CBOT · YM · MYM
YM futures: the E-mini Dow
The E-mini Dow tracks the thirty stocks of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and it is the one U.S. equity-index contract listed on CBOT rather than CME. It trades in whole index points: each one-point tick is worth $5.
- YM tick value
- $5.00
- 1 index point
- YM per point
- $5
- index point
- MYM tick value
- $0.50
- Micro E-mini Dow
- Round trip, in R
- 0.023 R
- At a 0.8-ATR stop, screening engine
YM contract specifications
| Specification | YM · E-mini Dow ($5) | MYM · Micro E-mini Dow |
|---|---|---|
| Contract unit | $5 × the Dow Jones Industrial Average | $0.50 × the Dow Jones Industrial Average |
| Exchange | CBOT | CBOT |
| Tick size | 1 index point | 1 index point |
| Tick value | $5.00 | $0.50 |
| Value of a point | $5 | $0.50 |
| 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.
- YM contract months
- March, June, September, December (H, M, U, Z)
- YM 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 YM is worth
Both YM 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 YM is one index point. Use a minus sign for a loss.
Profit or loss, one contract: $50.00
E-mini Dow ($5) (YM), CBOT: $5 × the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Before commissions and slippage.
How YM trades
YM shares the Globex week and the quarterly calendar of the other index contracts: open Sunday evening, an hour's halt each weekday at 5:00 p.m. ET, and expiry at 9:30 a.m. ET on the third Friday of March, June, September and December.
The Dow is weighted by share price rather than by market value, so a stock's influence on the index depends on what one share costs, not on how large the company is. A big move in one high-priced component moves YM more than the same move in a far larger company with a lower share price, which is part of why YM and ES can part ways for a session.
YM or MYM?
The Micro E-mini Dow (MYM) is one tenth of YM: $0.50 a point, and because both contracts tick in whole points, $0.50 a tick as well. It follows YM's price exactly and trades the same hours and months.
As with every micro, ten MYM carry the exposure of one YM at roughly ten times the fees.
What the research record says about YM
YM is screened as the Russell 2000's sister tape: each is offered as the other's gate, so a signal on one can be required to agree with the other before it trades. A round trip at the menu's 0.8-ATR stop on 30-minute bars costs 0.023 R, against 0.053 R on ES and 0.012 R on NQ.
YM streams were among the 64, across six markets, on which ranking candidate strategies by return-to-drawdown ratio was tested. The ratio carried no information from one period to the next; return ranked weakly but repeatably.
Screening an idea on YM
An idea on YM 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 YM is a swing screen, read on YM’s daily tape from April 2018 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 YM from the tape's own order-flow delta or close location in range, or one of 66 external legs in 8 families, with RTY (Russell) available as its paired gate.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
YM futures questions
- What is the tick value of YM futures?
- The minimum tick is one index point, worth $5 per contract. On the Micro E-mini Dow (MYM) the same point is worth $0.50.
- How much is a 100-point move in Dow futures worth?
- $500 per YM contract and $50 per MYM contract.
- What are the YM futures trading hours?
- YM 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.
- When do YM futures expire?
- YM 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.
- Is YM traded on CME?
- It is listed on CBOT, the Chicago Board of Trade, which is part of CME Group, and it trades on the same CME Globex platform and hours as ES and NQ.
- Why does the Dow move differently from the S&P 500?
- The Dow holds thirty stocks weighted by share price; the S&P 500 holds about five hundred weighted by market value. A large move in one high-priced Dow component can move YM on a day when ES barely reacts.
Screen an idea on YM
Put a trading idea on YM 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.