CME Data-Center Issue Hits Options, Futures Trading — 2nd Update

By Kimberley Kao

Trading of futures and options on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange was halted for hours on Friday, disrupting some of the world's most liquid markets for commodities and financial instruments.

The exchange cited a cooling issue at a data center vendor and said it was working to resolve the problem.

"Due to a cooling issue at CyrusOne data centers, our markets are currently halted," according to CME Group's website.

"Support is working to resolve the issue in the near term and will advise clients of pre-open details as soon as they are available," it said.

CyrusOne did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the meantime, trading was halted in normally busy futures markets like U.S. crude oil, palm oil and soybean markets. These markets are typically active overnight, during Asian and European trading, ahead of the U.S. market.

CME Group is one of the world's largest derivatives marketplace, operating exchanges including the New York Mercantile Exchange, Chicago Board of Trade, and the Commodity Exchange, also known as Comex.

People familiar with the situation said that Comex and Nymex markets have all been affected.

U.S. markets were closed on Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday, but most were set to reopen Friday for a shortened trading day.

Trading on Bursa Malaysia's derivatives market have also been halted as its products trade on CME Group's electronic trading platform, the Malaysian exchange said in a statement.

"We are actively managing the situation and are working with CME Group to restore services as quickly as possible. Our priority is to minimize impact and ensure market integrity," it added.

The outage halted gold futures trading, with prices frozen at $4,221.30 a troy ounce. WTI crude-oil futures were also frozen.

"The timing is particularly unnerving for traders - we're at month-end, and a few contracts are facing their final trading day today," said Priyanka Sachdeva, senior market analyst at Phillip Nova.

"Once trading resumes, we could see a sharp rush to unwind or roll positions, which may inject a burst of volatility and even some knee-jerk, irrational price moves as participants scramble to normalize risk," Sachdeva added.

Trading across stocks, foreign-exchange and bonds could face increased volatility, XTB's Kathleen Brooks said.

"This closure ultimately means that liquidity will be even thinner than usual on the Friday of Thanksgiving," she said, adding: Any market-moving event could exacerbate the liquidity issues, causing more volatility.

--Miriam Mukuru and Giulia Petroni contributed to this report

Write to Kimberley Kao at kimberley.kao@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 28, 2025 04:16 ET (09:16 GMT)