A major market operator suffered a technical glitch that sent traders scrambling. Should you be worried?

The possibility of a very devastating disruption to the financial markets was averted thanks to the holiday.

CME Group (CME), one of the world’s largest derivatives exchanges, suspended futures and options trading across major asset classes for more than 10 hours, ending early last Friday, due to an overheated data center. The outage occurred when trading volumes were below average due to Thanksgiving, which may have helped contain the chaos.

The crisis appeared to have been averted, with financial professionals of all stripes complaining about the power outages, and others speculating how much worse it could have been had they occurred during a normal trading day. However, this faulty data center briefly took down a major exchange and had far-reaching consequences – a futures exchange in Malaysia and its customers were affected – which is deeply concerning in an industry that relies on a few major players.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange is a major force in the global financial system, processing futures and options tied to $1.7 trillion in underlying stock indices alone. The company provides continuous price signals to traders, hedge funds, brokers and other investment professionals in real time – for agriculture, currencies, precious metals, energy and cryptocurrencies as well – information that is as critical to financial companies as GPS navigation is to the aviation industry. CME’s derivatives markets operate approximately 24 hours a day on trading days.

For investors who trade Chicago Mercantile Exchange futures to hedge their positions in Treasuries, stocks or commodities, a power outage, even if brief, leaves them exposed. What has been largely interpreted as an inconvenience — this latest and briefest glitch in 2019 — raises the specter of a much larger financial market disruption because there are not many alternative derivatives trading venues.

The CME outage hit its derivatives markets, and its effects were visible on social media platforms: brokers said pricing for some contracts was temporarily unavailable, and Redditors claimed their trades were stuck or unfairly closed as a result of the outage. The company’s Globex platform, the main venue for futures trading that accounts for more than 90% of average daily trading volume, resumed operations early Friday morning, ahead of the market’s shortened post-Thanksgiving trading session.

The problem that disrupted the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s main e-trading center has been traced to a data center run by CyrusOne in Aurora, Illinois, according to The Guardian. Wall Street Journal. Temperatures reportedly rose when the air conditioning broke down; CyrusOne said it enhanced backup cooling after the event.

How CME plans to address its data center adoption remains an open question. The company did not respond to an email inquiry.