What is the difference between NQ and MNQ futures?

NQ is the standard Nasdaq 100 e-mini futures contract worth $20 per point, with intraday margin requirements of approximately $16,000+ per contract. MNQ is the micro Nasdaq contract worth $2 per point, with margin around $1,600. For prop firm evaluations under $100k, MNQ is almost always the correct choice — it allows proper position sizing without over-leveraging relative to the drawdown buffer.

What timeframe works best for MNQ scalping on a prop firm account?

The 30-minute timeframe is the most popular for MNQ/NQ prop firm strategies because it provides clear structure for pivot highs and lows, generates 2–6 signals per RTH session, and produces moves large enough to clear commission and slippage with room for profit. The 15-minute chart works well for more active strategies. Anything below 5 minutes is generally too noisy for reliable automated signal generation on NQ.

Does Apex's consistency rule affect NQ scalping strategies?

Yes — on funded Apex One accounts, no single trading day can account for more than 30% of your total profits. NQ and MNQ can have explosive days of 50–100+ point moves, which can generate outsized single-day profits. If your strategy catches one of those moves early in the funded account, subsequent days must generate more total profit before the consistency rule is satisfied. Using MNQ with conservative sizing helps keep individual day profits within the 30% limit relative to the growing total.

Strategy Guide · Nasdaq Futures

Nasdaq Futures Pine Script Strategy for Prop Firms

NQ and MNQ are the most popular instruments for prop firm trading — high liquidity, exceptional volatility, and well-defined RTH session structure that automated strategies can exploit with consistency. Here is how to build and run one correctly.

Why NQ and MNQ dominate prop firm trading

The Nasdaq 100 e-mini (NQ) and its micro counterpart (MNQ) have become the go-to instruments for prop firm traders for several compounding reasons:

Extraordinary liquidity — NQ/MNQ are among the most heavily traded futures contracts in the world during RTH, with tight spreads (typically 1 tick wide on NQ) and minimal slippage even at multiple contracts
High volatility relative to margin — NQ averages 100–300+ points of daily range, creating ample opportunity to hit prop firm profit targets without extreme position sizing
Defined structure — The Nasdaq follows predictable session patterns: pre-market data, 9:30am open, midday chop, afternoon continuation. Automated strategies built around these patterns have decades of historical data to backtest against
Micro contract scaling — MNQ at $2/point allows starting with extremely small risk while remaining able to scale up to 5, 10, or 20+ contracts as an evaluation progresses
Tight correlation to economic data — CPI, FOMC, earnings seasons create reliable momentum regimes that trend-following and breakout strategies can exploit

NQ vs MNQ — which contract for prop firm traders

NQ — the full-size Nasdaq e-mini

NQ is priced in index points. Each point of movement equals $20. The minimum tick is 0.25 points, worth $5 per tick. Intraday margin at Tradovate runs approximately $16,000–$20,000 per contract during RTH, dropping slightly in extended hours.

On a standard 50k prop firm evaluation with a $2,500 trailing drawdown, trading one NQ contract with a 25-point stop means risking $500 — 20% of your entire drawdown buffer on a single trade. That is far too much for a robust automated strategy. A 50-point stop (which is conservative for NQ's average daily range) consumes the entire buffer. NQ as a single contract is simply too large for most prop firm account sizes.

MNQ — micro Nasdaq futures

MNQ is exactly 1/10th of NQ. Each point equals $2. Each tick (0.25 points) is worth $0.50. Intraday margin is approximately $1,600–$2,000 per contract. A 25-point stop on one MNQ contract risks $50 — 2% of a $2,500 drawdown buffer. This is the right sizing for a risk-controlled automated strategy.

Starting with 1–3 MNQ contracts, you can scale to 8–15 contracts on a funded account as you build cushion above the trailing floor — achieving the economic equivalent of a full NQ contract while maintaining far better drawdown management.

