Alpaca incident

Investigating position update issue after sell orders issue

Resolved after 8 hours 35 minutes, affecting Positions API, on August 12, 2026.

postmortem Aug 13, 2026, 07:00 PM UTC

On August 12, 2026, disruptions affected equity position updates following completed sell orders. As a result, customers may have continued to see their pre-sale share quantities rather than their updated post-sale quantities, making it appear that they held more shares than they actually did and potentially resulting in customers overselling their positions. Our teams identified a position-data synchronization issue, corrected the affected position information, and completed the necessary order and account adjustments. We monitored the platform through recovery and confirmed that customer positions and balances were accurate. We know accurate position and order information is critical to your operations, and we appreciate your patience while the issue was resolved.

Started
Aug 12, 2026, 09:39 AM UTC
Resolved
Aug 12, 2026, 06:15 PM UTC
Duration
8h 35m
Detected by Pingoru
Aug 12, 2026, 09:39 AM UTC

Affected components

Positions API

Update timeline

  1. investigating Aug 12, 2026, 09:39 AM UTC

    We’re investigating an issue where some accounts may continue showing a position after it has been sold, which may allow an unintended second sell.

  2. investigating Aug 12, 2026, 10:15 AM UTC

    We are still investigating the issue , will share the update soon.

  3. identified Aug 12, 2026, 10:22 AM UTC

    We have isolated the cause of the position data discrepancies and are currently preparing plan for a corrective reconciliation to update the affected accounts

  4. identified Aug 12, 2026, 10:36 AM UTC

    We are taking correction actions on affected accounts and recovery process is in progress, we will update once process is finished.

  5. identified Aug 12, 2026, 10:54 AM UTC

    Recovery process is still in the progress , we will update once it is complete.

  6. monitoring Aug 12, 2026, 11:07 AM UTC

    Recovery process is complete now ,accounts should not be seeing the open position of symbol they have sold.

  7. monitoring Aug 12, 2026, 01:02 PM UTC

    We have corrected the position display issue for affected accounts. We are now reviewing a limited number of accounts that may temporarily reflect short positions as a result of earlier incorrect position data.

  8. monitoring Aug 12, 2026, 01:23 PM UTC

    We are currently conducting validation to ensure all account positions are accurately reconciled across our systems. We will provide a final update once these verification steps are complete.

  9. monitoring Aug 12, 2026, 01:52 PM UTC

    We are continuing to conduct validation to ensure all account positions are accurately reconciled across our systems. Thank you for your patience as we work to resolve this issue.

  10. monitoring Aug 12, 2026, 03:42 PM UTC

    We are continuing to conduct validation to ensure all account positions are accurately reconciled across our systems. Thank you for your patience as we work to resolve this issue.

  11. monitoring Aug 12, 2026, 04:10 PM UTC

    We are continuing to conduct validation to ensure all account positions are accurately reconciled across our systems. Thank you for your patience as we work to resolve this issue.

  12. monitoring Aug 12, 2026, 04:31 PM UTC

    We are continuing to conduct validation to ensure all account positions are accurately reconciled across our systems. Thank you for your patience as we work to resolve this issue.

  13. monitoring Aug 12, 2026, 04:45 PM UTC

    We are continuing to conduct validation to ensure all account positions are accurately reconciled across our systems. Thank you for your patience as we work to resolve this issue.

  14. resolved Aug 12, 2026, 06:49 PM UTC

    We have validated that customer positions and balances are now accurate. This issue is now resolved. Thank you for your patience as we worked to ensure balances and positions for customers were correct.

  15. postmortem Aug 13, 2026, 07:00 PM UTC

    On August 12, 2026, disruptions affected equity position updates following completed sell orders. As a result, customers may have continued to see their pre-sale share quantities rather than their updated post-sale quantities, making it appear that they held more shares than they actually did and potentially resulting in customers overselling their positions. Our teams identified a position-data synchronization issue, corrected the affected position information, and completed the necessary order and account adjustments. We monitored the platform through recovery and confirmed that customer positions and balances were accurate. We know accurate position and order information is critical to your operations, and we appreciate your patience while the issue was resolved.

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