CME · NQ · MNQ
NQ futures: the E-mini Nasdaq-100
The E-mini Nasdaq-100 tracks the hundred largest non-financial companies listed on Nasdaq, and it typically covers more ground in a day than ES or YM. One contract is $20 times the Nasdaq-100 Index, so each 0.25-point tick is worth $5.
- NQ tick value
- $5.00
- 0.25 index points
- NQ per point
- $20
- index point
- MNQ tick value
- $0.50
- Micro E-mini Nasdaq-100
- Round trip, in R
- 0.012 R
- At a 0.8-ATR stop, screening engine
NQ contract specifications
| Specification | NQ · E-mini Nasdaq-100 | MNQ · Micro E-mini Nasdaq-100 |
|---|---|---|
| Contract unit | $20 × the Nasdaq-100 Index | $2 × the Nasdaq-100 Index |
| Exchange | CME | CME |
| Tick size | 0.25 index points | 0.25 index points |
| Tick value | $5.00 | $0.50 |
| Value of a point | $20 | $2 |
| Settlement | Cash-settled | 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.
- NQ contract months
- March, June, September, December (H, M, U, Z)
- NQ last trading day
- 9:30 a.m. ET on the third Friday of the contract month. Volume moves to the next quarter about a week earlier.
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 NQ is worth
Both NQ 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 NQ is one index point. Use a minus sign for a loss.
Profit or loss, one contract: $200.00
E-mini Nasdaq-100 (NQ), CME: $20 × the Nasdaq-100 Index. Before commissions and slippage.
How NQ trades
NQ keeps the same Globex hours as ES, Sunday evening to Friday afternoon with an hour's halt each weekday, and the same four quarterly expiries. Its volume concentrates in the U.S. cash session, 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET. Its largest scheduled moves come from the 8:30 a.m. data releases and, after the close, from the earnings of the few very large companies that dominate its weighting.
A point is worth less than on ES, $20 against $50, but the index sits at a far higher level and moves more in percentage terms. So a typical NQ day is worth more dollars per contract than a typical ES day, not fewer, and an NQ strategy needs more account behind each contract than its smaller point value suggests.
NQ or MNQ?
The Micro E-mini Nasdaq-100 (MNQ) is one tenth of NQ: $2 a point and $0.50 a tick, on the same price, hours and expiries. Because an NQ contract swings more dollars in a day than an ES contract, MNQ is often the only way to run an NQ strategy at a risk a smaller account can carry.
The fee arithmetic is the same as on ES: ten micros cost more to trade than the one E-mini that carries the same exposure.
What the research record says about NQ
NQ is the most-screened tape in the ledger, and for a measurable reason: it is the cheapest market on the menu to trade in risk terms, at 0.012 R for a round trip at the menu's 0.8-ATR stop on 30-minute bars. An edge worth a few hundredths of an R per trade can clear its costs on NQ and on nothing else, so most ideas are tried here first.
That makes NQ the tape most of the record's lessons were learned on. Adding contracts to a winning position lost to constant size in all 42 schemes tested. Waiting for a pullback before entering beat the baseline in none of 50 cells. Swapping 30-minute bars for volume bars added nothing, and range bars manufactured an edge that was not there.
Screening an idea on NQ
An idea on NQ is written in the Strategy Language on its own bars, in the regular session or the whole Globex 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, and NQ’s 16-, 40-, 260- and 340-tick range, 16-, 40- and 160-tick Renko, 31,500-contract volume and 233-, 500-, 1,000- and 1,500-trade tick bars, built from the tick data, in the regular session; 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 overnight range; 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 NQ is a swing screen, read on NQ’s daily tape from June 1999 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 NQ from the tape's own order-flow delta or close location in range, or one of 66 external legs in 8 families.
- Market breadth 16
- Up / down volume 8
- Relative breadth 5
- Participation 2
- Volatility term structure 2
- Scheduled events 3
- Contract roll phase 3
- Technical indicators 27
Generated from the ledger, measured 28 October 2026. These describe specifications screened, not strategies traded.
From the research record
- SettledAdding contracts to a position that is already winningEvery add earns less per unit of risk than the first lot and is correlated with it. Across forty-two schemes, flat sizing came out ahead.
- SettledAn edge that only exists in the last three yearsNinety-eight percent of a six-stream book's lifetime profit sat after 2022, which is why every result is now split by era before it ships.
- SettledPicking the strategy with the best return-to-drawdown ratioReturn persists weakly out of sample and the drawdown ratio does not, so rank on return and correlation and let the portfolio shape the drawdown.
- Works with conditionsAdding a filter to a strategy that already worksA filter that keeps half the trades needs a 41% lift in average R to draw level, which is the bar to design against.
NQ futures questions
- What is the tick value of NQ futures?
- One tick is 0.25 index points and is worth $5 per contract. There are four ticks in a point, so a full point is worth $20.
- How much is a 100-point move in NQ worth?
- $2,000 per NQ contract and $200 per Micro E-mini Nasdaq-100 (MNQ) contract.
- What are the NQ futures trading hours?
- NQ 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. Most of its volume trades between 9:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. ET.
- When do NQ futures expire?
- NQ lists March, June, September and December contracts. Each stops trading at 9:30 a.m. ET on the third Friday of its month and settles in cash. Volume rolls to the next quarter about a week earlier.
- What is the difference between NQ and MNQ?
- MNQ is one tenth of NQ: $2 a point and $0.50 a tick, against $20 and $5. Same index, same price, same hours.
- Why is NQ cheaper to trade than ES in risk terms?
- Because its tick is small relative to its range. A round trip at the menu's 0.8-ATR stop on 30-minute bars costs 0.012 R on NQ and 0.053 R on ES in the screening engine: the same slippage and commission are a smaller slice of a typical NQ stop.
Screen an idea on NQ
Put a trading idea on NQ through seven gates written down before the run, from real per-fill costs to a drift null, a walk-forward and an era split. The verdict comes back in seconds.