CME Group'sGlobex electronic trading platform went dark for gold, copper and natural gasfutures on Wednesday afternoon, the second significant breakdown on theexchange's commodity markets within the last few months, and this time ithappened on one of the most sensitive days in the trading calendar.CME'sGlobal Command Center flagged the problem at 12:11 p.m. Central Time. Fourminutes later, the exchange confirmed a full trading halt across metals andnatural gas futures and options. Natural gas markets came back online at 12:50p.m., about 50 minutes after they were switched off, with options following 35minutes into the halt. Metals took considerably longer, with gold and coppercontracts on Globex not reopening until around 1:45 p.m.Bad Timing on ContractExpiry DayThedisruption landed at a particularly sensitive moment. Wednesday was the expirydate for the March natural gas futures contract - the day when traderstraditionally roll positions over into the next month. Despite the confusion,gas prices still managed to push higher, ultimately settling up 1.9% at $2.969per million British thermal units. Whether the halt itself contributed to thatmove remains unclear.CME saidall standard day orders and good-till-date orders placed for Wednesday werewiped out entirely. Good-till-canceled orders that had already beenacknowledged were left in place. The cancellations added operational headacheson top of an already volatile session.Trading onthe competing Intercontinental Exchange was unaffected throughout.Silver Tests $91 Amid theChaosSilveradded its own layer of intrigue to Wednesday's session. Prices climbed to theirhighest levels in three weeks during the day, briefly testing just above $91per ounce intraday, a level that carries significant technical weight as theupper boundary of February's consolidation range. By the close, however, themetal pulled back to finish the day below $90, failing to confirm the breakout.On Thursday, silver drifted slightly lower again, continuing to trade beneaththat key resistance zone.Whether theGlobex outage played any role in those price swings is hard to say withcertainty. What is clear is that the halt disrupted normal price discovery inmetals markets at precisely the moment silver was making its most technicallysignificant move of the month. As detailedanalysis on FinanceMagnates.com shows, the $90-$91 zone is the gate that determines whethersilver's recovery from February's brutal selloff gains real momentum. A dailyclose above it would open the path toward $100 and beyond, while failure tohold it keeps the metal range-bound.Confidence Erosion Sets InThereaction from market participants was pointed. Nicky Shiels, head of metalsstrategy at MKS PAMP SA, commented for Bloomberg the glitch "erasesconfidence over liquidity and price discovery at a time when the market hasbeen contending with a market dysfunctioning given the wild price swings."CME's stockfelt the impact too, falling about 4% on the day. The exchange is currentlyriding record trading volumes: its natural gas complex hit an all-timesingle-day record of more than 2.5 million contracts on January 20, up 15% fromthe previous peak set in November 2018. Metals volumes have also surged thisyear as gold and silver prices rocketed to new highs, driven in part bytariff-related safe-haven buying.That volumeboom has made the reliability question harder to ignore. The exchange earlierthis year overhauled how it calculates margins for precious metals, switching fromfixed-dollar amounts to a percentage-based system as prices surged to records. Despite themargin change, metals volumesat CME jumped 18%,with micro silver futures hitting a new daily record of 715,111 contracts.A Familiar ProblemThis wasnot a one-off. In late January, the New York Mercantile Exchange - owned by CME- imposed an unusual two-minute trading halt during the market close fornatural gas, skewing the settlement price and leaving traders dealing withunusually high volatility caused by a wave of cold weather thoroughly confused.And just this month, CME reported delays in publishing metals settlementprices.Theproblems go back further still. In November, CMEwas forced to suspend futures and options trading entirely for severalhours after a cooling failure at a CyrusOne data center knocked out systemsacross foreign exchange, bonds, equities and commodities. That outage leftbrokers flying blind andforced firms onto internal pricing models.This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.