Account size to contract mapping

Account Size	Drawdown Buffer	Contract	Starting Qty	Max Qty (scale-up)	Risk/Trade at 2%
$10,000	$1,000	MNQ	1	2	$20 (10 pts)
$25,000	$1,500	MNQ	2	4	$30 (15 pts × 1)
$50,000	$2,500	MNQ × 3–5	3	8	$50 (25 pts × 1)
$100,000	$5,000	MNQ × 8–12 or 1 NQ	8 MNQ / 1 NQ	15 MNQ / 2 NQ	$100–$200 target range
$150,000+	$7,500+	1–2 NQ or 15+ MNQ	1 NQ	3 NQ	$300–$500 target range

These ranges are starting points, not maximums. As you build cushion above the trailing drawdown floor, you can scale contracts up. The key principle: never let a single losing trade consume more than 3–4% of your active drawdown buffer.

RTH vs ETH for Nasdaq scalping

NQ/MNQ trades nearly 23 hours a day, but not all hours are created equal for automated strategies.

RTH — Regular Trading Hours (9:30am–4:00pm ET)

RTH is where the highest volume, tightest spreads, and most reliable signal behavior lives. Institutional order flow is active, making breakouts stick and momentum moves follow through. The majority of successful NQ/MNQ prop firm strategies restrict all trading to RTH — specifically the 9:30am to noon ET window when volume is at its daily peak.

Backtesting exclusively on RTH data and then deploying a strategy that also trades ETH is a common mistake. RTH and ETH have fundamentally different statistical properties — a strategy built around RTH structure will underperform or lose money when applied to the thin, gap-prone ETH session.

Pre-market ETH — 8:00am to 9:30am ET

The pre-market window has elevated volume around economic data releases (CPI at 8:30am, jobless claims at 8:30am, ISM at 10am). Scalp strategies can work during these windows but the risk profile is different — thin book, larger spreads, news-driven spikes that stop-hunt aggressively before the RTH open. Most prop-firm-safe automated strategies either skip this window entirely or run a more conservative configuration with larger stop-loss multipliers.

ETH overnight (4:00pm–9:30am ET)

Very low volume, high spread, easily manipulated. The NQ overnight session frequently makes large moves on minimal volume that reverse completely at the RTH open. Strategies should not trade in this window. Any Pine Script strategy running on NQ/MNQ should include a strict session filter that prevents entries outside RTH hours.

Key Pine Script parameters for NQ/MNQ strategies

Pivot High/Low detection for scalp entries

The most reliable entry logic for NQ/MNQ scalping is based on pivot structure — identifying higher lows in an uptrend or lower highs in a downtrend and entering on breaks of those pivots with momentum confirmation. Pine Script's ta.pivothigh() and ta.pivotlow() functions handle detection natively:

// Pivot detection — use a 2-bar lookback for intraday scalping
pivotHigh = ta.pivothigh(high, 2, 2)
pivotLow = ta.pivotlow(low, 2, 2)

// Track most recent swing levels
var float lastHigh = na
var float lastLow = na

if not na(pivotHigh)
    lastHigh := pivotHigh
if not na(pivotLow)
    lastLow := pivotLow

// Long entry: price breaks above last pivot high with momentum
breakoutLong = close > lastHigh and close[1] <= lastHigh
breakoutShort = close < lastLow and close[1] >= lastLow

ATR trailing stops for NQ/MNQ

NQ can move 20–50 points in a single 5-minute candle during high-volatility periods. Fixed-point stops get hit far too frequently. ATR-based stops on the 30-minute chart adapt to current volatility:

// ATR stop for NQ/MNQ — 30min timeframe
atrLen = input.int(14, "ATR Length")
atrMult = input.float(1.5, "ATR Stop Multiplier", step=0.1)
atr = ta.atr(atrLen)
stopPoints = atr * atrMult

// Dollar risk per contract:
// MNQ: stopPoints * $2/point
// NQ:  stopPoints * $20/point
stopDollarsMNQ = stopPoints * 2
stopDollarsNQ  = stopPoints * 20

// At ATR = 20 pts, 1.5x mult = 30pt stop
// MNQ: $60/contract  |  NQ: $600/contract

30-minute session open momentum strategy — conceptual logic

The most consistently backtested approach on MNQ is a 30-minute opening range breakout (ORB) strategy. The first 30-minute candle after the RTH open defines the range. A break above the high signals a long entry; a break below the low signals a short. The target is typically 1–2× the opening range width, and the stop is placed at the opposite side of the range (or an ATR multiple, whichever is tighter).

