Crypto News: CME Outage Freezes Global Futures Trading for Hours

A CME outage froze global futures trading for hours after a Chicago data centre cooling failure, leaving traders with stalled prices and low visibility.

A rare disruption hit global markets when a technical problem forced the Chicago-based CME Group to halt trading across large parts of its futures and options markets. 

The stoppage lasted several hours and created uncertainty across Asia, Europe and the United States. Traders depend on these prices to guide decisions, so the outage left many without the data they needed.

CME Outage Stops Key Markets

The interruption started early during Asian trading. Prices across major futures contracts suddenly froze, and this included contracts tied to crude oil, US Treasuries, the S&P 500, the Nasdaq 100, the Nikkei, gold and palm oil. 

Many brokers had to pull products because quotes were unavailable or outdated.

A man, Christopher Forbes, at CMC Markets, told Reuters that he had never seen an outage spread across so many products. 

His firm removed several commodity contracts from its platform. Staff tried to calculate prices using internal data, but they knew the risk increased without live feeds. 

Other brokers across Europe made similar moves and paused trading in certain futures.

Cooling Failure at CyrusOne Facility

CME said the trigger came from a cooling issue at a CyrusOne data center near Chicago. 

The CHI1 facility lost several chillers after a failure in the plant that cools servers. Engineers and outside contractors worked onsite to restore temperature controls and CyrusOne restarted some units at limited capacity.

It then installed temporary cooling machines to keep equipment safe.

The company told clients it was working around the clock to restore full service. CME repeated that support teams were trying to bring systems back online as soon as possible. 

By late morning in Europe, some of CME’s fixed-income platforms, such as BrokerTec U.S. Actives and BrokerTec EU, had resumed while many other markets remained paused.

Related Reading: CME Expands Crypto Futures Trading to 24/7 Due to Rising Demand

Market Reaction as Prices Stalled

The outage caused difficulties for traders across asset classes. The EBS foreign exchange platform, which handles tens of billions in daily volume, also stopped updating spot currency prices. 

That pushed some traders to other venues for execution. Even then, many felt they were operating with limited clarity.

At TP ICAP Europe, a manager said losing US futures felt like flying in the dark. Futures usually hint at how cash markets will open, so not having those signals added uncertainty. 

Liquidity dropped in some markets. Bid-ask spreads widened, especially in metals and energy. Gold saw spreads many times wider than usual in early London trade.

Timing Added Extra Complications

The outage hit during a quiet period in the US, right after Thanksgiving. Markets were preparing for a shortened session. Many expected slow activity. Even so, traders in Asia and Europe were in the middle of their workday and felt the shutdown far more strongly.

Some commodity contracts were close to expiry. Gasoline (petrol) and diesel futures were among those due for settlement that involve physical delivery. A long delay could have made the process more complicated for firms handling logistics.

The timing also lined up with monthly contract rolls for some products. 

Several traders said they felt stuck holding positions longer than planned. One trader in Kuala Lumpur told CNBC he spent the afternoon calling brokers as he waited for updates.

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