A cooling malfunction at CyrusOne data centres triggered a major outage across CME Group’s trading platforms, disrupting activity in FX, commodities, Treasuries, and equity futures. CME confirmed the issue in a statement, saying it expected a resolution “in the near term” but provided no additional details.
CyrusOne—based in Dallas and operating more than 55 data centres across the U.S., Europe, and Japan—did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
CME, the world’s largest exchange operator by market value, first reported the issue at 0240 GMT on its website. By 0720 GMT, key futures benchmarks such as WTI crude, 10-year U.S. Treasuries, the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, Nikkei, palm oil, and gold had not received updated prices, according to LSEG data.
Live pricing also stalled on CME’s EBS foreign exchange platform, which averaged nearly $60 billion in daily turnover in October, affecting major pairs including EUR/USD and USD/JPY.
While spot FX traders were able to find alternative venues, brokers struggled without real-time futures pricing, leaving many unwilling to execute trades.
“It’s just a pain in the arse, to be honest,” said Christopher Forbes, CMC Markets’ head of Asia and the Middle East, noting he had not seen such a widespread exchange outage in two decades. CMC suspended trading in several commodity contracts and relied on alternative price sources or internal calculations to quote prices for clients and even other brokers.
Futures play a critical role across global markets, used by businesses, speculators, and dealers to hedge or take on exposure in a wide array of assets. CME recently reported an average daily derivatives volume of 26.3 million contracts in October.
Friday’s outage marks the most significant CME disruption since 2014, when technical problems temporarily halted electronic trading in some agricultural contracts, pushing traders back to the floor.
With U.S. markets closed Thursday for Thanksgiving and only a shortened session expected on Friday, trading volumes were already anticipated to be thin.
