SizeGuard

Home › Guides › Micro vs E-mini futures: which should you trade?

Micro vs E-mini futures: which should you trade?

Same chart, same ticks, one tenth the dollars.

The difference

A micro contract follows the same index or commodity as its big brother and moves in the same ticks, but each tick is worth less. One MES tick is $1.25; one ES tick is $12.50. So 10 MES = 1 ES in dollar terms. The same is true for MNQ/NQ, MYM/YM, M2K/RTY, MGC/GC and MCL/CL.

When the E-mini is better

If one or more standard contracts land inside your risk range, trade the standard. You pay commission per contract, so 1 NQ is usually much cheaper to trade than 10 MNQ.

When micros are better

• One standard contract already risks more than your maximum. Example: a 150-tick NQ stop risks $750.00 per NQ. With $500 to $600 to risk, that does not fit, but 7 MNQ ($525.00) or 8 MNQ ($600.00) does.
• You want finer steps, like scaling out a third of a position.
• You are new, or in a small funded account with a tight daily loss limit.

Let the calculator pick

SizeGuard checks the standard contract first and only recommends the micro when the standard does not fit. Try it for ES / MES, NQ / MNQ, GC / MGC or CL / MCL.