How much can you lose on one NQ, ES or GC contract?

Tick values, point values and drawdown math for NQ, ES and GC futures and their micros, with worked examples from Stacked Edge's own backtest drawdowns.

The honest short answer is: more than you planned, if you size from the balance instead of the worst case. A futures contract has no built-in loss limit. Your stop is an order, not a guarantee, and a fast market or a gap can fill it well past your price. This guide walks through the arithmetic that turns "points" into dollars for the three markets we research, then uses our own published drawdowns to show what one contract can cost in a bad stretch.

Education only, not financial advice. Trading futures risks loss. Every Stacked Edge result mentioned here is a backtest, hypothetical, with inherent limitations. There are no live or forward results.

Step 1: know the point value and the tick value

Every futures contract has a point value (dollars per 1.00 move in price) and a tick size (the smallest price step). Multiply them and you get the tick value. These are the exchange contract specifications; check your broker's spec sheet before you trade, because they are what your P&L is actually computed from.

A micro is one tenth of the full-size contract in each case. That single fact is the most useful sizing tool most small accounts have: it lets you cut risk by 90% without changing the rules you follow.

Step 2: convert a stop into dollars

The formula is simple:

Dollar risk per contract = stop distance in points × point value + costs

Examples, using illustrative stop distances (these are not recommendations, just arithmetic):

• NQ, 40-point stop: 40 × $20 = $800 per contract. On MNQ, $80.
• ES, 10-point stop: 10 × $50 = $500 per contract. On MES, $50.
• GC, $8 stop: 8 × $100 = $800 per contract. On MGC, $80.

Notice that a "small" 10-point ES stop and a "wide-looking" 40-point NQ stop are in the same ballpark in dollars. Comparing stops in points across markets is meaningless. Always compare in dollars.

Step 3: add costs and slippage

Costs are not a rounding error on short-term strategies. In our backtests we charge 4 ticks of slippage per order and $2.50 commission per contract per side ($5 round trip). Four ticks per side works out to:

So on ES, a strategy has to make about two points per trade just to break even under those assumptions. Your real costs may be lower or higher; the point is to put a number on them before you trade, not after.

Step 4: one trade is not the risk; the losing streak is

The stop tells you what one trade might cost. What actually ends accounts is a sequence of losses, or a slow grind down that never quite hits a single dramatic stop. That is what maximum drawdown measures: the largest peak-to-trough fall in equity over a test.

Here are some real per-contract max drawdowns from our published backtests (TradingView Strategy Tester, 2024-09-23 to 2026-09-23, one full-size contract, costs as above; all backtest, hypothetical):

Results shown are hypothetical (backtested), not actual trading, and have inherent limitations. Hypothetical performance disclosure →

The micro column is simple division and ignores the fact that commissions do not scale down by exactly ten, so treat it as approximate.

Two things stand out. First, even strategies with healthy test profits had drawdowns of $6,500 to nearly $15,000 on one full-size contract. Second, the per-contract figure is the best case for what the future holds, not the worst, because these tests are in-sample. We picked the strategies on the same two years we measure them on, so live drawdowns should be expected to be larger.

Step 5: drawdowns grow after you look

Our own weekly re-tests show how quickly a drawdown can move. When we extended the NQ DPO 15m test from 2026-09-23 to 2026-10-16, all seven new trades lost (−$9,395, backtest, hypothetical) and its max drawdown rose from $13,248 to $16,862, over our $15,000 cap. It failed the bar and was removed from our All-Instrument set. The one longer-history check we ran on the same strategy, covering 2019 to 2026, showed a max drawdown of $21,275 (backtest, hypothetical).

So the drawdown in any two-year test is a floor, not a ceiling. A practical habit: multiply the tested max drawdown by at least 1.5 to 2 when you ask "could my account survive this?" That multiplier is a rule of thumb, not a statistical guarantee.

Step 6: turn it into a sizing decision

Put the pieces together:

1. Decide the most you can lose before you stop trading the strategy. For a prop-firm account, that is the firm's max loss or trailing drawdown, not the account balance.
2. Take the strategy's tested max drawdown per contract and apply a safety multiplier.
3. Divide your loss limit by that figure. If the answer is less than one full-size contract, use micros. If it is less than one micro, the strategy is too big for the account.

Worked example: a $3,000 trailing drawdown limit, and NQ Supertrend Flip's tested drawdown of $8,238 per NQ. With a 1.5× safety multiplier, the planning figure is about $12,357 per NQ, or about $1,236 per MNQ. $3,000 ÷ $1,236 ≈ 2.4, so about 2 MNQ, not one NQ. One full-size NQ would have needed more than double that limit just to survive the historical drawdown once. Our position sizing calculator does this math for each strategy.

Common mistakes

• Sizing from the balance. A $50,000 account with a $2,500 max loss is a $2,500 account for sizing purposes.
• Assuming the stop is the maximum loss. Gaps over news, the open, or a thin overnight session can fill a stop well beyond its price.
• Comparing stops in points. Always convert to dollars per contract.
• Ignoring costs. On ES, a round trip of slippage and commission can be about two points under conservative assumptions.
• Treating a backtest drawdown as the worst case. It is the worst that happened in one sample of history, and usually in-sample.
• Adding contracts after a winning streak. Size changes should follow a plan, not a mood.

The honest caveat from our own data

Every drawdown in this article is from one two-year window, 2024-09-23 to 2026-09-23, in a strongly rising market (NQ moved from about 20,200 to about 31,300). Fills are idealised: entries fill at the close of the signal bar with 4 ticks of slippage, and we have not tested next-bar-open fills. Robustness checks (neighbouring timeframes, parameter nudges) have not been completed for any strategy. Expect real drawdowns to be worse than anything shown here. Our performance page and weekly report keep these caveats next to every number.

Related reading

• Position sizing and the calculator
• What a backtest does and doesn't tell you
• How to read NQ key levels before the open
• All education

Education only, not financial advice. Trading futures risks loss. All results are hypothetical backtests with inherent limitations; they do not reflect actual trading and were designed with hindsight. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Stacked Edge is not a registered investment advisor or commodity trading advisor.