US Stock Futures Overnight: What Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Futures Show

The US stock market closes at 4:00 p.m. in New York, which is before dawn in Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo. Yet an Asian morning report can still say “US futures are up 0.4%” at 10:00 a.m. local time. That number does not come from the Dow, the S&P 500 or the Nasdaq themselves, which follow the prices of US stocks and so stand still once those stocks stop trading. It comes from index futures: contracts on those indexes that trade on CME Group’s electronic market for 23 hours a day.

What is an index futures contract?

A futures contract is an agreement on a price today for a value that will be settled on a set date later. For an index, nothing is delivered. The contract is worth a fixed number of dollars for each point of the index, and on the final day it is settled in cash against a special reading of the index taken at the US open.

Three contracts carry the names readers see most:

Contract	Ticker	Index	Value per index point	Smallest price step
E-mini S&P 500	ES	S&P 500	$50	0.25 points ($12.50)
E-mini Nasdaq-100	NQ	Nasdaq-100	$20	0.25 points ($5.00)
E-mini Dow ($5)	YM	Dow Jones Industrial Average	$5	1 point ($5.00)

CME also lists Micro E-mini versions at one-tenth the size: $5 per S&P 500 point (MES), $2 per Nasdaq-100 point (MNQ) and $0.50 per Dow point (MYM).

Two details matter for reading the news:

• “Nasdaq futures” are Nasdaq-100 futures. The NQ contract follows the Nasdaq-100, the index of the 100 largest non-financial Nasdaq companies, not the broader Nasdaq Composite.
• Each contract has an end date. Trading in a contract ends at the scheduled start of US stock trading on the day its final price is set, the third Friday of the contract month. The final price is a “special opening quotation” built from each member stock’s first price that morning. For the December 2026 contracts, that day is Friday, December 18.

How each of the three indexes picks and weighs its stocks is covered in Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq: What Each US Stock Index Measures.

When do they trade in Asian time?

CME lists the hours as Sunday to Friday, 5:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Chicago time, with a halt from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. That is 6:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. in New York. Asian clocks do not change for daylight saving, so every shift comes from the US side. US daylight saving time ends on November 1, 2026, and the US events then move one hour later in Asian time:

US event (New York time)	Seoul and Tokyo, until Nov 1	Seoul and Tokyo, from Nov 2	Taipei, until Nov 1	Taipei, from Nov 2
Futures daily break, 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.	06:00 to 07:00	07:00 to 08:00	05:00 to 06:00	06:00 to 07:00
US stock session, 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.	22:30 to 05:00	23:30 to 06:00	21:30 to 04:00	22:30 to 05:00

Times in the Asian columns are the evening of the same date and the morning after. The week starts when trading reopens on Sunday at 6:00 p.m. in New York, which is 07:00 on Monday in Seoul and Tokyo until November 1 and 08:00 afterward.

So the order of a normal Asian day is: US stocks close before dawn, the futures pause for an hour, and then they trade again from early morning through the whole of the Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo sessions. A move in US futures during the Asian day is trading in those contracts while US stocks are shut, often around news that came out after the US close.

Why does the futures price differ from the index?

Even on a quiet day, the futures price and the index level are not the same number. CME describes fair value as “the theoretical assumption of where a futures contract should be priced given such things as the current index level, index dividends, days to expiration and interest rates,” and gives the formula:

Fair value = Cash × [1 + r × (x / 360)] − Dividends

Here “Cash” is the index level, r is the interest rate, x is the number of days to the contract’s end, and “Dividends” are the dividends the index’s stocks are expected to pay before then, in index points.

A made-up example shows the size of the effect. Say the index is at 7,700, the interest rate is 4% a year, 60 days remain, and the expected dividends come to 15 index points. Then:

• 7,700 × (1 + 0.04 × 60 / 360) = 7,751.33
• 7,751.33 − 15 = 7,736.33

In this example the contract’s fair value is about 36 points above the index. That gap reflects the cost of money and the dividends, not a forecast. It shrinks as the end date nears and is gone on the final day. Two practical points follow:

• Compare a futures move with the futures’ own earlier price, not with the index close. A futures price above the index’s last close does not by itself mean the market expects stocks to rise.
• Watch the contract month. Each contract has its own end date, and by the formula a contract with more days left sits further from the index.

Are there limits on how far they can move overnight?

Yes. CME’s rules set price limits for these contracts, tied to the regular US stock session:

• Outside US stock hours (from the evening open until 9:30 a.m. New York time), no trade may take place more than 7% above or below a reference price. The reference is the average futures price in the 30 seconds before the previous day’s 3:00 p.m. Chicago close.
• During US stock hours, the futures follow the NYSE’s market-wide circuit breakers. The NYSE halts all US stock trading when the S&P 500 falls 7% (Level 1) or 13% (Level 2) from the prior close; a Level 1 or Level 2 halt before 3:25 p.m. New York time lasts 15 minutes. CME halts the futures at the same time, and they reopen 10 minutes after the halt starts with the next limit in place. A 20% fall (Level 3) ends trading for the rest of the day.

A 7% limit is a ceiling, not a typical day. The S&P 500 itself moved 2% or more on only 2 of the 140 US sessions from April 2 to October 21, 2026, counting from S&P Dow Jones Indices closing levels.

Does Asia have overnight contracts of its own?

Yes, and they now overlap with the US day. Each of the three Asian futures exchanges runs a night session for its own index futures:

Exchange	Index futures	Night session (local time)
Korea Exchange	KOSPI 200 and other products	18:00 to 06:00
Osaka Exchange (Japan Exchange Group)	Nikkei 225 and others	17:00 to 06:00
Taiwan Futures Exchange	TAIEX and others	15:00 to 05:00

Korea’s night session is now run by the Korea Exchange itself. Its guide says the earlier link with the European exchange Eurex ended on June 5, 2025, and the Exchange counts night trading as part of the next day’s session. These sessions cover the whole US stock session, so Asian index futures can trade on a big night in New York hours before Asian stocks open.

Stocks may follow. In a filing dated September 15, 2026, the NYSE wrote that “on December 6, 2026, several exchanges, including NYSE Arca, intend to offer new overnight trading sessions,” from 9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. New York time. The NYSE itself said it “does not intend to implement 23/5 Trading at this time.”

What can futures tell you, and what can’t they?

Futures are a live price on the US indexes while their stocks are shut, and that makes them useful context for an Asian session. They also have limits:

• They are a price, not a promise. The next US session opens on its own orders, and a gain in futures during Asian hours can be gone by the open.
• Each contract follows its own index. Dow futures follow 30 stocks, only one of them a chipmaker (Nvidia), while Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD and Micron are all in the Nasdaq-100. Our explainer on the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index covers the chip index that closes before Asia opens.
• They are not the Asian market. A KOSPI or TAIEX move after a US night depends on local news too; for the hand-off between the four markets, see One Chip Day, Four Closes.

For the US tickers of Asian chip companies, and how their prices relate to the home shares, see Asia Chip Stocks From a US Account.