UPDATE: Some Ameritrade Clients Encountered Website Trouble

Some clients of TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. (AMTD) were unable to access the online brokerage's website earlier Monday before the problem was fixed, a company spokeswoman confirmed.

She said the service disruption affected a "very small number of clients" and was related to a "connection issue with a certain Internet service provider." She declined to name the vendor, citing company policy.

During the disruption, TD Ameritrade rerouted some of its Web traffic to other providers, where possible.

The connection issue is the second such disruption for the Omaha, Neb., company in the past three weeks. On May 20, some clients were unable to log in to their accounts with the company for over an hour. That issue didn't affect TD Ameritrade's institutional clients, the independent registered investment advisers, who access the site through a different Web platform.

TD Ameritrade, along with peers Charles Schwab Corp. (SCHW) and E*Trade Financial Corp. (ETFCD, ETFC), experienced a surge in trading volumes on May 6 during the "flash crash" stock market plunge. Schwab and privately held Fidelity Investments also experienced "slowness" that day in their website displays to clients.

Representatives from Charles Schwab and E*Trade said their websites operated normally on Monday.

Shares of TD Ameritrade closed down 51 cents, or 2.9%, at $17.25.

-By Brett Philbin, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2173; [e-mail]