As you probably know by now, a CrowdStrike update is unleashing chaos in the world this Friday. Computers running Windows are crashing and displaying the Blue Screen of Death.
The online trading sector, like many other industries, has been affected. ICMarkets, LMAX, and City Index were reportedly down in the early European morning, but the issue is striking many more brokers across the globe, regardless of where they are based. Forex.com, Plus500, and CMC Markets are just a few of the brokers affected.
Forex.com, City Index’s sister company and a subsidiary of StoneX, also crashed due to technical reasons. At the moment it is impossible to get up-to-date information on the chart from the current broker.
A first statement by Forex.com went: “Crowdstrike is currently disrupting some of our systems and we are working to resolve this issue as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience.”
An hour ago, the US-based broker returned to X to ask for patience: “!!!Global issues relating to a third party, Crowdstrike, are currently disrupting some of our systems and we are working to resolve these as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience caused and thank you for your patience!!!”
Plus500 also announced it has been affected by the Crowdstrike update. “Due to a global outage with a third-party provider (“Crowdstrike”), which affects many global services including Plus500, you might have difficulties logging into the platform and the website. We are on it.”
CMC Markets and its sub-brands, such as CMC Invest, are in distress due to the global IT outage as well. The UK brokerage firm said it is working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.
LSEG and BoE suffered outages
LSEG Group’s Workspace news and data platform also suffered an outage. The company said it was experiencing a third-party global technical issue that was impacting some services, although securities trading on the London Stock Exchange was not affected.
The LSEG outage also meant that company updates were not being published to markets through its Regulatory News Service, while signs of disruption in one of the world’s busiest financial centers emerged as London trade got underway.
During Asian trading hours, LSEG said its news services were experiencing a global technical issue that prevented news from being published on its platform. Separately, LSEG said it was experiencing technical problems publishing its spot and forward prices for currencies at 0600 GMT.
The Bank of England payments system suffered a temporary outage. Retail payment systems, including debit cards and cash machines, had been unaffected, the BoE said.
