US STOCKS-Wall St futures resume trading after hours-long CME outage

By Johann M Cherian and Pranav Kashyap

Nov 28 (Reuters) - Wall Street's main indexes were gearing up for a higher open on Friday as futures resumed trading after an outage at CME Group brought trading in currencies, commodities and equities futures to a standstill around the world.

At 8:42 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis YMcv1 were up 80 points, or 0.17%, S&P 500 E-minis EScv1 were up 13.25 points, or 0.21% and Nasdaq 100 E-minis NQcv1 were up 81.5 points, or 0.32%.

CME said that all its markets were opened and trading, hours after the world's largest exchange operator flagged the issue.

The outage was first posted on its website at 9:40 p.m. ET on Thursday and CME said it was due to a cooling issue at its CyrusOne data centers.

CME's stock futures offerings linked to the S&P 500 EScv1, the Nasdaq 100 NQcv1 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average YMcv1 are typically heavily traded before U.S. markets open, with investors relying on them to gauge trends and directions.

"It's a black eye to the CME and probably an overdue reminder of the importance of market structure and how interconnected all these are. It's month end, a lot of things get rebalanced today," said Ben Laidler, head of equity strategy at Bradesco BBI.

"Having said that, it could have been a lot worse, it'll be a very low volume day. If you're going to have it, there would have been worse days to have a breakdown like this."

Market volumes are expected to be light following the Thanksgiving holiday. Investors instead looked to exchange-traded funds tracking Wall Street's main indexes as a gauge for broader market mood.

Traders warned of a potential spike in volatility once the outage is resolved, a situation likely to be worsened by low liquidity during the holiday-shortened trading week. Markets will close at 1 p.m. ET.

Shares of CME Group CME.O were down about 0.1% in light volumes.