Global foreign exchange markets experienced a period of significant disruption on November 28, 2025, when a cooling failure at a CyrusOne data center in Chicago forced CME Group to halt all futures and options trading. The outage, which impacted trading in currencies, commodities, Treasuries, and stocks, exposed vulnerabilities in the increasingly interconnected financial system, according to market participants.
The incident began late Thursday, November 27, 2025, with a “cooling issue” at the CyrusOne CHI1 facility, a critical infrastructure hub for CME’s electronic trading platform, Globex. CME confirmed the shutdown, freezing price discovery across multiple asset classes. Trading was also suspended on CME’s cash FX EBS platform and the Malaysian BMD derivatives market. By 5:30 a.m. ET on Friday, November 28, price feeds for key benchmarks like WTI crude, S&P 500 futures, and U.S. 10-year Treasury futures remained frozen, according to LSEG data.
While foreign exchange futures represent a relatively small portion – roughly 2% – of overall spot and outright forwards volume, the impact of the CME and EBS shutdown was disproportionately large. Bid/offer spreads on currency pairs with active futures contracts widened by two to four times their normal levels, and for some non-bank liquidity providers, the spreads ballooned by as much as 124 times, according to reports. This indicated a significant loss of liquidity and increased volatility in the market.
CyrusOne engineers responded to a chiller plant failure, taking multiple cooling units offline. The company stated that several chillers were restarted at limited capacity and temporary cooling equipment was deployed. CME technical staff worked to stabilize the data center, promising updates once the system was ready to reboot. The outage occurred during a period of heightened sensitivity in global commodities markets, coinciding with geopolitical tensions and the shortened Black Friday trading session.
The disruption highlighted the growing reliance on futures-led market structures and the potential for systemic risk when critical infrastructure fails. The incident prompted a “soul search” within the FX community, as described by industry observers, regarding the fragility of the new market structure and the necessitate for greater resilience. The extended outage, one of the longest in years, underscored the interconnectedness of global financial markets and the potential for localized failures to have widespread consequences.
As of February 26, 2026, CME Group and CyrusOne have not publicly released a comprehensive report detailing the root cause of the cooling failure or outlining specific measures to prevent similar incidents in the future. The investigation remains ongoing, and market participants are awaiting further details regarding the steps being taken to enhance the reliability of the infrastructure supporting global financial trading.