What are futures and what bearing does it have on the market?

Answer 1

There are several stock index contracts traded on some of the exchanges like the Chicago Board Options Exchange (http://www.cboe.com/), Chicago Mercantile Exchange (http://www.cme.com/), and the Chicago Board of Trade (http://www.cbot.com/). The Kansas City Board of Trade (http://www.kcbot.com/) started it in 1982, so it has been around a while.

As for the impact on the market, it is an additional input on value pressures, like options (although some say it is the tail wagging the dog, still it happens). Bidding up, or down, a basket of stocks like the S&P500 is almost like an institutional investor buying or dumping large batches of some of the most important and widely traded companies around.

Answer 2

Futures is a contract to buy or sell a specific amount of asset, commodity, metal, livestock etc; at a future date at a future price.
It's impact on the stock market is duing the expiration of stock futures market there can be high volatility in the Stock Market. This especially is true when the expiry of Options, futures and futures on options happen on the same day. It happened in April 1987 when the Dow crashed 500 points. It is called the 'triple witching hour' when this happens.

Answer 3

maybe try www.stock-exc.com