NQ 20-Minute Range by Time of Day
How much does the E-mini Nasdaq-100 actually move on the 20-minute chart at different times of day? The table below is measured from 3,080 recorded 20-minute bars across 4 recent sessions: for each hour of the day, the average distance between a bar's high and its low.
| Hour | Avg 20-minute range | |
|---|---|---|
| 12:00 AM ET | 5.74 pts | |
| 1:00 AM ET | 5.26 pts | |
| 10:00 AM ET | 5.81 pts | |
| 11:00 AM ET | 5.72 pts | |
| 12:00 PM ET | 6.12 pts | |
| 1:00 PM ET | 5.70 pts | |
| 2:00 PM ET | 5.70 pts | |
| 3:00 PM ET | 5.85 pts | |
| 5:00 PM ET | 5.43 pts | |
| 6:00 PM ET | 6.12 pts | |
| 7:00 PM ET | 5.89 pts | |
| 8:00 PM ET | 5.76 pts | |
| 9:00 PM ET | 5.77 pts | |
| 10:00 PM ET | 5.72 pts | |
| 11:00 PM ET | 5.92 pts |
How to read this
The most active hours in this window were 12:00 PM, 6:00 PM, 11:00 PM ET, and the quietest were 1:00 AM and 5:00 PM 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 1× the ground of the quietest.
These figures shift with volatility regimes — they describe the recorded window above, not a guarantee of the next session.