CME data center outage halts futures and options trading, affecting trillions of dollars in contracts

CME Group's futures and options trading was suspended due to a data center outage, affecting markets for trillions of dollars in contracts, including S&P 500 index futures, U.S. Treasury bonds, crude oil, gasoline, and palm oil. Foreign exchange platform EBS resumed service at 12:00 PM London time after being down for several hours.

In Singapore, oil traders said CME is a key component of the global market mechanism. Gerald Gan, deputy chief investment officer at Reed Capital Partners in Singapore, noted that the outage was "very annoying" and said that alternative platforms may not have as much liquidity as CME. Amundi SA portfolio manager Amelie Derambure said it was fortunate that Friday was a light trading day, otherwise it would have been a "significant obstacle."

The outage occurred the day after Thanksgiving, with U.S. markets only open for half a day. Emmanuel Valavanis, a stock sales specialist at Forte Securities in London, said it was very bad that this happened on the last day of the month and year-end trading, affecting trillions of dollars in trading. The outage has exceeded the hours-long downtime caused by a technical error in 2019.

[Bloomberg]