MES & MNQ Position Size Calculator Guide: Tick Value, Risk & Contract Size

MES and MNQ are Micro E-mini equity-index futures. MES moves $5 per index point, or $1.25 per 0.25-point tick; MNQ moves $2 per index point, or $0.50 per 0.25-point tick. How many contracts fit a trade depends on the risk budget you choose and the distance to your stop.

Divide your risk budget by the risk of one contract at your stop, then round down. Nothing here suggests how many contracts, or how much risk, is right for you.

MES vs. MNQ contract specifications

Current CME specifications, checked for this article on September 22, 2026. The last two rows are derived: points moved × point value.

Source: CME Rulebook Chapter 353 (Micro E-mini S&P 500) and Chapter 361 (Micro E-mini Nasdaq-100). Tick values are for outright trades; intermonth spreads use a smaller 0.05-point increment.

Ticks, points, and risk per contract

Both contracts tick in quarter points, so four ticks make one point. Measure your stop in either unit; the result is the same.

Futures trade in whole contracts, so the division is rounded down, never to the nearest whole number. Rounding up would produce a position whose loss at the stop exceeds your limit. For the general version of this for every contract Saviqor supports, see points vs. ticks on the Futures calculator page.

Worked MES examples

A $25,000 account with a $250 maximum risk per trade, using MES at $1.25 per tick.

Doubling the stop cut the size from 5 contracts to 2. The remaining $50 of the budget goes unused because a third contract would bring the risk to $300, above the $250 maximum.

Worked MNQ examples

The same $25,000 account and $250 maximum risk, using MNQ at $0.50 per tick.

MNQ needed a stop two and a half times as many points wide as MES to reach the same $50 risk per contract, because each MNQ point is worth $2 rather than $5.

A smaller point value does not make MNQ “safer”

MNQ's $2 point is smaller than MES's $5 point, but that alone says nothing about how much a trade can lose. Planned risk is the product of three things: the number of contracts, the stop distance, and the instrument's point or tick value. The examples above show the same $250 of risk reached in both contracts. Neither contract is safer or better as such, and this page makes no comparison of the underlying indexes.

Micro vs. E-mini

MES and MNQ are the smaller versions of the E-mini S&P 500 (ES) and E-mini Nasdaq-100 (NQ). ES moves $50 per point and NQ $20 per point, so each Micro contract carries one-tenth of its E-mini's dollar value per point: MES $5 vs. ES $50, MNQ $2 vs. NQ $20. Ten MES contracts move by the same amount per point as one ES.

Contract months and rollover

MES and MNQ contracts expire, and traders who hold exposure over time periodically move to a newer contract month. When the specification is unchanged across expiries, as it normally is, the tick and point values above — and so the sizing arithmetic — stay the same. What can differ is the price level, so make sure your chart, your broker, and the expiry you select all refer to the contract you are actually trading before you measure a stop. The Futures FAQ covers how rollover relates to the calculator.

Calculate your MES or MNQ position size

In the Futures Position Size Calculator, choose MES or MNQ from the contract list, then enter your account balance, your risk as a dollar amount or a percentage, and your stop distance in points or ticks. It applies the arithmetic above and rounds down to whole contracts as you type. For the same idea across Forex and Futures, see how a trading position size calculator works.

Assumptions and limitations

• Contract specifications can change. Confirm them with CME Group or your broker before trading.
• The figures use outright contract tick values. Calendar-spread trades use a smaller minimum increment and are not covered here.
• Commissions, exchange fees, slippage, gaps, and partial or poor fills can make a realized loss larger than the planned one.
• Calculator output depends entirely on the inputs you supply: balance, risk, contract, and stop distance.
• Futures trade in whole contracts, so a position size is always rounded down, and can be zero.
• The examples are educational arithmetic, not recommendations. Saviqor does not tell you what amount or percentage to risk, which contract to trade, or where to place a stop.

Other short guides are listed under Resources.