Micro Futures: MES vs MNQ, Tick Values and Risk

Micro futures let you trade a stock index with a fraction of the usual contract size. This guide focuses on two of them, the Micro E-mini S&P 500 (MES) and the Micro E-mini Nasdaq-100 (MNQ). A small contract is not the same as small risk, though, and the margin your broker asks for tells you little about the money you can lose.

This guide does the math that most explanations skip. It shows what one tick, one point and one stop are worth in MES and MNQ, how to turn a risk budget into a whole number of contracts, and why costs and slippage belong in the calculation. All contract figures come from CME Group, checked on 25 October 2026. This article follows our editorial policy and is for education, not investment advice.

Micro futures in 30 seconds

• Smaller contracts. CME’s Micro E-mini index futures are one tenth of the matching E-mini. MES pays $5 per index point, MNQ $2 per index point.
• Ticks are tiny, points are not. One tick is 0.25 points: $1.25 in MES and $0.50 in MNQ. A 30-point move in MNQ is still $60 per contract.
• Size from the stop, not the margin. Contracts = risk budget ÷ (stop in points × point value + costs). Round down; if the answer is below one, skip the trade.
• Margin is not your risk. CME listed a maintenance margin of $2,602 for one MES (December 2026 contract, long) on 25 October 2026. Broker day-trading margins can be far lower, but they do not limit your loss.

What is a micro future?

A micro future is a standardized exchange contract on an index, a commodity or a currency, sized smaller than the standard contract. You do not pay the full contract value. You post a margin as collateral, and every price move is credited or debited to your account each day. That makes futures leveraged products: a small deposit controls a large value.

The contract value is the index level times the multiplier. With the S&P 500 future at 7,672.25 (last price on CME’s MES page, 25 October 2026), one MES controls about $38,361. One MNQ at 29,177 controls about $58,354. The CME maintenance margin for these contracts was about 7 percent of that value on the same day, so the contract value was roughly 14 to 15 times the maintenance margin. That ratio is not the leverage of your account, which depends on your actual equity and on what your broker requires to open the trade.

Every futures contract has an expiry date. MES and MNQ are listed for March, June, September and December. Trading in a contract ends at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time on the third Friday of its month, and the contract is settled in cash, not in shares. Traders who want to stay in the market roll to the next contract before that day.

Which micro futures exist?

CME Group lists micro contracts in several asset classes, and they are not all one tenth of the standard size. Next to the four equity index micros (S&P 500, Nasdaq-100, Russell 2000 and Dow Jones), there are micro contracts on metals, energy, currencies, interest rates, grains and crypto. According to CME’s overview of micro products, micro metals and micro FX contracts are 1/5 or 1/10 of the standard size, and the micro rate contracts work differently again.

Micro is also no longer the smallest size. CME now lists E-nano index futures, one tenth of a micro, according to its E-nano FAQ: the E-nano S&P 500 (NES) pays $0.50 per point and moves in steps of 0.5 points, so one tick is $0.25. Only the two nearest quarterly months are listed. For most index traders the choice is still between MES and MNQ, which is why the rest of this guide focuses on them.

CME’s Micro E-mini index futures started on 6 May 2019. CME launched them on the four US benchmarks at one tenth of the E-mini size, according to its press release. They made index futures usable for accounts that could not size an E-mini properly, because one E-mini S&P 500 point is worth $50.

MES vs MNQ: tick value, point value and size

MES and MNQ share the tick size, the trading hours and the expiry cycle, but not the value of a point. The table shows the contract specifications from CME’s pages for MES and MNQ, with the E-mini for comparison.

	MES	MNQ
Underlying	S&P 500	Nasdaq-100
Point value	$5	$2
Tick size	0.25 points	0.25 points
Tick value	$1.25	$0.50
Matching E-mini	ES, $50 per point	NQ, $20 per point
Contract value on 25 Oct 2026	about $38,361	about $58,354
CME maintenance margin, Dec 2026, long	$2,602	$4,198

Source: CME Group contract specifications and margin pages (MES margins, MNQ margins), read on 25 October 2026. Contract values from the last prices shown on CME’s pages (MES 7,672.25, MNQ 29,177). Margins change; check the current figure before you trade.

