By Ann Saphir

(Reuters) – The Chicago Board Options Exchange blamed its second outage in a week on problems relating to preparations to extend its trading day, but executives reiterated their commitment to the project and said they would hire an outside consultant to help.

The start of trading in one of 25 business “clusters” of stock options was delayed Thursday morning for about 10 minutes, with the system unable to handle complex orders in all affected products for the first 34 minutes of the trading day, CBOE said in a memo to clients.

By Ann Saphir

(Reuters) – CME Group Inc (CME.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the world’s largest futures exchange operator, reported a drop in first-quarter profit as trading in some of its more lucrative products slumped and average revenue per trade fell.

Net income declined to $235.8 million, or 71 cents a share, from $266.6 million, or 80 cents a share, a year earlier, the Chicago-based company reported on Thursday.

May 2 (Reuters) – CME Group Inc, the world’s largest
futures exchange operator, reported a drop in first-quarter
profit as trading in some of its more lucrative products slumped
and average revenue per trade fell.

Net income declined to $235.8 million, or 71 cents a share,
from $266.6 million, or 80 cents a share, a year earlier, the
Chicago-based company reported on Thursday.