I’d have liked to bring you good news about crypto this week. But since the story looks much the same as in previous weeks, I’ll keep it short:
We’ve had some big drops, and now things are stabilising. Prices are even starting to climb again.
The CME outage
If there’s one story you shouldn’t have missed, it’s this one!
On Friday 28 November, CME Group, the world’s largest derivatives exchange, was down for almost 11 hours.
The cause? A cooling system failure at a data centre...
It was one of the longest interruptions in years, and the timing was quite something: Thanksgiving weekend, when trading volumes are already low.
The outage affected a large part of the futures markets run by CME: equity index futures, commodities, currencies, interest rates and more.
The effects?
- Less liquidity
- Wider spreads
- Trading desks unable to hedge some of their positions
- Losses on poorly executed hedges
Several brokers also removed or suspended CME-linked products until things returned to normal.
The takeaway?
Even systems that are supposed to be among the most robust in the world can fail, with unexpected and very expensive consequences.
Topstep and prop firms
Another story that got people talking this week was the confirmation of Topstep’s new rules and challenges.
I’ve put out a YouTube video walking you through all the changes:
- Challenges with no activation fee
- The end of Rithmic access and a mandatory move to TopstepX
- Revised payout rules
Yes, I’m a YouTuber too, alongside being a trader, analyst and occasional economist.
Since we’re talking about prop firms, and Black Friday ends tonight, there are still a few very good challenge deals available.
If you’ve been hesitating, it’s now or never.
Here’s my comparison tool again so you can see which ones.
Source: Reuters