CME Group Inc logo is seen displayed in this illustration taken April 10, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

SINGAPORE (Reuters) -Exchange operator CME Group said on Friday it has halted trading in currencies, stock futures and commodities due to a cooling issue at data centres, freezing major market benchmarks.

"Due to a cooling issue at CyrusOne data centres, our markets are currently halted," CME said in a statement. "Support is working to resolve the issue in the near term and will advise clients of Pre-Open details as soon as they are available."

CyrusOne did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment.

The CME notice said the foreign exchange platform EBS markets was also halted due to a technical issue. Traders said they were informed by CME just before 0300 GMT of the halt, which affected trading of all futures and options contracts on Globex.

"It's a nightmare," said one trader who declined to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

CME derivatives are benchmarks in markets from stocks to commodities. Prices for S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 were not updated after 0344 GMT, according to LSEG data, nor were quotes for currency pairs on the EBS system, which is widely used in heavily-traded pairs such as dollar/euro and dollar/yen.

"It's been a very slow day here in Asia after the Thanksgiving holiday and this hasn't helped at all, more so given there is interest to transact at the end of what has been a volatile month," IG markets analyst Tony Sycamore said.

(Reporting by Ankur Banerjee, Florence Tan and Rae Wee in Singapore; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Shri Navaratnam)