Spread betting market prices

[EricaS]

These are opening prices for the Dow Jones from a spread betting company. I've compared them to the actual market opening price.
Why are the differences for some days so large? The difference is in excess of 100 points.

Date	Spread Betting	Actual Open	Difference
2019/08/19	26171.2	26020.1	-151.2
2019/05/23	25513.2	25658.0	144.8
2019/05/31	24901.7	25046.3	144.6
2019/10/04	26142.1	26271.7	129.7
2019/01/28	24468.5	24597.0	128.5
2019/07/10	26724.2	26852.0	127.8

 

[rossored]

Are these prices pre-open or actually at the open?

Are you comparing these to a Futures contract or a 'cash' price?

Which broker is this?

 

[tomorton]

The SB firms I have used keep a market running on the Dow and suchlike almost 24 hours a day. Their open therefore does not tally with the US stock market's open. The company I currently use has a shut-down period of some few minutes at about 2200hrs UK time. The start of this no trading period is therefore their close for the Dow, about 30 minutes after NY has shut down, but the open is many hours ahead of the NY open the next day. Its annoying to have to make the allowance for this, but very important if your strategy relies on an open price value.

Actually, some sources apart from SB firms take opening prices in different ways and it would pay to find out how your access provider for trading does it for the different instruments you might trade.

 

[BigDeal]

@EricaS

I would suggest you are looking at actual Dow index value v. the futures price quoted by the SB company