1. Contract rule1 tickThe smallest price step: 0.25 index points in both MES and MNQ.
2. 4 ticks1 pointMES: 4 × $1.25 = $5. MNQ: 4 × $0.50 = $2.
3. Your planYour stopExample: 8 points in MES = $40, 30 points in MNQ = $60 per contract.
4. Market and costsYour lossStop distance plus commissions, fees and slippage. A stop fill is not guaranteed.

Contract figures from CME Group, 25 October 2026. The stop distances are chosen examples, not typical moves.

The same number of points is not the same move in the market. The Nasdaq-100 stands almost four times higher than the S&P 500, so it travels more points for the same percentage move. On 25 October 2026, 8 points in the S&P 500 and 30 points in the Nasdaq-100 were both about 0.10 percent of the index. Compare stops in percent or with a volatility measure such as the ATR, not in raw points.

A cheaper point does not make MNQ the smaller trade. One MNQ controls more contract value than one MES and needs more margin at CME. The planned price loss per contract, before costs and slippage, is your stop in points times the point value; your total risk adds those costs and multiplies by the number of contracts. That is why the next step is the calculation, not the choice of the “smaller” contract.

How to size a micro futures position from your stop

Position size starts with the money you accept to lose on one trade. Our position sizing guide explains the risk budget in detail; many traders use 1 percent of the account or less. The formula for futures is short: contracts = risk budget ÷ risk per contract, rounded down.

Risk per contract has three parts, and two of them are not on the chart. The first is the stop distance in points times the point value. The second is your costs for the round trip: commission, exchange and regulatory fees. The third is slippage, the difference between your stop level and the price you actually get.

Here is a worked example with a $100 risk budget. The numbers are hypothetical: the stop distances are chosen for the example, and the cost of $1.50 per contract round trip is an assumption, not a broker quote. For orientation, Interactive Brokers listed a commission of $0.25 per contract per side for MES and MNQ on 25 October 2026 (up to 1,000 contracts a month), so $0.50 for entry and exit, plus exchange and regulatory fees on top.

Step	MES	MNQ
Stop distance	8 points	30 points
Stop × point value	8 × $5 = $40.00	30 × $2 = $60.00
Slippage, 1 tick (assumption)	$1.25	$0.50
Costs round trip (assumption)	$1.50	$1.50
Risk per contract	$42.75	$62.00
$100 ÷ risk per contract	2.34	1.61
Contracts (rounded down)	2	1
Planned risk	$85.50	$62.00

Round down, never up. In the example, three MES contracts would risk $128.25 and break the budget. If your stop is so wide that even one contract costs more than your budget, the answer is not a smaller stop to make it fit. The answer is to skip the trade or use a smaller contract such as an E-nano, where your broker offers it.

A stop order limits a plan, not the market. In a fast market, or when trading resumes after the daily break, a stop can be filled worse than its level. The planned risk in the table is therefore a planning figure, not a maximum loss. Our guide to risk management covers daily loss limits that sit above the single trade.

Why low margin does not prove you have enough money

Margin is the deposit the exchange or the broker demands, not the amount you can afford to lose. Three numbers are easy to confuse. The initial margin is what you need in the account to open a position. The maintenance margin is the minimum your account must keep; below it, CME’s margin course says you may have to add funds immediately, or the position may be liquidated automatically, possibly without warning. Your loss is not limited to the margin: it can exceed your deposit and your account balance. The day-trading margin is a lower deposit some brokers allow while the position is opened and closed in the same session.

• Risk budget in the example$100what you accept to lose on the trade
• Planned risk, 2 MES$85.508-point stop, assumed costs and slippage
• Planned risk, 1 MNQ$6230-point stop, assumed costs and slippage
• CME maintenance margin, 2 MES$5,2042 × $2,602, December 2026 contract, long, 25 October 2026
• CME maintenance margin, 1 MNQ$4,198December 2026 contract, long, 25 October 2026

Margin and risk measure different things. The bars use the same contract counts as the risk example; opening a position can require more than the maintenance margin. Brokers can ask more than CME and often allow much lower day-trading margins, which are the broker's own terms. The risk figures are the hypothetical example from the previous section.

