The world's largest derivatives exchange is offline again! Trading in markets such as CME gold futures was interrupted for 1.5 hours.

The world’s largest derivatives exchange, CME Group, experienced a system outage again, disrupting its core metals futures trading for about 1.5 hours, causing the market to halt at a highly sensitive moment.

On February 25, CME’s Globex metals market stopped trading at 12:15 p.m. Eastern Time and resumed at 1:45 p.m., with an outage lasting approximately 1.5 hours. This market is a primary trading venue for U.S. gold futures contracts. Meanwhile, CME’s natural gas futures and options markets also experienced about a 35-minute trading interruption. CME attributed the incident to a “technical” issue.

The timing of this outage was particularly sensitive—Wednesday was the settlement date for March delivery natural gas futures. Robert Yawger, Managing Director and Commodities Expert at Mizuho Americas, stated, “Even a brief loss of price tracking ability as contracts approach expiration is very unfavorable.”

Currently, global markets are experiencing intense volatility. Gold and silver prices hit record highs earlier this year, and natural gas prices surged significantly due to harsh winter weather and geopolitical uncertainties. The system failure further amplified the impact on market participants.

Repeated Failures Raise Questions About CME System Stability

This is not the first major system failure for CME in recent years. An article from Wallstreet.cn pointed out that this is the second trading interruption within about a month in CME’s natural gas futures market.

Previously, on January 27, during a record surge in natural gas futures prices, CME’s New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) implemented a two-minute abnormal halt during the market close, causing settlement price deviations and confusing traders already tense from demand fluctuations driven by cold weather.

Additionally, in November last year, CME experienced a nearly 10-hour large-scale outage affecting stock, bond, foreign exchange, and commodity markets. CME later attributed the cause to a “cooling system failure” at a data center near its Chicago headquarters.

Multiple failures have led to growing doubts about CME’s system stability. Yawger bluntly said that “CME outages are becoming a pattern,” and warned that clients have other options and could switch to alternative trading venues.

Increased Competition and Rising Client Loss Risks

Yawger pointed out, “Nothing drives clients away faster during a trading day than a market shutdown.”

CME’s main competitor is Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), based in Atlanta, which also offers energy products and other commodities trading services.

Notably, this outage occurred at a critical point of CME’s rapid expansion. Founded in 1898, CME is the world’s largest commodities derivatives exchange. In April last year, it set a monthly record with an average daily trading volume of 35.9 million contracts.

Meanwhile, CME recently announced plans to launch regulated cryptocurrency futures and options products in May, offering 24/7 trading, pending regulatory approval.

As the business continues to grow and market demands for system reliability increase, the series of technical failures pose significant challenges to CME’s reputation and customer trust.

Disclaimer: The content and data in this article are for reference only and do not constitute investment advice. Please verify before use. Trade at your own risk.