Global Futures Markets Left Reeling After Hours-Long Outage
The world's largest exchange operator, CME Group, suffered its longest outage in years on Friday, plunging global futures markets into chaos for over 11 hours. Trading in foreign exchange, stock and bond futures, as well as other products, came to a grinding halt due to an outage at a data centre run by CyrusOne in Chicago.
According to LSEG data, trading resumed around 13:35 GMT on Friday, bringing back to life major currency pairs on CME's EBS platform, as well as benchmark futures for West Texas Intermediate crude, Nasdaq 100, Nikkei, palm oil and gold. However, the disruption had a significant impact on market participants, who were already bracing themselves for a busy month-end.
"This is a black eye to the CME," said Ben Laidler, head of equity strategy at Bradesco BBI. "It's an overdue reminder of the importance of market structure and how interconnected all these are." The outage had dealers scrambling to close positions ahead of the end of the month, which could have led to increased volatility.
Futures markets are a critical component of financial markets, used by dealers, speculators, and businesses to hedge or hold positions in various underlying assets. Without live prices for hours on end, traders were left flying blind, making it difficult for them to close positions.
The incident raises broader concerns about the reliability of market infrastructure, according to Axel Rudolph, senior technical analyst at trading platform IG. "Beyond the immediate risk of traders being unable to close positions... the incident raises concerns about reliability."
Regulators are monitoring the situation, with both the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission confirming they are aware of the issue and conducting ongoing surveillance.
CME is the largest exchange operator by market value and claims to offer the widest range of benchmark products. However, this latest outage comes after similar incidents in 2014 and 2024, which temporarily shut down electronic trading for some agricultural contracts. CME's shares were up 0.4 percent in premarket trading on Friday, suggesting investors are willing to look beyond the incident.
As markets slowly return to normal, traders will be watching closely to see how this incident plays out and whether it leads to increased scrutiny of market infrastructure and its ability to withstand disruptions.
The world's largest exchange operator, CME Group, suffered its longest outage in years on Friday, plunging global futures markets into chaos for over 11 hours. Trading in foreign exchange, stock and bond futures, as well as other products, came to a grinding halt due to an outage at a data centre run by CyrusOne in Chicago.
According to LSEG data, trading resumed around 13:35 GMT on Friday, bringing back to life major currency pairs on CME's EBS platform, as well as benchmark futures for West Texas Intermediate crude, Nasdaq 100, Nikkei, palm oil and gold. However, the disruption had a significant impact on market participants, who were already bracing themselves for a busy month-end.
"This is a black eye to the CME," said Ben Laidler, head of equity strategy at Bradesco BBI. "It's an overdue reminder of the importance of market structure and how interconnected all these are." The outage had dealers scrambling to close positions ahead of the end of the month, which could have led to increased volatility.
Futures markets are a critical component of financial markets, used by dealers, speculators, and businesses to hedge or hold positions in various underlying assets. Without live prices for hours on end, traders were left flying blind, making it difficult for them to close positions.
The incident raises broader concerns about the reliability of market infrastructure, according to Axel Rudolph, senior technical analyst at trading platform IG. "Beyond the immediate risk of traders being unable to close positions... the incident raises concerns about reliability."
Regulators are monitoring the situation, with both the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission confirming they are aware of the issue and conducting ongoing surveillance.
CME is the largest exchange operator by market value and claims to offer the widest range of benchmark products. However, this latest outage comes after similar incidents in 2014 and 2024, which temporarily shut down electronic trading for some agricultural contracts. CME's shares were up 0.4 percent in premarket trading on Friday, suggesting investors are willing to look beyond the incident.
As markets slowly return to normal, traders will be watching closely to see how this incident plays out and whether it leads to increased scrutiny of market infrastructure and its ability to withstand disruptions.
I mean, can you believe this? An 11-hour outage at CME Group's data centre is just crazy! It feels like something straight outta the old days when my dad used to tell me about how trading would come to a standstill for hours if there was even a small issue. And now it's like that again, but with computers and stuff 
. I'm sure it's not the end of the world or anything, but still... what's going on? Can't we just have one hour without a glitch around here? 
i mean like 11 hours no trading is just crazy can u imagine how hard it must have been for those traders trying to close positions? it's not just about the money, it's about the risk too 
they could've ended up losing everything. i'm surprised cme's shares didn't tank more after this outage. regulators need to get their act together and make sure something like this never happens again. market infrastructure is so critical and we can't afford to have it fail. 
the longer these tech giants keep pushing limits on their systems the more likely they are gonna have a major meltdown 
it's like they're playing with fire 
and expecting everyone else to just sit back and watch while they mess up 
But seriously, 11 hours without live prices? That's like, forever! 
CME Group should really focus on making sure these types of outages don't happen again 
... CME Group's outage was like a domino effect, causing so much chaos in the futures markets. I mean, 11 hours is a looong time to be down, especially for traders who were already stressed out with month-end activity 
I'm glad regulators are on top of this, but seriously, CME needs to step up its game 
... and what's with the shareholders being all chill about it? 0.4% increase in shares after an outage? Not impressed 
. I was checking my watch every hour, waiting for them to get back online 
. And now people are worried about market reliability? Like, come on... we're already dealing with volatility, do we really need this kind of stress? 
and now it's all about how reliable market infrastructure is, yeah that's a big deal 
I'm not holding my breath. This whole thing stinks, if you ask me 
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. The fact that traders had to scramble to close positions and potentially increase volatility is a huge red flag 
. I mean, how can you trust an exchange if it can't even keep up with the demands of trading? 
It's like they're playing a game of Russian roulette with people's livelihoods 
. I think it's a big deal because futures markets are super interconnected, so this outage had ripple effects everywhere 
. It's like, how can they not have better backup plans? 
That would be a disaster 
... can't wait to see how regulators respond to this, hope they're able to find some solid answers 
, still, gotta be worried about the reliability of market infrastructure and how they're gonna prevent something like this from happening again