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Trading was halted for nearly three hours on the London Metal Exchange on Monday afternoon due to a technical outage, during a period when the Iran war has triggered unusually high volatility for commodity prices.
All electronic contracts on the exchange — which include copper, aluminium, nickel and other metals — stopped trading at about 2.44pm local time, according to data from LSEG. Dealing resumed at 5.30pm.
“The LME’s primary electronic matching engine encountered an issue at 14.43, which caused electronic trading to enter a technical halt,” the exchange said in a statement, adding that the issue “affected the ability of market participants to hedge at the relevant prices”.
The LME, founded in 1877 and owned by Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing, is the world’s largest market for physical metals trading and sets the benchmark price for many base metals.
The exchange reported a brief outage on January 30, which caused it to delay the start of trading by one hour. Rival CME separately experienced a 10-hour outage in November.
Global supply chains for metals have been roiled by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran war. The price of aluminium is up 13 per cent this year, largely due to smelter closures in the Middle East.