Stock Futures

I have a very rudimentary understanding of economics.  What I know, I learned from:

1.  The Economics 101 course that I took in college 30-something years ago.

2.  My husband, a securities attorney.

3.  Reading on my own.

Obviously not a professional.  If you don't know anything at all, I can teach you some.  Sorry if you googled in here by mistake thinking you were going to find sophisticated investment advice. You have inadvertantly taken a wrong turn and ended up in Neophyteville.  Turn left at the fork to find Expertland.   

So, any way, something that I find handy to have is an indicator of how the market is going to do before it opens. According to Investopedia:

Every morning before North American stock exchanges begin trading, TV programs and websites providing financial information will give the quotes for the S&P, Dow and Nasdaq futures contract. The quoted price movements of the futures contracts in early trading is used by some traders as a gauge for how the overall exchanges will perform at market open and over the trading day. If the index future is trading higher before the market opens, it generally means that the actual index will trade up in the early part of the day. This is because the index futures are closely tied to the actual indexes. These futures contracts mirror the underlying index and act as a precursor of the actual exchange index's direction.

So, the pre-opening futures numbers provide a potential peek into how the day might go.  It is not ironclad, however - the unexpected can happen. Here are this morning's numbers, approximately 36 minutes before the opening bell:

S&P 500	+7.10	1348.60
NASDAQ	+8.25	1815.75
Dow Jones	+30.00	12302.00

This indicates that yesterday's gains (DOW +298) will hold.  We shall see.

It's only later in life that I began to pay attention to economics and finance.  What once seemed dull as nails, I find fascinating now, both for personal and political reasons.