Futures Contract Specifications for ES and NQ: Tick Size, Contract Value, and Expiration

Futures contracts have standardized specifications that determine exactly what you are buying or selling and what each price movement means in dollar terms. Before trading any futures contract, understanding its specifications completely eliminates the type of calculation errors that cause new traders to misestimate their actual risk exposure. ES (E-mini S&P 500 futures) specifications: Ticker symbol ESH25, ESM25, ESU25, ESZ25 (the letter and year indicate the expiration quarter). Exchange: CME Group. Contract size: $50 x the S&P 500 index price. Tick size: 0.25 index points (the minimum price increment). Tick value: 0.25 x $50 = $12.50 per tick. Point value: $50 per point (4 ticks). Trading hours: Nearly 24 hours Sunday through Friday, with a brief maintenance pause daily from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM EST. Regular trading session: 9:30 AM to 4:15 PM EST. Expiration: Third Friday of the expiration month. Quarterly expirations: March (H), June (M), September (U), December (Z). Margin: Approximately $12,000-$16,000 for one contract (varies by broker and market conditions). Micro ES (MES) specifications: Everything identical to ES except contract size is $5 x the index price (1/10th of full ES) and tick value is $1.25 per tick. One point of MES movement = $5. MES and ES have identical price charts — the only difference is contract size and therefore dollar value of each movement. NQ (E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures) specifications: Ticker symbol NQH25, NQM25 etc. Exchange: CME Group. Contract size: $20 x the Nasdaq-100 index price. Tick size: 0.25 index points. Tick value: 0.25 x $20 = $5.00 per tick. Point value: $20 per point (4 ticks). Trading hours: Same as ES. Expiration: Same quarterly cycle as ES, on the same third Friday. Margin: Approximately $17,000-$21,000 for one contract. Micro NQ (MNQ) specifications: Contract size is $2 x the index price. Tick value is $0.50 per tick. One point of MNQ = $2. Understanding contract expiration and rollover is essential for position management. Futures contracts have a finite life — they expire on a specific date and must be rolled to the next contract before expiration if you want to maintain a continuous position. The active contract is called the "front month" — the expiration month with the highest trading volume. Approximately 8-10 trading days before the contract expiration date (called rollover week), trading volume and open interest shift from the expiring contract to the next quarterly contract. Most data providers and charting platforms automatically display the front month contract and handle continuous contract adjustment. If you hold a contract through rollover without switching to the new front month, you will face declining liquidity and eventually delivery notice obligations (though cash-settled indices like ES and NQ settle in cash, not physical delivery, making delivery notices less critical than in commodity futures). The practical rollover process: when your current contract is one week from expiration, check whether trading volume has shifted to the next quarterly contract. When the next contract has higher volume, switch your charts and orders to the new front month. NinjaTrader 8 handles this automatically with continuous contract settings — configure Instruments > ES > Data Settings to use the "Continuous Data" option with the rollover criteria set to switch on volume or open interest shift. Roll adjustment affects historical price comparison: the front month NQ contract and the next contract typically trade at slightly different prices (this difference is the "roll spread" or "basis"). When charts automatically roll to the new contract, they may show a price gap at the rollover date that did not reflect actual market movement. For historical analysis and backtesting purposes, use "back-adjusted" continuous contract data that adjusts prior prices to eliminate this rollover gap, providing a continuous price series. NinjaTrader's continuous contract settings and most professional data providers offer back-adjusted data as an option. Dollar risk calculation from contract specifications: every risk calculation in futures trading starts from the tick or point value. For a 10-point stop on one ES contract: 10 points x $50 = $500 risk. For a 10-point stop on five MES contracts: 10 points x $5 x 5 = $250 risk. For a 100-point stop on one MNQ contract: 100 points x $2 = $200 risk. Knowing these calculations instantly — without looking them up — is the baseline competency required before executing any futures trade. Test yourself: at current NQ prices near 20,000, what is the dollar value of one full NQ contract? ($20 x 20,000 = $400,000 of notional exposure for one contract.) What is a 50-point adverse move on two MNQ contracts? (50 x $2 x 2 = $200.) These calculations should be reflexive, not looked up during a trade.