Technical issues at the Shenzhen Commodity Exchange have caused interruptions in natural gas and metal futures trading, with all Wednesday orders being cancelled.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) group experienced a technical failure this Wednesday, forcing the interruption of trading in its natural gas and metal futures markets for over half an hour. Following an unusual halt in trading of the benchmark natural gas futures a month ago, this is another systematic trading interruption for the CME market, coinciding with the expiration date of the March natural gas futures contract, making the market impact significant. On February 25th, at 12:15 PM North American time, CME announced the suspension of trading for CME Globex metal and natural gas futures and options, and around 25 minutes later announced the resumption schedule: natural gas futures market resumed trading at 12:50 PM, while the metal futures market was delayed until 1:45 PM. CME also announced that all orders for the day and orders marked as GTD for the day would be canceled, with only confirmed GTC orders remaining valid. After the failure, Bloomberg data showed that starting from 2:00 AM Beijing time on February 26th, there were "missing" trading data for COMEX gold, silver, copper futures, and NYMEX natural gas futures. Trading for natural gas futures resumed after 3 AM Beijing time, with the increase widening to over 3%, reaching a new high of $3.017. Nicky Shiels, Head of Metal Strategy at MKS PAMP SA, stated that a "freeze" before the market closed was a "terrible timing," and "all participants who use futures as pricing and hedging tools were affected." Timeline of the failure: Four system alerts issued within 25 minutes The system alerts published on the CME official website can clearly depict the process of handling the event. At 12:11 PM Central Time on the 25th, the CME Global Command Center (GCC) issued an alert, stating that there was a technical issue affecting metal and natural gas futures and options, currently under investigation. Four minutes later, at 12:15 PM, CME officially announced that the mentioned markets had "suspended trading." At 12:33 PM, CME issued an operational notice, explaining the arrangements for handling orders before market restart. At 12:40 PM, CME further announced the specific restart time for the natural gas futures market. The restart notice for the metal futures market was then issued separately, with the opening delayed by approximately 55 minutes compared to natural gas futures. CME did not provide specific details on the cause of this technical failure. A second halt within a month, added pressure during natural gas contract expiration The timing of this failure is particularly sensitive. The March US natural gas futures contract was set to expire on February 25th, and the trading interruption directly disrupted the normal settlement process of the nearing delivery contracts, causing additional operational uncertainties for position traders. This is the second trading halt in about a month for the CME-owned natural gas futures market. According to previous reports, during the record-breaking surge in natural gas futures prices on January 27th, the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) under CME implemented an unusual two-minute halt during the market close, leading to price deviations in settlement and leaving traders confused amidst already tense market sentiments due to drastic weather-driven demand expectations. Two trading interruptions within a month have raised significant concerns about the stability of the CME trading system in the market. Nicky Shiels' statement reflects the general market concerns: any malfunction in trading infrastructure during crucial price discovery windows could have a substantial impact on institutional investors using futures for pricing and risk management. This article is reprinted from Wall Street See News, author: Li Dan; GMTEight editor: Feng Qiuyi.