A major Microsoft outage occurred, and email problems were reported at Euronext in Europe, Nasdaq in the US and elsewhere, but trading itself continued. The cause was the unexpected loss of server availability, and recovery is progressing in stages.
A major outage that began in the early hours of the 13th in Microsoft's Microsoft 365 service caused problems with Outlook, Teams and Copilot. Trading in the core systems of major stock exchanges is said not to have stopped, but trading-related email problems emerged at Euronext, Nasdaq and Deutsche Börse, among others. Some market participants continued trading by phone, WhatsApp and fax.
Microsoft attributed the outage to a failure in its automated health checks, explaining that a large number of servers unexpectedly became unavailable, concentrating the load on the remaining servers. The possibility of a cyberattack was ruled out. Reports came from around the world, and recovery is progressing in stages, but as of the 13th the service had not been fully restored.
The stock exchanges asked that listed companies be notified by phone of emergency communications, such as trading suspensions. As delays arose in trade confirmations and settlement, there were reports of cases in which it was difficult to complete a bank lending transaction in Singapore, as well as instances in which some Japanese companies conducted trades by fax.
The impact on cryptocurrency exchanges was considered limited, although concerns were raised that withdrawals could be delayed when adding a new withdrawal destination requiring email approval. Kraken was reported to have set the validity period for approval links sent to registered email addresses at one hour.