A glitch in the cooling system of its data center, has caused the CME Group, one of the world’s largest exchange operators, to suspend trading on its currency and derivatives platforms, impacting trading in foreign exchange, treasuries, commodities and stocks.
The Chicago-headquartered CME Group operates financial derivatives exchanges, including the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the Chicago Board of Trade, the New York Mercantile Exchange, and the Commodity Exchange. The company owns 27 percent of S&P Dow Jones Indices.
“Due to a cooling issue at CyrusOne data centers, our markets are currently halted,” said CME in a statement, adding, “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.”
CyrusOne operates over 50 data centers across the United States, Middle East, Europe and Asia. It is owned by US private equity groups KKR and Global Infrastructure Partners.
The outage began late on Thursday night, as per a report in Financial Times, and remained unresolved even eight hours later, as US markets opened after the Thanksgiving holiday. According to a Reuters report, futures prices for West Texas Intermediate crude, 10-year U.S Treasuries , the S&P 500 , Nasdaq 100 , Nikkei , palm oil and gold were among those not updated by 0720 GMT on Friday, according to LSEG Data.
The impact of this disruption could be exacerbated due to the fact that this Friday is the last trading day of the month, and this is when many options contracts will expire, and typically when traders start shifting their positions to new contracts.
