Jesus these guys are dumb

I think the more accurate thing to say is that these are indicative of current index prices according to pre-market activity, even though the majority of the market wont be trading until tomorrow at 9:30 am

But as we get closer to the closing date those speculative contracts converge towards the actual markets behavior, because any differences could be exploited to make easy returns

Not exactly, futures contracts close at the end of a given month. These are just the contracts that will close the soonest (i think at the end of May), so they are very representative of the movement of the underlying asset. There are contracts for much further out that are much more speculative

In very general terms, a futures contract is an agreement to buy an asset at a future date. The contracts you see here are very tightly coupled to the equities markets, so you can take them as a strong indicator of what equities will do tomorrow morning

I’m visiting Charleston tomorrow, any food spots you recommend?