On Thursday night, November 27 2025, a chiller plant failure at the CyrusOne data center in Chicago’s CHI1 facility caused a loss of cooling for CME Group’s Globex trading platform. The outage forced a halt to trading on the exchange’s futures and options markets early Friday, November 28, 2025, shutting down key asset classes—including U.S. Treasury futures, crude oil, gold, and equity index futures—for several hours.
CME Group’s spokesperson confirmed that the failure involved multiple cooling units and that engineering teams were working to restore full capacity. Fixed‑income and foreign‑exchange markets resumed at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time, with other markets gradually reopening over the next few hours. The incident highlighted the critical role of the exchange’s electronic trading infrastructure and the potential systemic risk posed by a single data‑center failure.
The outage occurred during a period of thin liquidity, as the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday and a shortened Black Friday trading session had already reduced market depth. Brokers and dealers were forced into ad‑hoc contingency modes, with some quoting prices from internal data because official market benchmarks were frozen. The disruption was resolved within the day, but it underscored the importance of robust data‑center operations for the stability of global derivatives markets.
CME Group’s reliance on a single commercial data‑center provider for its core trading hub exposed a concentration risk that regulators and market participants are now scrutinizing. The event is likely to prompt discussions about mandatory redundancy protocols and the need for diversified infrastructure to prevent cascading market risks. CME Group has previously experienced outages, including a 2014 technical fault and a 2019 multi‑hour outage, but this incident is the most extensive in recent years.
The incident has potential financial implications beyond the immediate trading disruption. While the outage was operational, the cost of system recovery, potential client compensation, and reputational damage could affect CME Group’s profitability and market perception. Management has indicated a focus on investing in infrastructure resilience and exploring additional backup sites to mitigate future risks. Analysts have noted that the event may influence regulatory expectations and could lead to increased scrutiny of other exchanges’ data‑center strategies.
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