CME Halts Futures for 30+ Minutes, Cancels Day's Orders
A technical failure at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange forced a halt in trading for its natural gas and metals futures markets on Wednesday, February 25. The exchange announced the suspension on its Globex platform at 12:15 PM UTC-6, citing an unspecified technical problem. The disruption lasted over 30 minutes for natural gas, which resumed trading at 12:50 PM UTC-6, while metals trading remained paused until 1:45 PM UTC-6.
As a result of the outage, the CME announced the cancellation of all outstanding day orders and Good-Til-Date (GTD) orders placed for the session. Only Good-Til-Canceled (GTC) orders that had been previously confirmed remained active. The sudden halt caused trading data for COMEX gold, silver, copper, and NYMEX natural gas futures to show as missing from feeds starting around 02:00 UTC+8 on February 26, according to Bloomberg data.
Second Outage in a Month Spikes Gas Prices Over 3%
The timing of the failure amplified its market impact, as it occurred on the expiration day for the March U.S. natural gas futures contract. This directly interfered with the final settlement process for traders holding positions, injecting significant uncertainty into a critical trading window. After trading resumed, natural gas futures prices climbed more than 3%, hitting a daily high of $3.017.
This event marks the second major trading disruption for the CME's natural gas market in approximately one month. On January 27, the NYMEX exchange implemented an unusual two-minute halt during a period of record price increases, which traders said led to settlement price discrepancies. The repeated failures are intensifying concerns over the stability of CME's trading infrastructure.
It is extremely poor timing to see the market freeze before the close. All participants who use futures for pricing and hedging have been affected.
— Nicky Shiels, Head of Metals Strategy at MKS PAMP SA.
