Trading in all contracts on the London Metal Exchange (LME) was suspended and dealers were unable to place orders while awaiting further information on the cause of the outage.
A spokesman for the exchange said in an email that the exchange is aware of the issue and is working to resolve it as soon as possible.
Trading data shows the halt occurred at 2:44 p.m. local time, and an update on the LME website revealed an issue was reported with the electronic trading platform, while other systems were operating normally.
Markets remained closed from 4 p.m. local time, which typically marks the start of daily electronic trading windows used to set closing prices.
An LME spokesman said in a separate statement that it intended to restore services once closing prices were announced. The outage comes at a time of uncertainty in the metals market – the war in Iran has disrupted flows of industrial metals, including aluminum and zinc, negatively impacting the prospects for the long-term use of these metals.
Before the crash, prices were mixed, with copper rising 0.6%. , and aluminum fell by 1.3%. Metals markets have seen several trading interruptions in recent months. The LME stock exchange suffered an hour-long delay in the start of trading on January 30, and rival exchange operator CME Group suffered a 10-hour outage that rocked global markets in November.
In March last year, LME launched a new trading platform as part of a broad technological upgrade that aims, among other things, to increase functionality for electronic traders. Unlike rival exchanges, large volumes of trading on the LME continue to take place via telephone and electronic messages, but the LME is aiming to increase the number of transactions on screens in the wake of the 2022 nickel price crisis.
Source: Bloomberg
