Market intelligence
When does ES actually move, and how far?
178 regular sessions of E-mini S&P 500 futures, measured from our own 15-minute data: when the range gets made, and what a session is worth end to end.
Sessions measured
178
2026-01-02 → 2026-09-17
Median session range
65.25
points, high to low, 09:30–16:00 ET
First 30 minutes
43.0%
of the whole session's range, median
Open vs quietest slot
2.4×
09:30 against 14:15
Average 15-minute range by time of day
E-mini S&P 500 futures, 178 regular sessions. Taller means price covered more ground in that quarter hour.
What it means for a plan
The session is front-loaded. The first quarter hour moves 21.3 points on average and the quietest slot of the afternoon moves 8.88, so the same target needs 2.4× longer to arrive after lunch. A target that is reasonable at 09:45 is a stretch at 14:15, and that is a geometry problem, not a conviction problem.
This is why the daily plan carries a reward-to-risk floor rather than a fixed point target: when the range compresses, the structure can still be clean while the trade simply stops paying.
Method
Every ES session in our own 15-minute data between Friday 2 January 2026 and Thursday 17 September 2026, keeping the 09:30–16:00 New York window and dropping short sessions. "Range" is the high minus the low of each 15-minute bar; the figures are averages across 178 sessions. Measured Saturday 19 September 2026.
What this does not show: it says nothing about direction, and nothing here is a claim that any setup makes money. It is a description of when the market moves.