Microsoft Outage Disrupts Oil Trader Data and Dealmaking A Microsoft office in New York. · Bloomberg · Bloomberg Nathan Risser and Mia Gindis Fri, November 13, 2026 at 3:06 PM EST 3 min read MSFT -0.25% Trade MSFT on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
(Bloomberg) -- Around noon on Thursday, Oklahoma-based commodities trader Dennis Kissler's inbox went eerily quiet, even as new comments on the Iran war by US President Donald Trump sent oil into a volatile stretch.
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It took another hour for his team to realize emails weren't going through and start calling clients instead.
"We were in a one hour black hole. It definitely threw us off," said Kissler, who uses Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook to communicate with clients, many of whom are executives at shale producers.
A major outage of Microsoft's flagship software starting Thursday hit government offices, businesses and traders around the world, leaving many, like Kissler, who serves as senior vice president for trading at BOK Financial Securities Inc., to try other forms of communication. In some cases, traders reverted to old-school methods, including employees taking orders and relaying fills by phone and fax machine.
For oil traders, the outage added another layer of complexity to a market already upended by months of conflict in the Middle East. Any delay to putting on or unwinding a trade can prove costly in today's headline-driven market, where prices can turn on a dime as traders parse every development tied to US-Iran peace talks.
Microsoft on Friday said it was making progress in efforts to restore access and service availability. Still, the company warned that users of more than 20 products and services may continue to encounter errors.
One of the key pain points for traders during the outage has been commodity price data.
In Iowa, refined products broker Ken Malloy realized just before noon local time on Thursday that he couldn't access his email. He tried for hours but ultimately couldn't send out a report detailing fuel prices for clients of Kembro Fuel Brokers that he publishes four times a day. He continued to try late into the night but the issue wasn't fixed and he ended up sending Thursday's report early Friday morning.
Commodity traders and the oil and gas industry more broadly — from drillers to refiners — rely on prices published by several reporting agencies. One of the main agencies, S&P Global's division Platts, alerted clients Thursday that price updates may be delayed due to the outage and asked market participants who share information with them to communicate via phone or instant messenger as the company was unable to receive data via email.
Natural gas and biofuels prices were delayed and 22 biofuels prices would not publish until the outage is resolved, according to Platts. As of Friday afternoon in New York, Platts' alert system says the "incident has now been resolved."
Meanwhile, an oil trader in Houston faced several internal issues as email stopped working and key reports showing profits and risk exposures broke down.
Some traders were relatively insulated from the outage, either using alternative email services not tied to Microsoft or relying on instant messaging services like ICE Chat to conduct business.
The Microsoft malfunction has been felt across commodities markets. For metals, trading itself wasn't disrupted because traders could execute electronically through CME Direct, Trading Technologies or OTC platforms.
John Porter, managing director of special metals at CCMA LLC, said the outage was an "inconvenience for sure." But there was another takeaway: "A phone call still works," he said.
--With assistance from Yvonne Yue Li and Grace Asenov.
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