Global markets ‘flying blind’ after CME suffers 10-hour glitch

The shutdown halted trading in major currency pairs on CME’s EBS platform and paused benchmark futures such as West Texas Intermediate crude, the Nasdaq 100, Nikkei, palm oil and gold.

Market activity had already been quiet because of the US Thanksgiving holiday. Traders said the outage increased the risk of sudden moves when markets fully reopened, especially with month-end positioning underway.

Ben Laidler, head of equity strategy at Bradesco BBI, told Reuters: “It’s a black eye to the CME and probably a reminder of how important market structure is and how interconnected everything is.”

He added that the timing was difficult because many portfolios are adjusted at the end of each month.
“If you’re going to have it, there would have been worse days to have a breakdown like this,” he said.

Futures are widely used to hedge or take positions in markets. With prices unavailable for hours, many brokers said they avoided trading altogether.

Axel Rudolph, senior technical analyst at IG, told Reuters: “Beyond the immediate risk of traders being unable to close positions, the incident raises broader concerns about reliability.”

A number of European brokers earlier reported they were unable to offer certain futures contracts during the outage.

CME is the biggest exchange operator by market value. It offers benchmark products across interest rates, equities, metals, energy, cryptocurrencies and agriculture. In October, it recorded average daily derivatives volumes of 26.3 million contracts.

The incident comes more than a decade after CME was forced to shut electronic trading for some agricultural markets in 2014 due to technical issues. Other exchanges, including LSEG and Switzerland’s exchange operator, have also faced outages in 2024. CME shares were up 0.4% in pre-market trading.