JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s wealthy clients suddenly found themselves shut out from trading at the height of this week’s drama in stock markets -- just as prices cratered into the worst rout since 1987.
An electronic-trading platform used for catering to wealth-management clients broke down Thursday afternoon as the Dow tumbled by roughly 1,600 points, ending in a historic 10% drop, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The outage hit the group’s Morcom electronic trading platform, which employees use to place orders on behalf of wealthy clients, the people said, asking not to be named because the information isn’t public.