The key parameters to configure:

ORB window: 9:30am–10:00am ET (the first 30-minute candle). Some strategies use 9:30–9:45am for a tighter range and faster breakouts.
Target multiplier: 1.0–2.0× the range width. Higher multipliers catch bigger moves but have lower win rates.
Daily session close: All positions closed by 3:45pm ET regardless of P&L — avoid close-of-business volatility and overnight risk.
Entry validity window: Do not enter a breakout that occurs more than 90 minutes after the ORB closes. Late breakouts in midday chop have far lower follow-through rates.

Circuit breaker math for NQ/MNQ

For firms with a daily loss limit (Topstep: $1,000 on 50k), the circuit breaker calculation for MNQ is straightforward:

// Topstep 50k account — $1,000 daily loss limit
// MNQ: $2/point, 0.25pt/tick, $0.50/tick
// $1,000 daily limit / $2 per point / 10pts (per unit of 1 MNQ) = 50 MNQ-point-contracts
// Simpler: if running 3 MNQ, max loss = $1000 / ($2 * 3) = ~167 points total

dailyLossLimit = input.float(-900, "Daily Loss Limit ($)", maxval=0)
// Set to -900 to give a $100 buffer before the firm's hard limit

var float sessionOpen = na
if ta.change(time("D"))
    sessionOpen := strategy.equity

dailyPnL = strategy.equity - sessionOpen
circuitBreakerOk = dailyPnL > dailyLossLimit

Consistency rule considerations for NQ/MNQ

Apex's funded accounts (Apex One) enforce a consistency rule: no single trading day can account for more than 30% of your total profits. This rule has real implications for NQ/MNQ strategies, which can have very large individual days.

The problem with aggressive NQ moves

Imagine a funded 50k Apex account with a $3,000 profit target. Your MNQ strategy catches a trending day early in the funded phase and books $1,200 in one session. To satisfy the consistency rule, your total profit must eventually reach at least $4,000 (so that $1,200 is no more than 30%). This is achievable, but it extends the timeline significantly if subsequent days are quieter.

How MNQ sizing helps

Starting with fewer MNQ contracts (1–2) caps your best-day profit naturally. A strategy that averages $60–$150 per day has a much lower chance of producing a single day that exceeds 30% of the cumulative total. Once you have banked enough total profit that any single day cannot mathematically hit 30% of it, you can confidently scale up contract size for subsequent sessions.

Consistency rule math: track maxDayProfit / totalProfit as you go. If no single day has ever exceeded 30% of your running total, you are safe to continue. Our MNQ strategy includes an optional consistency tracker overlay that displays this ratio on-chart during funded account phases.

Strategies for staying within the consistency limit

Set a daily profit cap in your strategy (e.g., exit all positions and disable entries once you hit $400/day) — this prevents any single day from becoming disproportionately large
Use the same contract size every day rather than pyramiding up on winning days
Avoid running during FOMC announcement days if the account is in an early phase with few total profit days counted
Review your Apex dashboard weekly to check the single-day vs. cumulative ratio before scaling up

MNQ 30-Minute RTH Scalp Strategy

Our Nasdaq strategy targets RTH momentum with 30-minute opening range logic, ATR-adaptive stops, session filters, and pre-built configurations for Apex (no daily limit + consistency tracker) and Topstep ($1,000 daily circuit breaker). TradersPost JSON alert templates included.

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