CME Group says it inadvertently placed thousands of test orders on live energy and metals markets on its electronic trading platform yesterday.
The exchange operator says that for six minutes, starting at 2.38pm local time, the orders were placed on its Globex platform and not, as they should have been, into a quality assurance testing environment.
According to the Wall Street Journal, around 30,000 of the test orders went to the live energy and metals markets while tens of thousands of messages, including things like system updates and changes to markets or contracts, were also sent out by mistake.
As soon as the mistake was discovered "we began working with affected customers and implemented other corrective steps" says a statement. All trades executed during the period will stand, with none cancelled.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has also been kept up to date and CME will "address these transactions in accordance with its Rule 587".