CME Futures Outage News: CME’s Globex trading outage hits US markets ahead of Thanksgiving, disrupting futures, treasuries and commodities, raising concerns over data centre reliability and market stability.
US markets had closed Wednesday on a high note ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. But just as markets were preparing for a shortened session, CME’s electronic trading platform, which is also known as Globex, went down.
The outage spread beyond stock index futures. US treasuries, commodities, currencies and other asset classes were affected as the disruption rippled through global markets.
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Traders took the hit.
“Trading of futures and options was halted due to a fault at a data center, spilling over into multiple markets and affecting contracts covering trillions of dollars. It hit S&P 500 futures as well as everything from Treasuries and US crude oil to gasoline and palm oil. EBS, a platform used in foreign exchanges, was restored at 12 p.m. London time after being down for several hours.”
“On Nov. 20, open interest in CME’s US Treasury futures and options set an all-time high of 35.1 million contracts. About $1 trillion of notional value is traded daily in the E-mini S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures alone.”
“The outage meant limited trading in Treasury futures. Elsewhere, cash bonds traded sporadically and volumes may be hit by the reduced ability of traders to hedge. There are alternative methods to hedge trades, such as through swap markets which became more active following the start of trading in London, according to traders.”
The malfunction reportedly came from a cooling-system failure at the data centre, a mechanical issue rather than a cyberattack.
Many traders described the disruption as one of the most severe they have seen in years, as reported by Reuters. With US markets due to reopen for a shortened session after the Thanksgiving holiday, all eyes will be on how smoothly trading resumes.
BREAKING:
CME just halted ALL futures trading because of a cooling failure at their data center.Read that again… the entire derivatives market froze because a server room got too hot.
This is the same market that moves trillions, sets global prices, hedges entire economies.… pic.twitter.com/2o7WrbAxa7
— Manpreet Kailon (@preetkailon) November 28, 2025
