- A cooling failure at a third-party data center temporarily halted CME trading worldwide.
- Globex, EBS and several futures markets were disrupted before reopening gradually.
- The outage highlights growing reliance on data center infrastructure for global markets.
Trading at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange gradually came back online Friday after a cooling system failure at a third-party data center forced one of the world’s most important derivatives platforms to pause activity across multiple markets.
The outage, which hit overnight during one of the slowest U.S. trading periods of the year, briefly halted stock index futures, options, metals and bond contracts, affecting traders around the globe.
Gradual Reopening After Hours of Disruption
CME Group confirmed that all markets were fully reopened by 8:30 a.m. ET, with some services restored even earlier. Foreign exchange platform EBS resumed operations at 7 a.m. ET, roughly 90 minutes after its European BrokerTec affiliate restarted.
A spokesperson for the exchange said in an email: “All CME Group markets are open and trading.”
The pause came after a cooling system issue at a CyrusOne data center in the Chicago region disrupted the infrastructure supporting several CME platforms, including Globex futures and options. According to CyrusOne, a chiller plant failure on Nov. 27 knocked multiple cooling units offline, forcing emergency repairs and deployment of temporary cooling equipment.
Traders Worldwide Felt the Ripple Effects
Because the outage occurred in the early U.S. morning hours — but during active Asian and European sessions — many international traders encountered stalled order flows and frozen price action.
“It’s inconvenient, but not unprecedented,” said Emir Syazwan, a futures trader in Kuala Lumpur. He added that markets had been unusually flat in the days leading up to the outage and would likely remain constrained until all systems stabilized.
U.S. strategist Art Hogan noted that timing helped prevent wider market disruption. “This could have been much worse,” he said, given the post-Thanksgiving lull.
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A Reminder of Market Infrastructure Vulnerabilities
While rare, outages at key trading venues have occurred before. CME’s Globex platform faced technical issues in 2014, and Switzerland’s SIX exchange temporarily halted trading last year due to data dissemination failures.
Friday’s incident underscores how dependent global markets are on the resilience of data centers and the systems that support them. For now, full operations at CME have resumed, and no lasting market distortions have been reported.
