What Are Stock Futures? How Index Futures Work and What They Mean Before the Open

It's 6 a.m. in New York and the headline says stock futures are down 1%. The stock market doesn't open for three and a half hours, so something else is trading. That something is a set of futures contracts on the big US indexes, and they trade almost around the clock. Here's what's behind that number, what it does and doesn't tell you about the open, and what the futures chart shows that the index chart can't.

Quick Answer: What Are Stock Futures?

They're standardized, cash-settled, traded on margin, and open from Sunday evening to Friday afternoon with a one-hour pause each day. That's why there's a number to quote at 6 a.m. I read pages from sixteen publishers that rank for stock futures questions, then checked every contract fact against CME Group's own spec pages and education material, and the rules against the CFTC and the SEC. One describes the E-mini S&P 500 as a fifth of the index's value (it's $50 times the index), two say index futures trade on a stock exchange, one lists a Friday-evening open that doesn't exist, and one applies the daytime price limits to the upside too. CME wins wherever they disagree. There are no live prices in this post. If a term is new, the trading terms glossary has a short definition.

What Are Stock Index Futures? ES, NQ, YM and RTY

A stock index future is a contract whose price tracks an index. You can't buy the S&P 500 itself, since it's a number calculated from 500 stock prices (the S&P 500 explainer covers what goes into it). You can buy or sell a contract that gains or loses a fixed dollar amount for every point the index moves. Per CME's E-mini S&P 500 contract specs, one ES contract is "$50 x S&P 500 Index," quoted in "U.S. dollars and cents per index point." So when someone asks what futures are in the stock market, this is usually the answer: contracts on the index, not on any one stock.

Four families cover almost everything a US headline means by stock futures. Each has an E-mini and a Micro E-mini at a tenth of the size, and each sits next to a cash index chart and an ETF that tracks the same index. Every root and contract unit below is from the CME spec page for that contract.

The cash index and the ETF are there because that's what most people compare the futures chart with. The index is the thing the contract settles against. The ETF is the thing a stock account can buy. I kept tick sizes and dollars per tick out of this table on purpose. The guide to trading indices works through tick sizes and what a point is worth on each contract, and the micro futures guide covers why the smaller contracts change your sizing more than your chart. The Russell 2000 is the small-cap one, and the Russell 2000 explainer covers what it holds.

All eight contracts share one clock. CME lists Globex hours of Sunday 6:00 p.m. to Friday 5:00 p.m. ET, with a daily maintenance period from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. ET. I won't repeat the schedule here, since the full Globex schedule and how the overnight session behaves has its own guide. The short version: when the stock market is closed on a weekday night, these are open.

How Do Stock Futures Work?

A future is a standardized agreement with the terms fixed by the exchange. The CFTC's basics of futures trading page puts it as an agreement to buy or sell at a future date, with the price and amount fixed when you agree, adding that "some contracts allow cash settlement in lieu of delivery" and "most contracts are liquidated before the delivery date." Stock index futures are the cash-settled kind. The same page splits the people in the market into hedgers, who trade futures "to reduce the risk of financial losses from price changes," and speculators, who "attempt to profit from price changes." A fund protecting a stock portfolio overnight is the first kind. A day trader on MNQ is the second. If futures are new to you in general, futures from the order ticket up starts at the very beginning. For stock futures specifically, these are the mechanics that matter.

• Margin
  You post a deposit, not the contract's full value. The exchange's clearing house sets a minimum per contract and your broker can ask for more. In a futures account, margin is a deposit against losses (CME calls it a performance bond), which is a different thing from a stock loan, and the margin account explainercovers both. I'm not printing margin figures because they move with volatility.
• Daily marks
  Open positions are marked to the exchange's settlement price each day. CME's mark-to-market lesson puts it plainly: "In the futures markets, losers pay winners every day," and the dollar difference from the previous day's settlement to today's is your profit or loss. Drop below the required margin and you have to add money or risk being closed out.
• Expiry
  Contracts list quarterly, in March, June, September and December. ES lists 21 consecutive quarters, NQ six plus extra June and December months, YM four, RTY five plus extras, and the micros four or five. On every one of the eight, trading ends at 9:30 a.m. ET on the third Friday of the contract month.
• Settlement
  CME lists all eight as "Financially Settled." Per CME's settlement lesson, the final price is a Special Opening Quotation calculated by the index provider from the actual opening prices of the stocks in the index. No shares change hands. The account is credited or debited and the contract is done.
• The roll
  To stay in the trade past expiry, you close the expiring contract and open the next quarter. That's the roll, and it's why a continuous chart can show a small step on the day it switches contracts (more on that in the chart section).
• Volume, OI
  Futures report contract volume and open interest, the number of contracts still open. The open interest vs volume guide explains why the two can move in opposite directions.

Leverage is the part that hurts people. A small deposit controls a large position, so a normal index move can be a large share of your account. The CFTC's page doesn't soften it: "Many individuals lose all of their money, and can be required to pay more than they invested initially." On regulation, it says commodity futures, with limited exceptions, "must be traded through an exchange by persons and firms who are registered with the CFTC," and firms that handle customer funds also register with the National Futures Association. Broad-based index futures like ES sit under the CFTC alone. Single stock futures are different, and they get their own section below.

