Does anybody know why various sites, including CNBC and Bloomberg, list the DJIA and S&P 500 as their closing values, but cut 400-500 points off the NASDAQ after hours? The points reappear the next morning, but it’s weird, and no one I’ve asked seems to know anything about it.
After hours trading… but it’s not always 400-500 points down.
Just a guess but … during the day, prices are based on last trade, while after-hours, many prices are the current visible Bid.
Go to cnbc.com right now and you’ll see the NASDAQ listed in the 4700’s, even though it closed above 5200 yesterday.
That appears to be the numbers for the NASDAQ-100, which is a subset of the NASDAQ.
Right, the pre/after hours number is the price of the lead futures contract on the Nasdaq 100, which is actually slightly different from the ‘cash’ level of the Nasdaq 100 index due to arbitrage relationship of futures to cash* but close. The number displayed during NY trading hours is the level of Nasdaq Composite, a larger set of stocks.
*the futures price must be less than cash index price to the extent of dividends to be paid on the stocks in the index between now and futures contract expiry, and more than the cash index price to the extent of interest the market clearing participant would pay to finance rather than purchase outright the basket of stocks in the index. Or else the futures v cash price could be arbitraged (sell one and buy the the other) for free money. That only amounts to a few points though.
Thank you for clearing that up! It’s something I’ve wondered about for a long time.
Odd that they don’t list it as “NASADAQ 100” but at least I now know what I’m seeing.
If you click on it in the
CNBC link, it’ll open up a new page with a chart and Nasdaq 100 Fut (Dec 16) labeled on top.