforms comes less than a week after NSE faced a major technical glitch that where exchange feeds for Nifty, Bank Nifty and other indices stopped for all brokerage firms. The glitched forced NSE to halt trading nearly three hours into the day’s session. Meanwhile, F&O and intra-day orders could not be exited across brokerages. Zerodha had then exited all intra-day equity positions for their clients on BSE without their individual consent, bringing the company under fire as NSE resumed trading post-normal hours. 

Nitin Kamath, Founder and CEO of Zerodha has defended the company’s actions. “A lot has been said about what we should have done on February 24,  when NSE halted trading. Of course, with hindsight, it is easy now to suggest. But at 3 PM on February 24, the best option was to square off all NSE intraday positions on BSE,” he tweeted.