When Does ZN (10-Year Treasury Note Futures) Actually Move? Hourly Ranges on 5-minute Charts

Educational reference. Measured from 15,819 recorded 5-minute bars of 10-Year T-Note through October 6, 2026.

08:00 is the busiest hour, averaging 0.0469 per bar — 3.0× the quietest hour at 18:00.

The same stop is a different stop at different times of day. This is the median high-to-low range of a single 5-minute bar of 10-Year T-Note, hour by hour, measured from 15,819 recorded bars over the last 90 days.

Hour (ET)	Median range	Bars
00:00	0.0156	663
01:00	0.0156	671
02:00	0.0156	698
03:00	0.0312	694
04:00	0.0312	705
05:00	0.0312	693
06:00	0.0312	698
07:00	0.0312	693
08:00	0.0469	699
09:00	0.0469	704
10:00	0.0469	698
11:00	0.0469	704
12:00	0.0312	698
13:00	0.0312	698
14:00	0.0312	684
15:00	0.0312	692
16:00	0.0312	678
17:00	0.0312	61
18:00	0.0156	603
19:00	0.0156	666
20:00	0.0156	688
21:00	0.0156	690
22:00	0.0156	676
23:00	0.0156	665

The spread across the day

The busiest hour is 08:00, averaging 0.0469 per bar. The quietest is 18:00 at 0.0156. That is a 3.0× difference across the same instrument, the same timeframe, the same trading day.

A stop sized for 18:00 conditions will be caught routinely at 08:00, and a stop sized for 08:00 gives away far more than it needs to overnight. The same number of points does not mean the same thing at every hour.

How this was measured

Every 5-minute bar of 10-Year T-Note recorded in the last 90 days was grouped by the hour it opened, in Eastern time. The figure shown is the median of high minus low within each group — the middle bar of that hour, not the average, so a single outlier session cannot distort it. Hours with fewer than 60 recorded bars are omitted rather than shown on thin evidence.

These are recorded market ranges, not predictions. Nothing on this page is a projection.