NQ Futures Statistics 2026

This is the Nasdaq version of my ES statistics page. Same CME data, same definitions and the same monthly update, so the two can be compared number for number. I trade ES, YM and RTY rather than NQ, so I'll keep the opinions short on this one and let the numbers talk.

If you trade NQ, this is the stuff worth knowing before you set a stop: how big a normal day is right now, how much of it is done by 10:30, and how often the levels everyone marks actually get hit.

Everything below comes from 1-minute bars of the front-month contract, January 2 to September 30, 2026. I add a row when each month closes.

NQ Average Daily Range by Month

ETH is the full Globex session. RTH is 9:30 AM to 4:15 PM ET, where NQ does most of its business. All figures in index points, so multiply by $20 for one NQ contract or $2 for one MNQ.

The spread between months is bigger than people assume. June days were more than twice as wide as January days on the full session, so a stop that fit June was badly oversized in January. That's the argument for sizing off current range rather than a number you picked once and never revisited.

The other one is April. It printed the year's biggest gain (+3,693.00 points) on a below-average daily range, which is what a grinding trend month looks like. Big monthly moves and big daily ranges are not the same thing.

NQ vs ES, YM and RTY: Range in Points, Dollars and Percent

The same numbers for all four index futures, computed the same way over the same 187 sessions. Click a market to see its full page.

Points don't compare across markets, so start with the share of price. NQ moved 1.46% of its price on an average cash session, against 0.98% for ES, which makes it the second most volatile of the four in percentage terms.

Per contract the difference is even bigger. One NQ covered about $8,090 on an average day, more than twice one ES ($3,530). So one NQ contract is not one ES contract with a different chart: at the same size you're carrying more than twice the dollar swing, and that's what your stop and your account feel.

The row I'd look at twice is the first hour. 62.4% of NQ's cash-session range is in by 10:30, against 55.5% for ES. NQ is more front-loaded than ES: the open does more of the day's work and the afternoon does less, and its opening half hour runs at 2.7 times the volatility of its quietest one, against 2.1 for ES.

NQ Volatility by Time of Day

Each bar is the average range of a 15-minute candle in that half hour, across all 187 days. It's the single most useful picture on this page if you're deciding when to trade.

The shape is the whole point. The opening half hour averages 138.6 points per 15-minute bar. By 2:30 PM that's down to 52.08. Then it climbs back to 62.5 in the 3:30 half hour as the close approaches, and volume in that block (18,929 contracts per 15-minute bar on average) makes it the fourth busiest half hour of the day, at 54% of the opening half hour's 35,265.

So the midday lull is real and it's measurable. If you take the same size and the same targets at 1:00 PM as at 9:45, NQ is giving you about half of the movement to work with. How NQ stacks up against ES as a contract is in NQ vs ES Futures.

Initial Balance: What Happens After the First Hour

The initial balance is the range built in the first hour, 9:30 to 10:30 ET. Profile traders use it as the day's reference, so the useful question is how often the rest of the session breaks it, and by how much.

The number I'd put in front of a beginner is that 5.9%. Roughly one day in 17 stays inside the first hour's range. If you fade the IB edges as a default, you're taking the wrong side of a very lopsided statistic, and the average break runs another 118 to 162 points past the edge.

The day's low got set in the first hour 51% of the time and the high only 38%, so the morning more often marked the bottom than the top, which fits a period that finished 4,496.25 points higher. And when a day does extend both ways (16.6%), that's the neutral day from the market profile guide: both sides tried, neither finished the job.

Overnight Range, Prior Day Levels and Gap Fill

Most traders mark the same handful of prices every morning. These are the odds each one gets touched during the NQ cash session.

Only 7.5% of sessions stayed inside the overnight range. The cash session took out the overnight high on 56% of days and the overnight low on 53%, so those two lines do real work almost every morning. How to read the overnight session is in my premarket guide.

Then the gap fill rate. In 2026 an up gap in NQ returned to the prior close in the same session 50.5% of the time and a down gap 50.0%. A coin flip, and nothing like "always." That's the lowest fill rate of the four index futures.

When the Day's High and Low Get Made

For each of the 187 sessions I found the half hour that produced the RTH high and the one that produced the low.

The distribution has two humps. The opening half hour alone produced 36.4% of the year's lows and 31.0% of its highs. Then it dries up through the middle of the day: the 2:00 PM hour made the day's high on 5.3% of sessions and the low on 3.2%, before the 3:00 PM hour picks up again with 16.0% of the highs and 10.2% of the lows.

