(Bloomberg) — The world’s most important base-metals exchange resumed trading after a more-than five hour halt, although some brokers reported patchy access to electronic systems as the European trading day got underway.
The connectivity issues were caused by a power outage at a third-party data center, according to the London Metal Exchange. That cut off at least some traders from a venue that sets global prices for bellwether industrial commodities like copper and aluminum. About $64 billion of base metals futures contracts are traded on a daily basis, according to Bloomberg calculations.
Markets had been due to open at 1 a.m. London time Tuesday. Electronic trading on LMESelect resumed at 6:15 a.m., according to Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd., which owns the bourse.
“Following a power outage at a third-party data center on Monday evening, the LME has now migrated all systems to its backup data center,” the LME said in a statement. Trading is now proceeding as normal and the exchange is closely monitoring the incident, it said.
However, some third-party trading systems known as independent software vendors remained offline at 7 a.m., according to two traders at separate London brokerage firms, who weren’t authorized to talk publicly about the outage. One trader said he still wasn’t able to access the LME’s own system, known as Select.
The over-a-century-old bourse had suffered unexpected shutdowns in the past due to issues including connectivity problems with external network providers. It suffered two major outages within six months over 2016 and 2017, prompting traders take to the phones to react to price moves on rival bourses.
The outage caps a turbulent 12 months for the LME. In January last year it proposed permanently closing the historic open-outcry floor known as “the Ring,” but canceled the plan six months later after a backlash from major users.
In October, the exchange was forced to step in to restore order in the copper market — launching an inquiry into trading and making emergency rule changes — after orders to withdraw metal drove inventories to perilously low levels and sparked wild price swings.
Copper futures were 1% higher at $9,656 a ton at 8:07 a.m. in London, while nickel jumped 3.1%.
