Nasdaq-100 futures (NQ): the instrument dossier

The instrument

Contract unit: $20 × Nasdaq-100 IndexCME E-mini. Roughly $565,000 notional per contract with the index near 28,270 (close of 2026-07-31).
Tick: 0.25 index points = $5.00Per contract. A 100-point move is $2,000.
Micro contract: MNQ, $2 × indexOne tenth of NQ: 0.25 points = $0.50. About $56,500 notional at the same level.
Exchange: CME Globex
Hours: Sun–Fri 18:00–17:00 ETOne-hour daily halt 17:00–18:00 ET; daily settlement at 15:00 CT.
Months: Mar, Jun, Sep, Dec (H, M, U, Z)Last trading day is the third Friday of the contract month; front month carries the liquidity.
Exchange margin: ≈$42,100 initial / ≈$38,300 maintenancePer contract, early August 2026 (Barchart mirror of CME performance-bond levels; MNQ roughly one tenth). Brokers advertise day-trade margins of $1,000–$3,000 per NQ — intraday only. Margins scaled up with the index and 2026 volatility; older “$19k–22k” citations are stale.

How it moves

NQ runs about 1.3–1.5 times the percentage range of ES: the top seven megacaps carry roughly half the index weight (the exact share drifts with rebalances), so one earnings print moves the whole contract. Regimes matter more than any average — quiet stretches range 80–140 points, normal ones 140–220, elevated 220–350, and event days 350–600 or more. At $20 a point, a merely normal 200-point day is a $4,000 swing per contract.

Average daily range

0.6%

2024–2025 sample; normal-regime midpoint (140–220 pts) at NDX ≈28,000 · source

The scheduled events

When	What	Why it matters
Late Jan / Apr / Jul / Oct, after the close	Megacap earnings clusters (Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Tesla)	A single megacap moving ±3–5% hits NQ about twice as hard as ES because of index weight. The 2026-07-31 rebound rode Amazon’s print.
Late Feb / May / Aug / Nov, after the close	Nvidia earnings (off-cycle)	One print has moved NQ 2–4% after hours — 400–800 points at current levels.
Monthly, ~08:30 ET	CPI (BLS release schedule)	NQ can travel 100+ points in about a minute on the print.
Eight scheduled meetings a year, 14:00 ET	FOMC statement, then the press conference	Same one-minute repricing risk as CPI; the July 2026 correction arrived the day of a Fed decision.

The extremes on record

2022-09-13 — Hot August CPI: Nasdaq Composite −5.16%, its worst day since June 2020 (source)
2022 — NDX lost roughly a third for the year — widely cited near −33%, the worst since 2008 (exact full-year print not independently confirmed here) (source)
2024-08-05 — Yen carry unwind: Nasdaq about −3% on the day, capping a ~13% slide from the July peak in under a month; VIX touched ~65 intraday (source)
2026-07-29 — Nasdaq-100 entered correction — down 10% from its June peak near 30,660 — after a Fed decision; intraday low ≈27,176 that week (source)

This instrument inside the corridor

The rulebook draws a corridor on a simulated $100,000 account: a daily floor at −5% and a phase-one target at +10%. Those two published percentages, priced in this instrument’s average day:

Inside the corridor Simulated · computed, not measured

An average day's range: 0.6% of $28,270 ≈ 180.93 points
Worth per full contract (NQ): $3,619 per average day
Worth per micro (MNQ): $362 per average day
Daily floor: −5% of the $100,000 sim: $5,000
Contracts until one adverse average day breaches it: 1 full contract ($3,619 of range) — at 2, one ordinary day ends the account
Perfect average days to the +10% target ($10,000), 1 contract: ≈ 2.8 days of full-range capture

SIMULATED. Range inputs: 0.6% average daily range (2024–2025 sample; normal-regime midpoint (140–220 pts) at NDX ≈28,000), reference price $28,270. Perfect capture of a full day’s range does not exist; this is geometry, not a promise. The reference level is the 2026-07-31 index close from secondary data (verify against official Nasdaq prints before relying on it); the range is a high-minus-low average, and nobody trades the whole of it.

Ways in

Channel	Symbol	What it actually is
CME futures	NQ	$20 a point, ≈$565k notional — the full-size market and the prop-futures standard.
Micro futures	MNQ	One tenth the size on the same tape: $2 a point, so a normal day swings $280–$440 instead of $2,800–$4,400.
CFD	USTEC / NAS100 / US100 / NDX	Broker symbols for the same index, typically $1 per point per 1.0 lot — the per-lot spec varies by broker, verify per firm.
ETF	QQQ	Invesco QQQ tracks NDX at a 0.18% expense ratio (cut from 0.20% after the 2025 reclassification); QQQM is the cheaper sibling.

