NYMEX · NG · QG
NG futures: NYMEX Henry Hub natural gas
Henry Hub natural gas futures are the U.S. benchmark for gas prices and one of the most volatile contracts on any exchange. One contract is 10,000 MMBtu, so each tenth-of-a-cent tick is worth $10 and a one-dollar move is worth $10,000.
- NG tick value
- $10.00
- $0.001 per MMBtu
- NG per point
- $10,000
- $1.00 per MMBtu
- QG tick value
- $12.50
- E-mini Henry Hub Natural Gas
- Round trip, in R
- 0.084 R
- At a 0.8-ATR stop, screening engine
NG contract specifications
| Specification | NG · Henry Hub Natural Gas | QG · E-mini Henry Hub Natural Gas |
|---|---|---|
| Contract unit | 10,000 MMBtu | 2,500 MMBtu |
| Exchange | NYMEX | NYMEX |
| Tick size | $0.001 per MMBtu | $0.005 per MMBtu |
| Tick value | $10.00 | $12.50 |
| Value of a point | $10,000 | $2,500 |
| Settlement | Physically delivered | Cash-settled |
- Trading hours
- Sunday to Friday, 6:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. ET on CME Globex, with a daily halt from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. ET.
- NG contract months
- Every calendar month, listed years ahead
- NG last trading day
- Three business days before the first calendar day of the delivery month.
Exchange rules as published, checked 22 September 2026. Holidays shorten the hours, and the exchange’s own calendar is the authority on any single date.
What a move in NG is worth
Both NG contracts, by points, ticks or entry and exit. For every contract at once, use the tick value calculator; to size a position, the position size calculator.
One point on NG is $1.00 per MMBtu. Use a minus sign for a loss.
Profit or loss, one contract: $100,000.00
Henry Hub Natural Gas (NG), NYMEX: 10,000 MMBtu. Before commissions and slippage.
How NG trades
Gas keeps the Globex week, but two things set its rhythm: the EIA's Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report, normally at 10:30 a.m. ET on Thursday, and the weather forecast, which moves demand expectations every day of the heating and cooling seasons. The daily settlement is set at 2:30 p.m. ET.
NG lists every calendar month, is physically delivered at the Henry Hub in Louisiana, and stops trading three business days before the delivery month begins. Winter contracts usually carry a premium in the curve, so the gap at a roll can be large, and a continuous chart that is not adjusted for it shows moves that never happened.
NG or QG?
The E-mini Henry Hub Natural Gas contract (QG) is a quarter of NG: 2,500 MMBtu and cash-settled. Its tick is coarser, half a cent worth $12.50 against NG's tenth of a cent worth $10, so QG's fills are rougher relative to its size.
What the research record says about NG
Natural gas is the costliest market on the screening menu to trade in risk terms: a round trip at the menu's 0.8-ATR stop on 30-minute bars costs 0.084 R, against 0.012 R on NQ. Its intraday behaviour also differs from the index contracts'. Gas tends to mean-revert where the indices trend, so an idea that works on ES rarely transfers.
Averaging into a losing position on a price grid, which gas's swings seem to invite, lost to a constant position at matched risk in every configuration tested, and beat its own shuffled-bar placebo in none. Its paired gate is crude oil.
Screening an idea on NG
An idea on NG is written in the Strategy Language on its own bars, in the regular session: time bars from one minute to a week, or bars that are not time bars. Those are point-and-figure, kagi and line break, drawn from 1-minute closes at any size; their signals come from the bars and their fills from the underlying 1-minute prices.
It can read 62 indicators (moving averages; oscillators such as RSI, Stochastic, MACD and CCI; volatility measures and bands such as ATR, Bollinger and Keltner; volume studies with VWAP; trend studies such as ADX and Supertrend; and community lines in their non-repainting versions); session levels such as the opening range and the prior day's high and low; and the clock and the calendar of scheduled releases; it enters at the market, on a stop or at a limit, and exits by its stop, its target, a trailing stop, a time limit or a condition.
Held overnight on day or week bars of the whole Globex session, a rule on NG is a swing screen, read on NG’s daily tape from December 2022 and graded candidate, promising, doubtful or dead rather than judged gate by gate. A position held overnight can open beyond its stop, so a loss can be larger than the stop you set.
The cost figures on this page are the menu's, at a 0.8-ATR stop on 30-minute bars: a screen written in the Strategy Language pays the same round trip for every contract it enters, and what that is in R depends on the stop you write, or on the ATR of its bars when you write none.
The menu, which the desk still offers beside the language, builds an idea on NG from the tape's own order-flow delta or close location in range, or one of 41 external legs in 7 families, with CL (crude) available as its paired gate.
- Market breadth 16
- Up / down volume 8
- Relative breadth 5
- Participation 2
- Volatility term structure 2
- Scheduled events 5
- Contract roll phase 3
Generated from the ledger, measured 28 October 2026. These describe specifications screened, not strategies traded.
From the research record
- SettledAveraging into a position on a price gridA constant position at matched risk beat every scale-in scheme tested, and the shuffled-bar placebo shows why.
- SettledDaily-bar momentum on index futuresReturn persistence at the daily horizon reads zero, and most of the index drift accrues overnight.
- SettledFiltering a signal by a state variable from the same barsRegime conditioning works when the state is exogenous and lagged; measured on the same bars it becomes arithmetic.
- SettledLetting walk-forward optimization choose your stopIt gravitates to the tightest stop whenever the objective restates the parameter, so score in dollars at constant risk instead.
NG futures questions
- What is the tick value of natural gas futures?
- On NG one tick is $0.001 per MMBtu, worth $10 per contract. The E-mini (QG) ticks in $0.005 steps worth $12.50.
- How much is a 10-cent move in natural gas futures worth?
- $1,000 per NG contract and $250 per QG contract.
- What are the natural gas futures trading hours?
- NG trades on CME Globex from 6:00 p.m. ET on Sunday to 5:00 p.m. ET on Friday, with a one-hour halt from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. ET every weekday. The daily settlement price is set at 2:30 p.m. ET.
- What time is the EIA natural gas storage report?
- Normally 10:30 a.m. ET on Thursday. In a week with a U.S. federal holiday it can move.
- When do natural gas futures expire?
- Every month. A contract stops trading three business days before the first calendar day of its delivery month, and NG is physically delivered at the Henry Hub.
- What is the difference between NG and QG?
- QG is a quarter of NG, 2,500 MMBtu against 10,000, and cash-settled. Its tick is $0.005 worth $12.50; NG's is $0.001 worth $10.
Screen an idea on NG
Put a trading idea on NG through seven gates written down before the run, from real per-fill costs to a drift null and a walk-forward. The verdict comes back in seconds.