What Does It Mean When Stock Futures Rise or Fall?

A futures quote is a price and a change, and the change has a specific reference point. CME's help page for its own quote screens says the Change column is "the change in price between the most recent 'last' and the previous day's settlement price." So "S&P futures up 0.4%" means the E-mini S&P 500 is trading 0.4% above the price CME settled it at on the previous trading day. When stock futures fall, they're trading below that settlement. Neither one is measured against the SPX close.

The futures price also doesn't equal the index, even with nothing happening. CME's equity index basis lesson says index futures "do not convey the same rights of ownership and income possibilities" as the stocks, so they "cannot be expected to trade at the same price level" as the index. The gap is the basis. CME's fair value page gives the formula for where the future should sit: the cash index times one plus the interest rate for the days left (on a 360-day year), minus the dividends expected before expiry. Financing pushes the future above the index and dividends pull it back. The lesson adds that the gap gets smaller as expiry approaches and disappears when the two settle to the same number.

That's why the raw point gap between ES and SPX misleads people. A made-up example, not quotes: SPX closes at 6,000.00. With a 4% rate, 60 days to expiry and 15 points of dividends, CME's formula puts fair value at 6,025.00, a 25-point premium. Overnight, ES trades 6,043.00. That's 43 points (0.72%) above the SPX close, but only 18 above fair value. Take the premium out and the implied open is about 6,018.00, up 0.30%. If ES settled near fair value the day before, the headline percentage tells you roughly the same thing, which is why the percent change is the quick read and the raw point gap isn't.

So a premarket futures move is a price on how the market is weighing overnight news, set by a thinner crowd than the regular session. It's a sentiment read with a number attached. The premarket trading guide takes the same line for stocks before the bell, where the prints are even thinner.

Do stock futures predict the market?

They tell you where the index is trading right now, while its stocks aren't. That's useful, and it's all they do. Once the cash market opens, arbitrage ties the two together. CME's fair value page says price gaps above or below fair value "should cause arbitrageurs to return the market closer to its fair value." So the cash index usually opens near the level the futures imply, and the gap you see on SPX at 9:30 a.m. is mostly the futures move catching up.

After the first print, the futures have no say. The session can run with the overnight move, give it back, or reverse it, and nothing in the 9:29 a.m. futures price tells you which. None of the sixteen publishers I read gives a measured hit rate for futures calling the open or the close, and I didn't find a primary source with one, so there's no percentage here. Two of them treat the futures move as a straight prediction (one says rising overnight futures are a sign stocks will open higher). That's roughly right about the first print, for the arbitrage reason above, and it says nothing about where the day ends.

What Are Single Stock Futures?

Single stock futures are futures on one company's shares instead of an index. The US has had them before. OneChicago listed them until 2020, and the SEC's February 2021 order on its exit spells out the ending: after a strategic review, its owners decided to close the exchange, the last day of trading was September 18, 2020, and the CFTC vacated OneChicago's designation as a contract market effective December 21, 2020.

CME brought them back in 2026. Its June 30, 2026 press release announced Single Stock futures "across more than 50 of the top U.S. stocks" for July 27, pending regulatory review, with 55 larger-sized and 22 Micro-sized contracts, naming Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Nvidia and SpaceX among the listed firms. CME's single stock futures FAQ (dated August 2026) says the suite "is now available for trading." Two of the ranking pages I read still describe the launch as coming soon. From that FAQ and the contract spec pages:

• Size
  The standard contract is 100 shares and the micro is 10 shares. Notional value is the share count times the futures price. CME's own example: an Nvidia future at $200 is $20,000 of exposure on the 100-share contract.
• Months
  Two consecutive quarterly months (March, June, September, December) are listed. Trading ends at 4:00 p.m. ET on the third Friday of the contract month.
• Settlement
  Financially settled in US dollars, against the official closing price of the stock on its primary listing exchange on expiry day. No shares are delivered.
• Hours
  The same Globex hours as CME's equity index futures, Sunday to Friday with the daily one-hour maintenance window. So a single stock future is still trading when a company reports after the close.
• Rules
  They're security futures, jointly regulated by the SEC and CFTC, unlike broad-based index futures. Under those rules the minimum margin on an outright position is 15% of notional. The SEC's short-sale locate and price test rules don't apply, insider trading rules do, and a contract halts when its stock halts.
• Account
  CME says they're available only in futures accounts for now, for operational reasons. Most standard codes on Globex put an S in front of the stock ticker (SAAPL is Apple, SMETA is Meta), but not all of them (Micron is SMU00), so check CME's list.

CME publishes the full list of names on its single stock futures page, so I'm not copying it here, where it would go stale the first time CME adds one. They're new, so check the volume and the spread on the contract before you trade it. The same category logic shows up in other markets, and currency futures vs spot forex runs the same comparison for currencies.

