CME trading halted after data center cooling failure

A cooling failure at CyrusOne’s data centers halted trading on CME Group platforms, freezing futures and options on Globex, EBS FX and related markets such as commodities, Treasuries, equities and energy.

Key conclusions

• The global crash occurred during the thin post-Thanksgiving session on Friday.
• Pricing is frozen or volatile on key futures (stocks, Treasuries, energy, commodities) and related venues.
• Several brokers have reported missing prices in several CFDs and worsening liquidity/spreads in XAU/XAG.
• Wider spreads, stale prices and potential gap volatility on re-raises and hedging risk for active traders.

We have seen emails from several brokers about the outage. For example, TopFX emailed the following warning:

Disconnection details

The problem stemmed from a cooling plant failure at CME’s Central Electronics Center in Aurora, Illinois, which affected several cooling units and forced a complete shutdown.

CME confirmed that markets remain shut down as support teams, along with contractors, deploy temporary cooling and restart chillers at reduced capacity.

Contracts such as WTI crude, S&P 500 futures, 10-year Treasuries and palm oil stopped being updated around 09:00 ET, while Bursa Malaysia derivatives are also available offline through the CME platform.

Traders are reporting steady but narrow ranges persisting at the time of writing as the Asian and European sessions take the brunt of the blow.

Trader Impacts

Liquidity providers unable to hedge with CME futures move away from spot markets, widening CFD spreads and creating execution risks such as market order slippage.

Price signals can become unreliable when the futures level is inconsistent with spot action and lags actual market movements. For CFD traders, this means monitoring positions closely, preferring limits to markets and preparing for catch-up volatility on reopening – potentially increasing thin session gaps into real distortions.

Even short stops during periods of low liquidity can cause sharp volatility in currencies, Treasuries and commodities once they are resolved.

With the CME as a derivatives hub spanning the CBOT, NYMEX and Comex, these rare but recurring disruptions (echoing the shutdown of agricultural contracts in 2014) highlight the fragility of the 24-hour global trading infrastructure.