90% of Derivatives Freeze As Cooling Failure Stops Global Finance

At 03:00 GMT on November 28, 2025, a cooling system failure halted 90% of global derivatives trading after machines at a CyrusOne data center in Illinois overheated. This caused the CME Group’s systems to shut down.

This technical outage revealed a critical vulnerability in financial infrastructure. Physical cooling capacity, not computation or cyber threats, suddenly became the weak link for global market operations.

Cooling System Failure Halts Global Trading

CME Group confirmed that all markets were halted due to a cooling failure at a CyrusOne data center. The exchange, handling approximately 30 million contracts daily, ceased operations across its entire Globex platform. Treasury futures, energy, and agricultural markets froze from Chicago to Kuala Lumpur.

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

This outage was not the result of a cyberattack or market intervention. The cooling system failed to remove the heat from the hardware. As servers overheated, safeguards shut down the infrastructure to prevent serious damage.

For traders, the sudden disruption was alarming. Gold experienced two sharp $40 liquidation drops before recovering, while silver fell about $1 within minutes of the halt.

Gold (XAU) and Silver (XAG) Price Performances. Source: TradingView

These movements appeared disconnected from typical market selling, raising speculation about systemic issues or market intervention.

Market observers noted that the halt coincided with gold and silver nearing potential breakouts.

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