Trading in futures and options on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange was suspended for several hours on Friday after a fault at an external data centre stopped activity across foreign exchange, bond, equity and commodity markets.
The interruption, which affected contracts from crude oil to United States Treasuries and S&P 500 futures, lasted longer than a comparable outage in 2019 and highlighted the central role of CME and its Globex electronic system.
Market participants faced the prospect of missing an entire session.
A CME Group spokesperson said: “Due to a cooling issue at CyrusOne data centres, our markets are currently halted.” The spokesperson added that support teams were working to fix the problem and would update clients on reopening plans. CyrusOne did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Traders reported disruption on EBS, a foreign exchange venue, and on products such as gasoline and palm oil that use CME’s platform. West Texas Intermediate futures last traded at 10:47 am in Singapore. Nick Twidale, chief analyst at AT Global Markets in Sydney, said: “We’ve lost one of the market’s major liquidity sources.”
US markets were shut on Thursday for Thanksgiving.