The Pre Market INET ATS

Listening to Bloomberg Radio around US market opening hours, they keep talking about what different stocks are in the pre market INET ATS system.

What exactly is this and where can you see these prices ?

Is there a simular pre market in the UK ?

Also they talk about how the stocks are doing on the futures market, before the main markets open.

What can be read into the pre market prices ?

Try :

http://www.island.com

and

http://www.archipelago.com

They are trading platforms that allow pre-market trading in certain major stocks.

I don't think that there is a similar thing in the UK .

Most US stocks have a set of futures and options attached to them, unlike UK/European stocks where the choice is very limited.

These particularly get used when ther has been an announcement made out of hours which will affect the mkt price the next day. Plus, USA is such a big asylum.. ahem... country that it allows a wider time fame of trading than just relying on NY timings.

Archipelago also does an amalgamation of thier own and islands order books.

http://www.archipelago.com/tools/book/book_info.asp

TBS - I though ISLD only traded ISLD?

Island is an electronic trading platform, if you use it then you are trading with other island members - not with the wider marketplace. Archipelago is a similar thing but they show both island and their own books - mainly island as they seem to have cornered a large chunk of the marketplace.

I think - and am more than willing to be corrected cos this isn't really my thing - that Reuters have some sort of system as well. plus their may be a few others about - Bloomberg probably have something too. However, Island seems to be the main one that you see banded about.