Do prop firms let you trade it?

Availability is a rulebook question, not a marketing one: an instrument a firm lists but voids trades on around its scheduled events is only half offered. Check the current terms before relying on a row below — firms change theirs without notice, and we publish ours.

Firm	Offered	The detail that matters
up·me	opens at v1.2	The corridor above is our published rule set for it. The instrument list ships with rulebook v1.2, before anything can be bought — the row you can hold us to. Create an account to be in the first cohort when it opens.
Topstep (futures)	Yes — NQ and MNQ	Combine position limits scale with account size: $50K → 5 minis, $100K → 10, $150K → 15. Funded accounts start under a Scaling Plan (e.g. 2 contracts on a 50K Express, more as profit grows). How minis convert to micros in the count is reported inconsistently across secondary sources — confirm on Topstep’s help center. (source)
Apex Trader Funding (futures)	Yes — from day one, no scaling plan	Limits by account: $25K → 4 minis, $50K → 10, $100K → 14, $150K → 17, $250K → 27, $300K → 35; one mini counts as ten micros. (source)
FTMO (CFD)	Yes, as US100	Indices at 1:50 leverage on Normal accounts (1:30 on Swing). Funded Normal accounts may not open or hold positions within 2 minutes of key releases (NFP, CPI, FOMC) and cannot hold over the weekend; the Swing account allows both. (source)
FundedNext (CFD)	Yes, as NAS100	Overnight and weekend holding allowed. On funded accounts, trades opened or closed within ±5 minutes of a high-impact release fall under the News Reward Share Rule. A separate FundedNext Futures arm runs its own news rules. (source)
FundingPips (CFD)	Yes — Nasdaq-100 CFD (exact platform ticker unconfirmed here)	Master accounts allow news trading outside a 10-minute window around high-impact events; positions auto-flatten before the weekend (not a breach); dynamic leverage tiers on indices apply from 2026-03-16. (source)
upme	Not yet	Nothing is live here. The instrument list ships with the product and will be published, versioned, before launch.

How traders blow up on it

The same account-ending patterns recur on this instrument often enough to have names. None of them requires being wrong about direction.

Sizing to margin instead of drawdown. A broker will lease you an NQ contract for about $1,000 of day-trade margin while a normal 200-point day swings $4,000 of it. On a typical $50K evaluation with a $2,500 trailing drawdown, one impulse leg on full size ends the account. (source)
Copying ES size onto NQ. Five NQ carry roughly two to three times the dollar volatility of five ES. A contract count that survives on ES fails on NQ during ordinary moves — same trader, same setup, hotter tape. (source)
Standing in front of the news candle. FOMC, CPI, and megacap prints can move NQ 100+ points in about a minute — more than $2,000 per contract. A position that is fine on a normal day breaches a daily-loss limit in two minutes. (source)
Holding through earnings night. During tech earnings, 100–200-point gaps fill far from the intended stop. Two NQ held through an Nvidia print is a $16,000–$32,000 potential overnight swing. (source)
Chasing extension, revenging the failure. NQ’s trend reputation invites momentum entries at full extension; the cited NQ-specific loop is breakout failure followed by revenge re-entry. Practitioner observation, not a statistic. (source)

On the forecast desk

Questions this dossier suggests, in the form the forecast desk uses: a resolution rule and a named source, published before any probability is. These are drafts — nothing below is open for forecasts, and none has a desk number yet.

Draft — not yet a live question

Will the NQ front-month daily settlement on Friday 2026-09-18 be above 28,500.00?

Resolves on CME Group’s official daily settlement for the named contract month (NQU26/NQZ26, pinned in final wording) — a single printed number, no ambiguity.

Draft — not yet a live question

Will the Nasdaq-100 close above its June 2026 all-time closing high (≈30,660 — exact value pinned from official Nasdaq data at publish) on or before 2026-12-31?

Resolves on the official NDX close from Nasdaq index data, cross-checkable against WSJ and Bloomberg prints.

Draft — not yet a live question

Will NQ’s front-month high-minus-low range exceed 400.00 points on the next FOMC decision day?

Resolves on the official CME session high and low for the full Globex day (18:00 ET prior day to 17:00 ET), per the CME daily bulletin; TradingView CME_MINI:NQ1! daily bar as public cross-check.

Sources

Every number above is drawn from one of the documents below; a figure that cannot be traced to one does not belong on this page. Corrections: hello@upme.com.

Nasdaq-100 futures

The instrument

How it moves

The scheduled events

The extremes on record

This instrument inside the corridor

Ways in

Do prop firms let you trade it?

How traders blow up on it

On the forecast desk

Sources

Trade it inside published rules