Read together with the volatility chart, that's the same story twice: the extremes and the movement both live at the edges of the session.

Rotations and Day Character

Rotation is a vague word, so here's a testable version of it: how many times does price close a 15-minute bar on the opposite side of the opening price from the bar before?

More than half of all sessions crossed the opening price once or not at all (59.9%). Price picked a side early and mostly stayed there. Genuine two-way chop, eight crossings or more, happened on 2.7% of days, though when it happens it really happens: one session managed 9.

Chop feels like it dominates when you're in it. It doesn't. It's just far more memorable than a day that went one direction and left you alone.

NQ Range by Day of the Week

Thursday has been the widest cash session this year at 432.86 points and Monday the narrowest at 389.16, though a 43.7 point spread across 35 to 39 sessions each is not something I'd bet real money on. What makes it more interesting is that Thursday was the widest cash session in all four index futures, ES, NQ, YM and RTY.

The Monday number is the useful one. Its full session runs 171 points wider than its cash session, the biggest difference of any weekday. That's the Sunday evening reopen absorbing two days of weekend news, and a reminder that the overnight session does real work before you sit down.

How to Use These Numbers

Size stops against current range. When the average NQ day is 639 points, as it was in June, a 45 point stop is noise. When it's 310, as in September, the same stop is reasonable. Check the last month's average before deciding what a normal stop should cost, the same logic as in risk management.

Judge targets against what's already happened. If the first hour has already printed 280 points and the last month averaged 310 for the whole cash session, most of the easy move is behind you. Expect rotation, not continuation.

Respect the curve. By 2:30 PM, NQ moves about a third as much per bar as it did at the open. The market is still open, but it's paying a lot less for the same attention and the same risk.

Don't fade things that rarely hold. The first hour's range breaks on 94.1% of days and the overnight range on 92.5%. At those edges, look for continuation first and a reversal second. The order flow at the edge decides it, but the base rate tells you which outcome to expect.

Methodology

If you're going to cite these numbers, here's exactly how they're built.

• Source: CME trade data for the NQ contract (via Massive), built up from 1-minute bars into sessions, half hours and 15-minute bars.
• Contract: front month throughout, spliced at the volume crossover rather than on expiration day. In 2026 that means NQH6 to March 13, NQM6 from March 16 to June 12, NQU6 from June 15 to September 11, and NQZ6 from September 14.
• Sessions: ETH is the full Globex session. RTH is 9:30 AM to 4:15 PM ET, matching the equity index futures day session that ends at the 4:15 halt. First hour is 9:30 to 10:30 ET.
• Time zone: all session boundaries are in US Eastern with the March 8 daylight saving change handled, so the RTH window is correct on both sides of it.
• Holidays: Martin Luther King Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, July 3 and Labor Day don't appear as sessions of their own. CME either closes or gives the hours traded on a market holiday the next business day's date, so the full-session range of the day after includes them. Good Friday (April 3) only traded a short overnight session with no cash session and is not counted. Any session trading under 120,000 contracts is excluded as a partial day. No session in this period fell below that line.
• Net change: the sum of daily close-to-close moves within each contract, so the price gap between the old and new contract at each roll doesn't distort the monthly figure.
• Ranges: simple high minus low for the session in question, in index points. Multiply by $20 for dollars per NQ contract, or $2 for MNQ.
• Initial balance: the high and low of 9:30 to 10:30 ET. An extension means any bar after 10:30 traded beyond that level. A day counts as staying inside the IB only if neither side was exceeded for the rest of the session.
• Gap fill: measured from the RTH open against the prior session's RTH close. A fill means price traded back through that closing price at any point in the same cash session.
• Overnight levels: the high and low of the Globex session from 6:00 PM ET the previous evening to 9:30 ET, tested against the cash session that follows. "Takes out" means trading beyond the level, not just touching it.
• Rotations: the number of times consecutive 15-minute closes flip from one side of the RTH opening price to the other. Bars closing exactly at the open are ignored rather than counted as a flip.
• Comparison table: ES, NQ, YM and RTY are all computed by the same script with the same definitions, over the same sessions.

Use This Data

All of it is free to use in your own research, blog, newsletter or video. The only thing I ask is a link back to this page so people can check the methodology for themselves.

Cite it

Embed the volatility chart

The chart from the time of day section, ready to drop into a post. It stays current as I update the data each month.

Download the numbers

The monthly table as a CSV, with the methodology notes in the footer rows.

Download nq-futures-statistics-2026.csv