Traders Around the World Left Hanging After Glitch Took Out CME
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Traders Around the World Left Hanging After Glitch Took Out CME
08 mins
(Bloomberg) — The Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group proudly describes itself as the place “where the world comes to manage risk.” Except on Friday, the world was shut out.
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Trading of futures and options was halted due to a fault at a data center, spilling over into multiple markets and affecting contracts covering trillions of dollars.
More than nine hours after the first alert appeared on the CME website on Thursday evening in the US, the company said services were starting to come back.
During the outage, there was disruption to S&P 500 Index futures as well as the EBS foreign exchange platform and everything from Treasuries to US crude oil.
In Singapore, one oil trader said when the initial alert was issued around 10:30 a.m. local time on Friday, they thought it was a hoax because the trades and quotes were still streaming in. But a few minutes later, the screen suddenly froze and they were booted out of the Nymex platform. A trader in London thought he had Wi-Fi connection issues.
With the go-to service out, screens that would usually be a flickering wall of numbers ground to a halt, and traders had to seek out other options to keep trading and operating.
“It’s pretty annoying. We wanted to price some equity index options,” said Gerald Gan, deputy chief investment officer at Singapore-based Reed Capital Partners. “My provider is scouring for alternatives, but I doubt the liquidity would be as ample as CME.”
Such reactions reflect how CME — which started in the late 1800s as the Chicago Butter and Egg Board — has grown to become an integral part of the global market machinery and a crucial part of traders’ daily work. On average in October, derivatives trading volumes amounted to more than 26 million contracts every day, according to data from the group.
On Nov. 20, open interest in CME’s US Treasury futures and options set an all-time high of 35.1 million contracts. About $1 trillion of notional value is traded daily in the E-mini S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures alone.
A notice about the outage on the CME website.Source: Bloomberg
Exchange outages have occurred frequently in recent years, with technology issues affecting pricing across platforms globally.
In June 2024, a glitch during a software update in June 2024 led the New York Stock Exchange to erroneously halt trading on about 40 stocks and display odd trades showing a 99% drop in prices. Earlier in the year, tech issues disrupted premarket Nasdaq trading for almost three hours.
In Europe, London Stock Exchange Group Plc suffered three outages in a few months at the end of 2023.
The latest CME malfunction is far longer than an hours-long outage in 2019, which will mean questions for the company about its contingency plans.
On LinkedIn, one employee at commodity trader Glencore commented “Real Black Friday” in response to a post on the issue.
Quiet Day
Friday was expected to be a relatively subdued day for stock markets, with no US economic data scheduled and no Federal Reserve speakers.
While some in the market said lower-than-normal liquidity because of Thanksgiving and half-day trading would limit volatility, there was also frustration about the challenges of trading without indications on US price action.
“Given the shortened session, the lack of data today and little volatility in markets given yesterday’s holiday, you couldn’t have asked for a better day for this to happen as volumes would have already been light,” said Paul Hickey, co-founder of Bespoke Investment Group. “On the other hand, on a day when liquidity is already scarce, this only made getting trades done harder.”
The outage meant limited trading in Treasury futures, and cash bonds traded sporadically. There are alternative methods to hedge trades, such as through swap markets, which became more active following the start of trading in London, according to traders.
“I’m glad this isn’t happening on a ‘Liberation Day’ type event,” said Ritik Katte, chief investment officer at MCD Capital, a London-based investment firm.
Futures for European and UK bond markets trade on a different exchange and were unaffected.
In the foreign exchange market, one trader said when trading opened at 8 a.m. in London, some platforms initially showed elevated bid-offer spreads.
“We typically use derivatives for tactical trades but it’s obviously impossible this morning,” said Amelie Derambure, a portfolio manager at Amundi SA. “Thankfully, it’s a quiet day. It would have been quite a handicap had it been a busy day.”
CME alerts on Nov. 28, 2025Source: Bloomberg
Some said they were staying away given the risks posed by the outage on a day when trading was already expected to be thinner.
“I am wary about trading on such an illiquid day, so I would not have wanted to trigger trades anyway,” said Rajeev De Mello, chief investment officer at Gama Asset Management. “And with this outage, all the more so.”
–With assistance from Neil Campling, Christian Dass, James Hirai, Alex Longley, Natalia Kniazhevich, Michael Msika, Jack Wittels and Yongchang Chin.
