Major Trading Disruption Hits Global Markets
A significant technical failure at CME Group's data centre brought global financial markets to a standstill on Friday, November 28, 2025. The outage effectively froze all U.S. stock index futures trading and halted activity across multiple asset classes including currencies and commodities.
The disruption began in the early morning hours, with trading systems becoming unresponsive around 7:56 AM EST. Market participants worldwide found themselves unable to execute trades or access real-time pricing data as the outage spread across CME's trading platforms.
Widespread Impact Across Asset Classes
The trading halt affected multiple financial instruments simultaneously, creating one of the most significant market disruptions in recent memory. Equity futures, which allow investors to bet on the future direction of stock indexes, were completely frozen alongside currency and commodities contracts.
CME Group, one of the world's largest financial derivatives exchanges, serves as a critical hub for global risk management and price discovery. The outage effectively severed a key artery of the global financial system, leaving traders and institutions unable to manage their positions or hedge against market movements.
Market Response and Recovery Efforts
Exchange officials immediately began working to restore systems and determine the cause of the failure. The timing of the outage during active trading hours in multiple global markets amplified its impact, creating uncertainty among investors and financial institutions.
While the exact cause remains under investigation, the incident highlights the vulnerability of modern electronic trading systems to technical failures. Market regulators have been notified and are monitoring the situation closely as recovery efforts continue throughout the trading day.
This marks one of the most significant trading halts since previous technical failures in major exchange systems, raising questions about redundancy and backup systems in critical financial infrastructure.
