What are the digits we see in news relating to stock market , e.g 490 (with a sign up or down) what are these numbers suggesting?

It depends what numbers you're talking about. One thing might be this:

These numbers are from the day when the Dow Jones index (a group of companies that are supposed to give a general idea of how the entire stock market as a whole is doing). That day, the index hit just over 14,087.

That number doesn't represent a dollar figure, it's simply a number that shows how the market is performing. So if the Dow goes up a percent or two (in the case of this picture, it went up 191.92 points), that means that the entire market is performing well, which means that if you own stocks or mutual funds, you probably made money today. On the other hand, the Dow is currently sitting at just over 8,131.

That means that the market has lost about 40 percent of its value. So if you have money in the stock market, it's likely you have lost about 40 percent of your money. You might also see something like this:

In this picture, the Dow is at 10,882, and it had increased 2 points that day.

The number below that is for the Nasdaq index. It's the same type of index as the Dow. In this image, the Nasdaq is at 2276, up 13.41 points on the day.

Below those numbers, you have individual stocks: Yahoo, Pixar, Adobe, and Starbucks. Rather than being indexes, they represent shares of individual companies. So if you own one share of Yahoo, it would be worth $41.53 that day.

And the share had increased in value by 56 cents on the day. The same explanation goes for all the stocks below that. I'm hoping these are the "numbers" you were talking about.

If I'm off base, please feel free to comment.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.