What Does a Stock Futures Chart Show That the Index Chart Doesn't?

Stock futures earn their keep on the chart, even for a day trader who never trades them. An ES or NQ chart prints candles all night. The SPX chart stops at 4:00 p.m. ET and picks up again at 9:30 a.m. So the futures chart shows you things the cash chart can't.

• Overnight
  The overnight high and low are the extremes ES traded since the evening reopen. They exist only on the futures chart, and plenty of traders mark them before the open as the first levels of the day.
• The gap
  The distance between yesterday's cash close and where futures trade now, net of fair value, is roughly the gap SPX opens with. On the futures chart it's a slope through the night. On the cash chart it shows up all at once at 9:30 a.m. The guide to gap types and which ones fill covers how to read that opening jump.
• Your stock
  A stock's premarket chart often leans the same way as ES. Overnight news that moves the whole market (an economic release before the open, the overseas sessions, a mega-cap earnings report) reaches most stocks at once, and premarket trading in a single name is thin. A stock with its own news does its own thing.
• Roll steps
  An unadjusted continuous symbol such as ES1! shows the front contract until the roll, then switches to the next one. The new contract carries a different basis, so the chart can show a small step on the switch day that never traded as a move. A dated symbol like ESZ2026 doesn't splice. It ends at expiry.
• Volume
  Futures charts show exchange-reported contract volume, with thin bars overnight and heavy ones after 9:30 a.m. A cash index has no traded volume of its own. The SPX vs SPY and ES comparisoncovers what each chart's volume panel actually counts.
• Daily break
  From 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. ET there are no bars. A time-based chart doesn't draw an empty hour. It skips it, so the line can jump between the last bar before the break and the first one after.

Which chart should you read? The one you trade. If you trade SPY or a stock at the open, the ES chart is context: the overnight range and the likely gap. Your levels and stop still come from the chart of the thing you hold. If you trade ES, NQ or the micros, the overnight structure is part of the chart, and the ES chart analysis page, the NQ chart analysis page and the US30 (Dow) chart page show what a grade looks like on each.

How Does an AI Chart Grade Read a Stock Futures Chart?

I build SnapPChart, so this is what it does with these charts, straight from the code. It grades one uploaded screenshot of one chart. It reads the symbol label and the timeframe when they're visible, plus the trend structure, support and resistance, EMAs, VWAP, MACD, volume and candles drawn on the chart. Then it grades the setup as a with-trend continuation, a pullback in an uptrend for a long or a rally inside a downtrend for a short, the same idea as a momentum trading strategy. Reversals aren't setups to it.

The symbol label sets the grade ceiling. The grader's symbol check reads ES, NQ, YM, RTY, MES, MNQ and MYM, continuous symbols like ES1! and NQ1!, and slash symbols like /ES as futures. It reads SPX, NDX, DJI, US30 and NAS100 as an index. Futures and index charts both top out at B, because the scoring was built on stock momentum trading and we cap non-stock instruments until each gets its own rules. SPY, QQQ, DIA and IWM aren't on either list, so the symbol check doesn't cap them. For those, for any other label that isn't on the lists, and for a chart with no label at all, the instrument type comes from the model's own read of the chart: a chart it reads as a stock has no cap, and one it reads as an index tops out at B. None of that is a reason to trade the ETF. Keep the ticker in the screenshot.

Two details matter on futures charts. It only names a trading session, like the New York morning, when the chart's time axis makes the time of day readable, and it won't guess one otherwise. And a missing or unreadable volume panel counts as missing data, not weak volume. Then the list of what it doesn't see. It doesn't read live futures quotes, fair value or the implied open, the overnight high and low unless they're on the chart you uploaded, margin, expiry or roll dates, the cash index or ETF beside the chart, news or the economic calendar. It doesn't scan for setups, read Level 2 or backtest, and it doesn't predict the open.

One extra on some paid grades. The position size calculator only appears on a full grade with an entry and a stop (on current terms, a paid plan), never on a wait-for-pullback plan. For ES, MES, NQ, MNQ, YM, MYM, RTY and M2K symbols, including forms like ES1!, /ES and ESZ2026, it sizes in contracts from CME's point values. An SPX, NDX, DJI or US30 chart gets sized in units at $1 a point, with a note to scale by your broker's contract size. The free futures position size calculator uses the same contract table.

1. Read the futures before the open. The overnight range, the likely gap and the fair value adjustment are your homework, and none of them is in a grade.
2. Screenshot the chart you'll trade. Symbol and time axis visible, zoomed out far enough to show the trend. The futures chart analysis page and the index chart analysis page show what a grade looks like.
3. Read the grade as a grade of that chart. Trend, pullback quality, levels, the stop and reward to risk, with B as the ceiling on futures and index charts.
4. Skip the C grades. A C-grade trade that stops out costs the same as an A-grade trade that stops out. Passing on it keeps the risk for a setup you actually wanted.

There's more on AI chart analysis from a single screenshot, and the AI trading guide's section on what AI can't see applies here in full.