TLDR:
- CME outage halted futures and currency trading as cooling failure reduced live market data feeds.
- Freezing prices affected key benchmarks including crude oil, gold, government bonds and stock futures.
- Brokers removed products and switched to internal pricing models due to unreliable data.
- Market desks expect volatility as trading resumes after the Thanksgiving holiday slowdown.
The CME The outage halted a wide range of futures and forex products in early Asian hours. Forex traders saw live prices stall across commodities, stock indices and major currency pairs.
Activity slowed as brokers withdrew products without reliable flows. The outage followed a cooling system failure at the CyrusOne data center.
CME outage halts market activity across futures and currency
Trading was paused across CME’s major futures contract after the cooling issue triggered an immediate platform shutdown. Reuters reported that markets saw frozen prices for crude oil, gold, government bonds, palm oil and stock futures.
The EBS currency platform was also offline, reducing access to real-time rates on the euro-dollar and dollar-yen pairs. Wu Blockchain conveyed that quotes stopped being updated across the board.
Traders in Asia said the announcement came just before 0300 GMT as desks braced for thin liquidity after the Thanksgiving break. Reuters noted that spot currency traders shifted activity to alternative arenas, although futures desks had fewer options.
Brokers operated with limited visibility and avoided price contracts with missing data. CMC Markets removed several commodities and relied on internal calculations for remaining instruments.
Market counters pointed to increasing uncertainty as the disruption extended into the morning session.
The report added that companies saw heightened risk in maintaining two-way pricing in illiquid conditions. Traders expected volatility as markets reopened with delayed price discovery. CME stated that it aimed to resolve the issue in the near term.
CMC Markets said the outage added strain to an already slow post-holiday session. The company saw the demand for transactions at the end of the month but lacked the information required to manage exposures.
Reuters reported that several brokers avoided offering products altogether because of the missing flows. The event came during a volatile period for global marketsincreased caution among desks.
Cooling failure at CyrusOne data center triggered outage
CME linked the outage to a cooling failure at CyrusOne facilities that supported its infrastructure. The report noted that CyrusOne did not immediately comment on the incident.
The data center operator has more than 55 facilities in the US, Europe and Japan. Its systems support critical exchange and trading workloads.
The outage followed earlier technical disruptions seen across global exchanges in recent years. Reuters referred to previous issues at LSEG and Swiss Stock Exchange which briefly suspended trading.
The CME also faced an electronic trading halt in 2014, sending traders back to floor activity. The latest incident placed renewed focus on infrastructure reliability during high-frequency trading sessions.
Asian desks said the outage dampened what was already a calm post-holiday environment.
IG’s Tony Sycamore told Reuters that interest in transactions remained strong despite limited activity. The disruption reduced market depth and forced traders to adjust execution strategies. With American markets opened for a shortened session, liquidity was expected to remain low.
