(Reuters) - CME Group delayed the start of trade on its electronic platform by four hours on Monday due to technical problems, the latest glitch to hit the world's largest futures market operator.
But traders in Asia said the delay would have only a limited impact, with volumes likely thin on Monday morning in the absence of major market-moving news over the weekend.
The start of trade in all contracts on the Globex Markets platform, apart from Bursa Malaysia derivatives, was halted because of an unspecified technical glitch, the top U.S. exchange operator said on its website.
Trade eventually began at 2200 EST, but a spokesman for CME in Singapore declined further comment.
Among contracts traded on CME include the benchmarks for U.S. crude and agricultural markets such as wheat, corn and soybeans. U.S. gold and silver futures are also traded on the system.
The delay marks another headache for CME, which shut electronic trade for leading agricultural contracts on April 8 in the worst-ever trading outage for those markets.
CME Executive Chairman Terrence Duffy has said that outage was triggered when sophisticated technology tripped over a trading halt in a single market.
CME, which owns the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade and the New York Mercantile Exchange, said in July that it would slash costs by reducing hiring and employee travel amid weak trading volumes that led to a 15 percent drop in second-quarter net profit.
All day and session orders, including so-called good-through-date orders with an Aug. 24 trade date would be canceled, CME said on Monday.
All open orders that have been acknowledged would remain working, the exchange operator said.
(Reporting by Colin Packham in SYDNEY, Manolo Serapio Jr. and Florence Tan in SINGAPORE; Editing by Michael Perry and Joseph Radford)