The world’s largest derivatives exchange operator, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), experienced a technical outage on Friday (November 26), freezing major benchmark prices for stock indices, commodities and government bonds.
The outage hit CME Group due to a cooling problem in its CyrusOne data centers. In a statement, the CME confirmed that the issue had led to the shutdown of all its markets.
This failure had an immediate and widespread impact, leaving traders and brokers without live prices for important financial instruments.
Futures contracts on benchmarks including WTI crude oil, 10-year US Treasuries, S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 were frozen.
Services on Electronic Brokerage Services (EBS) were also disrupted, impacting trading in currency pairs like Euro/Dollar.
According to ReutersThe outage left market participants “flying blind,” with many brokers removing products from trading due to the inability to accurately price them.
Christopher Forbes of CMC Markets highlighted the unprecedented nature of this widespread outage, calling it a “pain in the ass” and worrying about the “unnecessary risk” of pricing without live data.
Analysts also warned that the event could lead to increased volatility once markets reopen, as the CME is the cornerstone of the financial system, with average daily derivatives volume reaching 26.3 million contracts in October.
Although the outage occurred during a period of generally lower liquidity following the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, it froze a primary source of price discovery for assets globally.
