LME experiences trading disruption

The London Metal Exchange (LME) issued a memo to all members and interested parties March 16 about a disruption event that halted trading on its LME Select platform for roughly three hours Monday, March 16. 

The LME says its primary electronic matching engine encountered an issue at 14:43 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) that caused electronic trading to enter a technical halt. However, the interoffice market remained open at all times. 

“The secondary matching engine was immediately available, but because market participants needed to reconnect and reinput orders and because the LME’s pricing window runs from 16:00-17:00 GMT, the LME decided to operate its backup Closing Prices approach,” the memo explains. “This was used to produce the Closing Prices, which were published at the usual times. Although all Closing Prices were produced, per the LME’s usual process, a Disruption Event was declared, because the system issue affected the ability of market participants to hedge at the relevant prices.” 

The electronic market was restarted on the secondary matching engine at 17:30 GMT, after the Closing Prices process, with trading continuing until 19:00 GMT. 

The disruption affected the LME's metal contracts, including copper, aluminum, lead, ⁠zinc, nickel and tin, which stopped updating on LSEG's Workspace platform from 14:43-17:30 GMT.