A CME data center outage caused a halt to futures and options trading, affecting trillions of dollars in contracts.

CME Group's futures and options trading was suspended due to a data center outage, affecting markets worth trillions of dollars, including S&P 500 futures, US Treasuries, crude oil, gasoline, and palm oil. The foreign exchange platform EBS resumed service at noon London time after several hours of downtime. In Singapore, oil traders stated that the CME is a key component of the global market mechanism. Gerald Gan, Deputy Chief Investment Officer at Reed Capital Partners in Singapore, noted that the outage was "very frustrating" and indicated that alternative platforms might not offer the same level of liquidity as the CME. Amelie Derambure, a portfolio manager at Amundi SA, said that it was fortunate Friday was a light trading day, otherwise it would have been a "significant obstacle." The outage occurred the day after Thanksgiving, when US markets only trade for half a day. Emmanuel Valavanis, a London-based equity sales specialist at Forte Securities, said that it was very bad for something like this to happen on the last day of the month and year-end trading, affecting trillions of dollars in trades. This outage surpasses the several-hour outage caused by a technical error in 2019. (Bloomberg)