(Bloomberg) — The Chicago Mercantile Exchange restored most trading operations after an hours-long outage stemming from problems at a data center disrupted multiple financial markets across Asia and Europe.
The exchange’s Globex Futures & Options markets, which handles futures, options, and commodities trading and accounts for 90% of CME Group’s volume, opened at 8:30 a.m. New York time. Volume remained light across many markets, with at least four traders noting delays in trading for Treasury futures and SOFR options.
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CME Direct, a platform used to trade some of the company’s markets, was still unavailable, according to an alert shortly before the exchange said that all its markets were open.
A halt lasting around ten hours had triggered widespread frustration among market participants as they found themselves unable to trade contracts tracking the S&P 500 Index and multiple other assets on one of the world’s largest derivatives exchanges. The company saw an average of more than 26 million contracts exchanged each day in October, a record for that month.
“It’s a bit like flying dark,” said Thomas Helaine, head of equity sales at TP ICAP Europe in Paris. “When you’re trading cash equity like us, US futures give you an indication of where the market is going before the open.”
The outage lasted some three times longer than a similar disruption caused by a technical error in 2019 and underscores the reach of CME Group and its Globex electronic trading platform.
The cause was a cooling system malfunction at a data center in the Chicago area, according to facility operator CyrusOne, which is backed by KKR & Co. and BlackRock Inc.’s Global Infrastructure Partners.
Bourses operated by CME include the Chicago Board of Trade, the New York Mercantile Exchange and the Commodity Exchange. CME also has a stake in other exchanges, including the Gulf Mercantile Exchange, which said in a notice to the market that it had also seen trade halted due to the cooling issue.
For markets affected, the impact was significant. In London hours, trading of US Treasury futures was halted, gold saw erratic moves and US crude and palm oil on the Bursa Malaysia exchange were also affected.
Concentrated Markets
The disruption “shows how concentrated futures markets really are — there just aren’t many alternative venues for the main products,” said Thomas Texier, group head of clearing at Marex Group Plc.