A low day-trading margin only tells you that the broker lets you open the trade. It says nothing about how far the market can move against you. If a broker accepts a small deposit for one MES and the market falls 20 points, you have lost $100 on that contract, whatever the margin was. Brokers can also raise margins at short notice or close positions when your account falls below their limit.

Holding a position overnight changes the numbers. A broker’s intraday margin usually applies only until a set time before the session close. After that, the full overnight margin applies, and a gap at the next open can move the price past your stop. Check your broker’s exact cut-off time, not a general rule.

Trading hours and the contract roll

MES and MNQ trade almost around the clock on CME Globex. According to CME, trading runs from Sunday 6:00 p.m. to Friday 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time, with a daily break from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. ET. The hours, the break and the holiday schedule are explained in our guide to futures market hours.

Traders usually concentrate on one contract month at a time. On 25 October 2026, CME’s product pages showed December 2026 (codes MESZ6 and MNQZ6), whose trading ends on Friday, 18 December 2026, at 9:30 a.m. ET. CME’s course on expiration and the roll says traders watch the volume in the expiring and the next contract and roll when the next one becomes the active month. The quarterly expiry days are covered in our guide to triple witching.

A roll is two trades, and both cost money. You close the old contract and open the same position in the next one. The two contracts trade at slightly different prices, so a continuous chart that joins them can show a jump that never happened in your account. Use the same contract month for your chart and your orders.

How to choose between MES and MNQ

Start from your risk budget and your method, not from the index you like. Measure the stop your method needs in points, multiply it by the point value and add costs. If one contract already uses most of your budget, the contract is too large for that stop. If both fit, pick the market your method was tested on.

Test your rules before they cost real money. CME offers a free Trading Simulator, and many futures brokers have a demo account. Our guide to paper trading on TradingView shows how a simulated account works and where it differs from real fills: no slippage, no partial fills and no queue position. Treat simulated results as a check of the process, not as proof of an edge.

For intraday plans, the contract decides the size of every small move. An opening range breakout on the S&P 500 can be traded with an ETF such as SPY or with MES. In MES, a stop at the other end of a 6-point range is $30 per contract before costs, so the range width decides whether the trade fits your budget at all.

Micro futures: my conclusion

Micro futures solve a size problem, not a risk problem. They make it possible to trade the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq-100 with $5 and $2 per point instead of $50 and $20. That is useful for small accounts, for scaling in and out, and for testing a method with real orders. The arithmetic stays the same: stop, point value, costs, slippage, and contracts rounded down.

The most common mistake is reading margin as permission. A broker can let you open a trade with little money; the market decides what it costs. If you size every trade from the stop and keep a daily loss limit, the micro contract does what it was built for.

Frequently asked questions about micro futures

Can you trade micro futures with $100?

A $100 account cannot hold even one MES overnight at CME’s maintenance margin of $2,602 (December 2026 contract, 25 October 2026). Some brokers allow day-trading margins far below that, but a single 20-point move in one MES equals $100, the whole account. With $100, one losing trade can end the account, so it is not a sensible size to trade futures with.

What is the tick value of MES and MNQ?

One tick in MES is worth $1.25, one tick in MNQ is worth $0.50. Both contracts move in steps of 0.25 index points. MES is $5 per point and MNQ is $2 per point, according to CME’s contract specifications.

Is MES or MNQ better for beginners?

Neither contract is safer by design; the stop you need decides the risk. MNQ has a smaller point value but the Nasdaq-100 travels more points for the same percentage move, and one MNQ controls more contract value. Calculate the risk per contract for your stop in both and choose the one that fits your risk budget.

What is the current MES contract?

On 25 October 2026, CME’s MES page showed the December 2026 contract, code MESZ6. Its trading ends on 18 December 2026 at 9:30 a.m. ET. The month codes are H (March), M (June), U (September) and Z (December), followed by the last digit of the year.

Are micro futures the smallest index futures?

No, CME also lists E-nano index futures, one tenth of a micro contract. The E-nano S&P 500 (NES) pays $0.50 per point and the E-nano Nasdaq-100 (NNQ) $0.20. Not every broker offers them, and fewer contract months are listed than for MES and MNQ.