Chicago Mercantile Exchange Halts Trading, Sparking Public Outcry
Chicago, November 28, 2025 – Trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), one of the world's largest derivatives marketplaces, was abruptly halted early Friday morning, sending ripples of concern and frustration throughout the global financial community. The halt, which impacted futures and options trading, was attributed to a "cooling issue" at the CyrusOne CHI1 data center, a critical facility that powers the CME's Globex electronic trading platform.
The outage began late Thursday, November 27, 2025, and quickly escalated, forcing the CME Group to shut down the entire Globex platform. According to the CME Group's website, "Due to a cooling issue at CyrusOne data centers, our markets are currently halted,". The statement further indicated that support teams were working to resolve the issue and would advise clients of pre-open details as soon as they became available. By 8:20 a.m. ET, the issue was seemingly resolved. Trading of futures and options then resumed at 7:30 a.m. local time.
The trading halt froze price discovery for a wide array of financial instruments, including U.S. crude oil, gold, U.S. equity futures, global FX markets, U.S. Treasury futures, and palm oil. It also affected trading on CME's cash FX EBS platform and Bursa Malaysia's BMD derivatives market, highlighting the interconnectedness of global financial systems. LSEG data indicated that by 5:30 a.m. ET, price feeds for WTI crude, S\&P 500 futures, and U.S. 10-year Treasury futures had not been updated.
CyrusOne stated that the cooling failure involved a chiller plant malfunction that took multiple cooling units offline. Engineers were reportedly working "around the clock" to restore full cooling capacity, with some chillers restarted at limited capacity and temporary cooling equipment deployed. The CME's technical staff also worked to stabilize the data center and prepare the system for a reboot.
The disruption occurred during a sensitive period for global commodities, with oil and gold prices already reacting to geopolitical headlines. The shortened Black Friday trading session, typically characterized by lower liquidity, amplified the impact of the outage. The absence of critical pricing signals created uncertainty for global investors, brokers, and risk desks.
The trading halt sparked immediate public outcry, with market participants expressing concerns about the lack of transparency and the potential for increased volatility. Asian and European traders were particularly affected, as the outage occurred during their market hours, forcing many to operate with incomplete information. Some analysts warned that the disruption could lead to steeper price swings during the day's trading session.
The CME Group is one of the world's leading derivatives marketplaces, operating exchanges such as the New York Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade, and The Commodity Exchange (COMEX). Its role in facilitating the trade of stocks, commodities, currencies, and other assets means that any disruption can have far-reaching consequences for global financial markets.
While trading has now resumed, the incident has raised serious questions about the resilience of critical infrastructure supporting financial markets and the potential vulnerabilities of relying on centralized data centers. The incident is likely to prompt increased scrutiny of data center redundancy and contingency planning to prevent similar disruptions in the future.
