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

ChainCatcher reported that futures and options trading on CME Group was suspended due to a data center outage, affecting markets with contracts worth trillions of dollars, including S&P 500 index futures, US Treasury bonds, crude oil, gasoline, and palm oil.

The forex platform EBS resumed service at 12:00 noon London time after several hours of downtime. In Singapore, oil traders noted that CME is a key component of the global market mechanism. Gerald Gan, Deputy Chief Investment Officer at Reed Capital Partners in Singapore, pointed out that this outage was "very frustrating" and stated that alternative platforms may not have as much liquidity as CME.

Amelie Derambure, portfolio manager at Amundi SA, said that fortunately Friday was a light trading day, otherwise this would have been "quite a big obstacle." The outage occurred on the day after Thanksgiving, when the US market only had a half-day session.

Emmanuel Valavanis, an equity sales specialist at Forte Securities in London, said that having this happen on the last day of month-end and year-end trading, affecting transactions worth trillions of dollars, was very bad. This outage has surpassed the hours-long downtime caused by a technical error in 2019.