Nasdaq-100 Futures: NQ vs MNQ Sizing

Nasdaq 100 futures are contracts that track the Nasdaq-100 index, the 100 largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq exchange. The full-size contract is called NQ, and it trades alongside a smaller version called MNQ, the Micro E-mini Nasdaq-100. The difference between them is pure sizing: NQ pays $20 for every point the index moves, MNQ pays $2. Same index, same tick size, ten times the exposure per contract on the full-size version.

What is the NQ contract?

NQ is the E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures contract, listed on the CME. It settles to the value of the Nasdaq-100 index, which is dominated by large technology and growth companies: Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Meta, and a rotating list of others that meet the exchange's listing rules.

The contract multiplier is $20 per index point. If the Nasdaq-100 sits at 18,000, one NQ contract controls $360,000 of notional exposure. That number matters more than most new traders expect, because it drives both your margin requirement and the dollar size of every point the index moves against you or for you.

The minimum price move, the tick, is 0.25 index points. At $20 per point, that tick is worth $5. A ten-point move in the index, small by NQ's standards on an active day, is a $200 swing per contract.

What is the difference between NQ and MNQ?

MNQ is the Micro E-mini version of the same contract. It tracks the identical Nasdaq-100 index, on the identical tick size of 0.25 points, but the multiplier is $2 per point instead of $20. That makes MNQ exactly one-tenth the size of NQ, dollar for dollar, tick for tick.

A 0.25-point tick on MNQ is worth $0.50. The same ten-point move that costs an NQ trader $200 costs an MNQ trader $20. Nothing about the market data, the settlement price, or the index composition changes between the two. Only the multiplier changes.

This matters for position sizing more than most traders give it credit for. Ten MNQ contracts equal one NQ contract in dollar terms, which means you can scale your exposure in much finer increments with the micro than you can with the full-size contract.

Same index, same tick size, ten times the exposure per contract on the full-size version.

Why does the Nasdaq-100 move more than the S&P 500?

The Nasdaq-100 and the S&P 500 overlap heavily in their largest names, but they're built differently. The S&P 500 spreads its weight across roughly 500 companies from every sector: energy, financials, healthcare, industrials, and tech. The Nasdaq-100 is narrower and skews far more toward technology and consumer growth names.

That concentration is the mechanism behind NQ's reputation for wider swings. When a handful of megacap tech stocks report earnings, or when interest rate expectations shift and growth stocks reprice faster than value stocks, the Nasdaq-100 tends to feel it more directly than a broadly diversified index does. Fewer sectors absorbing the shock means more of the move shows up in the index itself.

This shows up in daily range, not just in headline days. On an average session, NQ's percentage move tends to run wider than ES's, because the underlying basket is less diversified by sector and more sensitive to the same handful of growth-stock catalysts.

Point value and tick value side by side

It helps to line the two contracts up against each other in plain numbers. NQ: $20 per point, $5 per tick, full-size notional exposure. MNQ: $2 per point, $0.50 per tick, one-tenth the exposure of NQ at the identical index price.

For comparison, the S&P 500's own pair works the same way in structure but different in scale. ES pays $50 per point and $12.50 per tick. MES pays $5 per point and $1.25 per tick. The ratio between full-size and micro is always ten to one, across every index CME offers a micro on.

What changes between NQ and ES isn't the mechanism, it's the underlying index's behavior. Same tick structure, same micro-to-full ratio, different basket of stocks driving the price.

Choosing contract size for your account

The honest way to think about NQ versus MNQ is dollar risk per tick, not which one feels more serious. If a ten-tick stop on NQ represents an amount of your account you're not comfortable losing on a single trade, that's not a reason to override the stop. It's a signal that MNQ, or fewer contracts, is the right size for where your account is today.

This is the same logic that governs risk limits in any rules-based system: position size gets set by account size and volatility, not by which contract feels like the 'real' one. A trader running MNQ with disciplined sizing is taking the trade more seriously than a trader running NQ they can't actually afford to be wrong on.

Margin requirements scale with the contract too. Full-size NQ carries a meaningfully higher margin requirement than MNQ, both overnight and intraday, because the notional exposure is ten times larger. Check your broker's current figures before sizing a position, since margin requirements move with volatility and are set by the exchange and your broker, not fixed forever.