Trading in Metals Contracts on London Metal Exchange Restarted — 2nd Update
By Giulia Petroni and Kirk Maltais
Trading in all contracts on the London Metal Exchange has resumed after being halted earlier in the day Monday, with the stoppage preventing traders from placing or matching electronic orders in metals ranging from copper to aluminum.
The disruption affected trading on the exchange's electronic platform, LMEselect. Contracts stopped trading shortly after 1440 GMT, according to the LME - roughly 10:40 a.m. EDT. Before the outage, prices were broadly mixed, with three-month copper up 0.9% and aluminum down 1.3%.
The electronic market was restarted on the secondary matching engine at 1730 GMT, or 1:30 p.m. EDT. The LME said that trading is scheduled to continue as normal until 1900 GMT, or 3 p.m. EDT.
The London-based exchange is owned by bourse operator Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing.
The incident is the latest in a series of exchange disruptions in recent months. In late January, the LME delayed the start of trading because of technical issues, temporarily stifling activity. In late November, CME Group was unable to offer trading in futures tied to U.S. stock indexes, Treasurys and crude oil for more than 10 hours after a data center it relied on overheated.
The three-month forward contract for aluminum is down 1.2% to roughly $3,400 a metric ton. Three-month copper futures are up 0.9% to $12,840/mt, and three-month zinc futures are down 0.6% to $3,276/mt.
Write to Giulia Petroni at giulia.petroni@wsj.com and Kirk Maltais at kirk.maltais@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 16, 2026 14:58 ET (18:58 GMT)
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