Glitch forces Globex trading halt

Details remained sketchy at press time, but the problem is believed to stem from the failure of a third-party software component in the matching engine's database, which also prevented the engine from automatically switching to the backup database. All other products traded on Globex, such as equity, index and currency futures, were unaffected because the exchange maintains separate matching engines for each asset class.

Trading was suspended at 12:06pm Chicago time. The problem was fixed by 1:54pm, and trading re-started at 2:45. During the intervening period, trading switched to the open-outcry pits, where 840,000 eurodollar contracts traded that day, compared with a daily average of 365,000 contracts.

"Ironically, it was the third-busiest day we've ever had, in spite of the glitch," a spokesperson said. The CME traded a total of 6.4 million contracts on Thursday, 3.9 million of which were traded on the Globex platform. The volume of contracts was not related to the cause of the technical problem, according to the spokesperson.