Markets Open App

I’m not familiar with the development language, but have an idea for a stock market app that would be pretty simple to write…

US markets are open from 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM ET on weekdays, except market holidays (which are published on numerous websites). I’d like a scrolling marquee on the Tidbit that acts as follows:

  1. If it were more than 8 hours to market open (and more than 6 hours since market close), just say, "US stock markets open at 9:30 AM tomorrow (or “Monday” or whatever).

  2. If less than 8 hours to market open, just say, “US stock markets open at 9:30 AM ET, in X hours and Y minutes from now.”

  3. If the market were open say, “Stocks are up/down/mixed. Markets close in X hours and Y minutes.” So to figure out markets, poll the stock API for QQQ (Nasdaq) and SPY. If one is up and one is down, markets are mixed. If both are up, markets are up. If both are down, markets are down. If both are up > 0.5% or down <-0.5%, say “sharply up” or “sharply down”.

  4. If markets have closed within 6 hours, say, “Markets are now closed. Indices were up/down/mixed” using the same logic as outlined above.

So program would need to know timezone, and market holidays, and do api lookups for QQQ and SPY to get the changes. And that’s pretty much it.

What are your thoughts?