How Do I Exit a Trade If My Broker's App Goes Down?

“The app will not load and I have a position open. What do I do?”

Work down this list in order.

1. See whether the problem is on your end. Switch from Wi-Fi to mobile data, or the other way round. Restart the app.
2. Try another way in: the broker’s website on a computer, or the app on a second device.
3. Call the trading desk. If your broker takes orders by phone, now’s the time to use it. Fees for broker-assisted trades may apply, so check the fee schedule when you’re calm.
4. Once you’re back in, look before you act. Open the order status and the positions page, and read both before you send anything new.

The fourth step is the one that’s easy to skip under pressure, because the relief of finally seeing the screen again pushes you to act at once, and acting before you’ve read what already happened while you were locked out is how a single exit turns into two.

Why you check before acting

Orders you sent before the outage may have executed. So may orders placed by phone during it. You might not see either.

Order status first, positions second, then decide. If anything looks wrong, call the desk again. Ask them to read back every open order and every fill on the account since the trouble began, and write down what they tell you, with the time of the call, in case the record needs sorting out with the broker later.

Preparing before it happens

If your exit is already sitting at the broker, you have far less to do in an outage than someone whose exit is a plan in their head. That’s the case for resting orders, the same one made in why mental stops fail: an exit that needs you to act at the right moment fails exactly when acting gets hard.

Once the broker accepts a stop order, it lives on the broker’s systems and triggers whether or not your phone is on. A bracket order goes further and places the stop and the profit target together at entry, so the position is covered from the first fill.

Resting orders can’t cover an outage on the broker’s side. If the firm’s own order handling is affected, nobody outside it can promise what will execute, and the phone desk may be swamped at the same moment. Preparing lowers that risk without removing it.

The checklist

Do this on a quiet evening, and add the items to your pre-trade checklist.

• Save the broker’s trading desk number in your phone contacts.
• Write it on paper too, with your account number.
• Log in once through the website on a computer, so you know the password works there.
• Check that two-factor codes reach a device you’ll have with you.
• Find out what the desk charges and which hours it’s open.
• Put a real stop order on every position you’re holding.
• Know how to read order status and fills on both the app and the website.

Each item takes minutes. Skip them and the first test comes during the outage itself, with a position moving against you and a login screen that won’t respond, which is a bad time to find out the password was only ever saved in the app.