WASHINGTON — The National Grain and Feed Association (N.G.F.A.) recently made recommendations to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group (CME Group) on steps to take in the case of an outage in the Globex trading platform.

On April 8, such an outage occurred, with the unfavorable outcome that many participants already had entered orders in Globex that could not be cancelled.

Among the N.G.F.A.’s recommendations to the CME Group was the formation of a contingency communications plan so that market participants would be aware of additional steps to avoid the kind of confusion experienced April 8. In addition, the N.G.F.A. advised the CME Group to suspend open outcry trading during any period in which the Globex platform was non-operational.