How many points do ES and NQ move in a day, and how far will today go?

The short answer, in points, percent and dollars

Over the 20 sessions to mid-September 2026, the E-mini S&P 500 (ES) covered about 55 points a day from its high to its low, and the E-mini Nasdaq-100 (NQ) about 330. With ES trading around 7,600 and NQ around 29,000, that is roughly 0.7% and 1.1% of price.

NQ also moves further in percentage terms, roughly one and a half times as far as ES over the same stretch. So size each one against its own range rather than translating a stop or a target from one to the other.

In money, a point is worth $50 on ES and $20 on NQ, and a tenth of that on the micro contracts.

Why the numbers you find online don't match

Search for how far NQ moves in a day and you will find confident answers that disagree with each other, and with the tables above. Most of them aren't wrong so much as old. A point figure only means something at the price it was measured at.

When NQ traded near 15,000, a 150-point day was a 1% day. With NQ near 29,000, the same 150 points is about half a percent, a quiet session by any standard. The index has nearly doubled, so a point figure written at the old price describes a day about half the size today.

Platforms also disagree because they measure different days. Some count only the regular session, 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM ET. Others count the full futures day, which opens at 6:00 PM ET the evening before and runs for 23 hours, so its range reads larger. And most charting software averages the true range over 14 sessions by default, where we use 20.

Two habits get around all of this. Think in percent of price, which keeps its meaning as the index climbs, and convert to points at today's price when you need a number to trade. Or read the average true range, which is measured in points at current prices and updates itself every session.

Range and leg: two sizes of the same day

The range is the distance from the session's high to its low. It is the number everybody quotes, and for a day trader it is the less useful of the two. What a trend or breakout trade can actually catch is the largest distance price travels in one direction without a real pullback along the way. Our dashboard calls that the leg.

On a clean trend day the two are nearly the same number. On a two-sided day they come apart: price covers the same distance from high to low, but in pieces, with each run reversed before it goes far.

This is why a big range is not the same thing as a good day. The two sessions above look identical on a chart of daily ranges, and only one of them pays a trader waiting for follow-through. The other takes a little from every attempt. When you compare the move a setup needs with the move the day offers, compare it with the leg.

Three ways to estimate how far today will go

An average describes the past month, and the session in front of you is rarely average. Release days run larger and quiet pre-holiday sessions smaller. There are three practical ways to size a day before it starts, and each answers a slightly different question.

1. The average true range

True range is a session's high minus its low, stretched to include any gap from the previous close. Its average over the last few weeks is the plainest yardstick there is for what a normal day has recently looked like. Every charting platform plots it and it costs nothing.

Where it falls short: it looks backward, and it is an average. A month of calm sessions leaves it low on the morning of a Fed decision, and one violent week props it up long after the market has gone quiet again.

2. The options market's expected move

Options prices carry the market's own estimate of how far an index will move. The quick version is the rule of 16: divide the VIX by 16 and you get the S&P 500's implied daily move in percent. The 16 is roughly the square root of 252, the number of trading days in a year, which turns the VIX's annualised figure into a daily one. With the VIX at 16 and ES at 7,600, that is a 1% move, about 76 points. For the Nasdaq-100, Cboe's VXN does the same job.

Two refinements suit a day trader. Cboe's VIX1D prices the current session alone, which fits the question better than the 30-day VIX, though it swings more. And the price of the at-the-money straddle expiring today, on SPX, SPY or QQQ, is a quick read of roughly how far the options market expects the index to travel by the close. Platforms apply different multipliers to it, which is why two sites can quote different expected moves for the same day.

Where it falls short: implied volatility usually runs above what the market then delivers, because option sellers charge for taking the risk. It measures the move from one close to the next, not the distance from high to low, so it won't match the ATR and isn't meant to. And it says nothing about whether the move arrives in one run or in pieces.

3. A forecast for the session itself

The third approach models the specific session before it opens, from what is knowable at that point: how far the overnight and pre-market sessions have already travelled, where volatility sits and the shape of the VIX curve, and what the calendar holds. Our Volatility Scale is one of these. Each morning it states the leg and the range it expects in ES and NQ, in index points and as a multiple of the 20-day ATR, and after the close it grades the forecast against what the session actually did.

Where it falls short: a forecast is a probability, not a promise. No model sees an unscheduled headline coming, and a forecast of how far the market travels is not a forecast of which way. That second limit is why ours flags scheduled news separately, and says stand aside on a vetoed day whatever the size estimate. Whichever forecast you use, look at how its calls have been graded against real sessions before you size a trade off it.

Turning the size of the day into stops and size

Knowing how far the day is likely to go changes three decisions, and none of them is which way to trade.

• Whether your setup fits the day. Add up the travel a setup needs from the move it waits for to the target. If that is more than the leg the day is likely to offer, the setup can be right and still not pay. Our guide to when not to day trade works through an example.
• How wide your stop is. A stop that sits outside the noise on a 30-point day sits inside it on an 80-point day. Setting stops as a fraction of the average range lets them breathe with the market: a quarter of a 55-point ATR is about 14 points on ES, and a quarter of a 330-point ATR is about 82 points on NQ.
• How many contracts you trade. Hold the dollar risk steady and let the size change. The number of contracts is the amount you are prepared to lose, divided by the stop in points times the dollars per point.

Put numbers on it. Say you risk $300 on a trade. A 14-point stop costs $700 on one ES contract, more than the whole budget, but $70 on one MES, so four micros fit at $280. An 82-point stop costs $164 on one MNQ, so one fits and two don't. The arithmetic never changes. What changes with the size of the day is the stop, and the stop decides the size.