The last major full technical halt on CME futures before the November 28, 2025 outage occurred more than a decade ago—on August 24, 2014.
On that day, CME Group’s Globex electronic trading platform suffered a four-hour shutdown after a technical malfunction disrupted the system that powers futures trading across asset classes.
What happened in 2014?
The halt stemmed from planned weekend software reconfigurations that went wrong. When the market reopened, critical components of the Globex platform—particularly the risk transfer and order-matching systems—failed to load correctly.
As a result, several major futures contracts were frozen:
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S&P 500 E-mini
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Nasdaq 100 futures
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Crude oil futures
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Gold futures
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Treasury futures
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Multiple agricultural products that relied heavily on Globex risk systems
The system remained offline for roughly four hours, creating significant market disruption for global traders who rely on Globex’s near-24/7 availability.
Why the 2014 halt matters today
The 2014 event is the most recent comparable full-market technical halt prior to the November 2025 outage. In contrast:
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Circuit-breaker pauses (such as the 15-minute halt at 7% and 13% drops in U.S. equity futures)
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Scheduled holiday closures
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Individual contract halts due to limit moves
…do not count as broad operational failures of the CME system.
Bottom line
August 24, 2014 was the last time CME experienced a major, cross-market technical shutdown — until the November 28, 2025 cooling-system failure that halted CME Globex, EBS Direct, EBS Markets, and BMD simultaneously.
