What does NQ do the day after a 2% drop?
Short answer. No reliable bounce. After the 188 sessions from June 2010 to May 2025 in which NQ closed 2% or more below the prior close, the next session closed higher 54.8% of the time, about the same as after any day (55.3% of 3,413). What changed was size: the next day's range was a median 1.34 times its recent typical range.
A 2% drop here means the 4 p.m. ET close was at least 2% below the prior session's 4 p.m. close. That happened on 188 of 3,413 sessions, 5.5%. Drops cluster in rough years: 40 of the 188 came in 2022, 24 in 2020 and 20 in 2018.
Does NQ bounce the next day?
Not more than usual. The next day closed higher 54.8% of the time after a drop and 55.3% of the time after any day. The average next-day return was +0.21% after a drop against +0.07% after any day; that 0.14-point difference is about one standard error (0.13 points), well within noise. No era showed a bounce edge: the after-drop rate ran from 3.5 points below to 0.7 points above the after-any-day rate.
| Period | 2% drops | Next day up, after a drop | Next day up, after any day | Next-day range vs recent typical, after a drop | Same, after any day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 2010 to May 2025 | 188 | 54.8% | 55.3% of 3,413 | 1.34x | 0.99x |
| 2010 to 2014 | 36 | 55.6% | 55.3% of 1,026 | 1.26x | 0.99x |
| 2015 to 2019 | 46 | 52.2% | 55.7% of 1,145 | 1.58x | 0.99x |
| 2020 to 2025 | 106 | 55.7% | 55.0% of 1,242 | 1.28x | 1.00x |
"Next day up, after a drop" is a share of that row's 2% drops. Range ratios are medians of the next day's high-to-low range divided by the median range of the 20 sessions before the drop. The first two drops, in June 2010, have fewer than 20 sessions of history and are left out of the ratios, so 1.34x is the median over 186 of the 188 drops and 1.26x over 34 of the 36 in 2010 to 2014.
The next day went either way. A second 2% drop followed 12 times (6.4% of 188) and a 2% gain 22 times (11.7% of 188), against 5.6% and 5.2% of 3,413 after any day.
How much bigger is the next day?
Noticeably. The median next-day range was 2.22% of the open, against 1.19% after any day. Part of that is timing: drops come in volatile stretches, when every day is wider. So we compare each next day with its own recent typical range. On that basis it still ran 1.34 times wider after a drop, against 0.91 times for the 993 days without a drop in the same volatility band, and 1.26 to 1.58 times in every era.
The widening follows drops, not big moves in general. After the 174 sessions that rose 2% or more, the next day ran a median 0.87 times its recent range (0.84 to 0.96 by era).
After the 24 deepest drops, of 4% or more, the next day closed higher 58.3% of the time and ran a median 1.81 times its recent range. With 24 cases, treat that as a description, not a pattern.
This is past behaviour, not a forecast for the next drop.
How we measured this
- CME NQ futures 5-minute bars, front month and not back-adjusted, sessions from June 3, 2010 to May 30, 2025 with at most 3 of 78 five-minute bars missing (trading halts, including March 2020); half days dropped.
- Returns are 4 p.m. close to 4 p.m. close of back-to-back sessions, with back-to-back set by the NYSE trading calendar (a market holiday counts like a weekend); range is the session's high minus low as a share of its 9:30 a.m. open.
- Pairs spanning a half day or a quarterly contract roll (where the prior close can sit on another contract) were dropped, as were the 3 sessions whose prior trading day is missing from the data (December 30, 2013, February 3, 2014 and October 26, 2020), leaving 3,413.
For how NQ trade stops compare with the daily range, see NQ stop loss: how many points.
For how often the opening gap trades back to the prior close the same day, see how often NQ gaps fill.
STS Futures sends systematic NQ futures signals; see how they work.