When Does ES (S&P 500 E-mini Futures) Actually Move? Hourly Ranges on 5 minute Charts
Educational reference. Measured from 17,604 recorded 5 minute bars of E-mini S&P 500 through November 3, 2026.
10:00 is the busiest hour, averaging 7.00 per bar — 4.0× the quietest hour at 19:00.
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 E-mini S&P 500, hour by hour, measured from 17,604 recorded bars over the last 90 days.
| Hour (ET) | Median range | Bars | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 00:00 | 1.75 | 768 | |
| 01:00 | 2.25 | 768 | |
| 02:00 | 2.75 | 768 | |
| 03:00 | 3.00 | 768 | |
| 04:00 | 3.25 | 768 | |
| 05:00 | 2.50 | 768 | |
| 06:00 | 2.50 | 768 | |
| 07:00 | 3.25 | 768 | |
| 08:00 | 4.00 | 768 | |
| 09:00 | 5.25 | 767 | |
| 10:00 | 7.00 | 763 | |
| 11:00 | 5.50 | 766 | |
| 12:00 | 4.50 | 768 | |
| 13:00 | 4.25 | 757 | |
| 14:00 | 4.00 | 756 | |
| 15:00 | 4.00 | 756 | |
| 16:00 | 2.50 | 756 | |
| 17:00 | 2.00 | 62 | |
| 18:00 | 2.25 | 701 | |
| 19:00 | 1.75 | 768 | |
| 20:00 | 2.88 | 768 | |
| 21:00 | 2.50 | 768 | |
| 22:00 | 2.25 | 768 | |
| 23:00 | 2.00 | 768 |
The spread across the day
The busiest hour is 10:00, averaging 7.00 per bar. The quietest is 19:00 at 1.75. That is a 4.0× difference across the same instrument, the same timeframe, the same trading day.
A stop sized for 19:00 conditions will be caught routinely at 10:00, and a stop sized for 10:00 gives away far more than it needs to overnight. The same number of points does not mean the same thing at every hour.
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How this was measured
Every 5 minute bar of E-mini S&P 500 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.
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