CME data center failure leads to suspension of futures and options trading, affecting trillions of dollars in contracts

According to Bloomberg, trading in futures and options at CME Group was suspended due to a data center failure, affecting markets worth trillions of dollars in contracts, including S&P 500 index futures, U.S. Treasuries, crude oil, gasoline, and palm oil.

The forex platform EBS resumed service at 12 PM London time after several hours of downtime. In Singapore, oil traders indicated that CME is a key component of the global market mechanism. Gerald Gan, Deputy Chief Investment Officer at Reed Capital Partners in Singapore, pointed out that the outage is "very frustrating" and noted that the liquidity of alternative platforms may not be as sufficient as that of CME.

Amelie Derambure, a portfolio manager at Amundi SA, stated that fortunately, Friday was a light trading day; otherwise, it would have been a "considerable obstacle." The outage occurred the day after Thanksgiving, when U.S. markets had only a half-day of trading.

Emmanuel Valavanis, a sales specialist at Forte Securities in London, remarked that having this happen on the last day of month-end and year-end trading, affecting trillions of dollars in trades, is very unfortunate. This outage has surpassed the several-hour downtime incident caused by a technical error in 2019.