How do people figure out points for the stock market?

Question

I see there is the Nasdaq and Dow Jones. They have minus or positive something. Is it how much they sell? How much profit they make? I mean about the Nasdaq or Dow Jones.

In "they" I meant the markets.

Answer 1

Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 are indexes or baskets of stocks.

They're used as a proxy for the various markets. So when the S&P, Dow, and Nasdaq are up, they say the market is up.

The plus/minus is the change in the value of the index vs. the prior trading day.

Here's how you read the #'s part.

http://www.investopedia.com/university/tables/tables1.asp


Here's general info on the indexes.

http://www.investopedia.com/university/indexes/

For Fri, Dow closed at 12,342.56
It was up 36.74 or 0.30%

The day's high was 12342.56 (yes, closed at the high!)
The day's low was 12277.40

Hope that helps!