NQ (Nasdaq 100 E-mini Futures) 1 Minute Range by Time of Day
How much does the E-mini Nasdaq 100 actually move on the 1 minute chart at different times of day? The table below is measured from 5,402 recorded 1 minute bars across 17 recent sessions: for each hour of the day, the average distance between a bar's high and its low.
| Hour | Avg 1 minute range | |
|---|---|---|
| 12:00 AM ET | 11.91 pts | |
| 1:00 AM ET | 8.00 pts | |
| 2:00 AM ET | 17.29 pts | |
| 3:00 AM ET | 18.35 pts | |
| 4:00 AM ET | 15.22 pts | |
| 5:00 AM ET | 13.59 pts | |
| 6:00 AM ET | 14.01 pts | |
| 7:00 AM ET | 11.35 pts | |
| 8:00 AM ET | 18.63 pts | |
| 9:00 AM ET | 17.51 pts | |
| 10:00 AM ET | 12.50 pts | |
| 11:00 AM ET | 15.02 pts | |
| 12:00 PM ET | 24.90 pts | |
| 1:00 PM ET | 17.16 pts | |
| 2:00 PM ET | 15.50 pts | |
| 3:00 PM ET | 13.60 pts | |
| 4:00 PM ET | 11.70 pts | |
| 5:00 PM ET | 16.46 pts | |
| 6:00 PM ET | 5.91 pts | |
| 7:00 PM ET | 14.72 pts | |
| 8:00 PM ET | 13.40 pts | |
| 9:00 PM ET | 15.35 pts | |
| 10:00 PM ET | 13.12 pts | |
| 11:00 PM ET | 11.08 pts |
How to read this
The most active hours in this window were 12:00 PM, 8:00 AM, 3:00 AM ET, and the quietest were 6:00 PM and 1:00 AM ET. A wider bar means each interval covers more ground. The takeaway is purely observational: a fixed number of points represents a very different share of typical movement at different hours — in this window, the most active hour covered roughly 4× the ground of the quietest.
These figures shift with volatility regimes — they describe the recorded window above, not a guarantee of the next session.