Markets from bonds and commodities to equities and foreign exchange are paused on the Chicago Mercentile Exchange (CME), after a problem with one of the platform’s data centers. Every day, millions of exchanges are made on CME, not only allowing investors access to 24-hour trades in some markets but also providing analysts and the media with real-time updates on market sentiment.
The CME’s FedWatch barometer is often referred to as a snapshot of how convinced the market is of a rate cut, and by how much, and in turn the volatility which may ensue if that bet doesn’t translate to reality.
A message sat on the CME homepage this morning, telling investors: “Due to a cooling issue at CyrusOne data centers, our markets are currently halted. Support is working to resolve the issue in the near term and will advise clients of Pre-Open details as soon as they are available.”
A spokesman for CME told Fortune in a further statement: “BrokerTec EU markets are open and trading. All other CME Group markets remain halted due to a data center cooling issue at CyrusOne. We will provide updates as they are available.”
It is unknown when the problem will be rectified.
Due to a cooling issue at CyrusOne data centers, our markets are currently halted. Support is working to resolve the issue in the near term and will advise clients of Pre-Open details as soon as they are available.
— CME Group (@CMEGroup) November 28, 2025
The disruption will sting less than it might have in any other week, with many American traders out for the Thanksgiving holiday.
“Whilst our 2026 outlook might be called ‘Anything but dull’, the last 24 hours have been ‘everything dull’ with the U.S. out for Thanksgiving, and few headlines elsewhere,” wrote Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid to clients this morning “Even an overnight outage at the CME, which means many futures contracts (including U.S. equity futures) haven’t traded since around 2.45am London time, hasn’t really been noticed!”
“Given the exponential surge in data centres for other reasons in recent quarters that’s an interesting development!”
Not everyone will be so sanguine. Frustration will be inevitable for traders who were holding positions when the platform went dark, with questions mounting from speculators as to why the issue has led to an outage across so many markets.
And hasn’t that been the question of the year: With millions of dollars riding on data infrastructure across the U.S., will it hold up?
This isn’t the first time CME has suffered such problems: In 2019 a technical error halted trading for three hours, impacting markets including grains, crude oils, and metals.
At the time, Hiroaki Kuramochi, global sales trader and chief market analyst at Saxo Bank Securities in Tokyo, told Bloomberg: “This is so annoying for our clients. There are some people who make arbitrage trades in after-hours trading. This poses a risk of hurting investor sentiment.”
The data center issue
The supply of reliable data centers is a problem that isn’t going to go away anytime soon. AI hyperscalers are investing eye-watering sums into specific campuses to fuel the data centers their emerging technology needs.
As McKinsey & Co observed in an August report, global demand for data center capacity could more than triple by 2030, and in the U.S., particularly, demand could grow by 20 to 25% per year by the end of the decade. But on the other hand, “for all the investment, some hyperscalers have pulled back from or paused some of their commitments to building large-scale data centers.”
“This may be the result of several factors, including economic uncertainty, power constraints, construction project delays, or potential oversupply of capacity … All these factors combined highlight the complexity of accurate demand forecasting over the medium to long term.”
This is a breaking news story, updates will be added on an ongoing basis.
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