Trading app Robinhood faces regulator scrutiny after outages

By: Thornton M.

Robinhood’s angry customers may prove the least of its woes.

The online trading platform reopened for business on Tuesday afternoon after crippling technical outages left more than 10 million customers in the dark all day Monday and most of Tuesday amid record-setting market volatility.

But questions linger over whether the Menlo Park, California, company failed to provide customers with a back-up plan for executing trades, as it’s required to do by regulators.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra) requires firms to “create and maintain” written procedures “to meet their obligations to customers, counterparties and other broker-dealers during an emergency or significant business disruption.”

Robinhood was blasted on social media over the last two days by people claiming the company was impossible to reach during the two-day stock roller coaster.

“Still haven’t gotten any information on how to contact your co,” user @lilWitsell wrote on Robinhood’s Twitter page. That was followed by @DfsMoneda responding “6509402700, they won’t pick up though.”

A petition has even been floated to convince Finra to ban Robinhood “from any financial services activity.” It has racked up 1,500 signatures.

“Things go down. You have to have an escape hatch for people to exit positions,” explained Anthony Denier, CEO of Manhattan-based online trading platform Webull.

Sources told The Post that Robinhood has long since removed the phone number it once listed on its website.

Robinhood did not respond to a request for comment, but a spokesman for Finra told The Post, “We’ve been in contact with the firm and we’re monitoring the situation closely.”