Futures Rollover & Holiday Trading Reminders

Today is E-mini roll over day. This means that the official time has come to switch over from the December, 2018 contract (ES 12-18 in NinjaTrader) to the March, 2019 contract (ES 03-19). Some traders prefer to wait until the majority of the volume transitions into the new contract period. At the time of posting this, this has not yet occurred (it can take a couple of days). As you can see in the screenshot, the March contract still has less than half the volume of the expiring December contract.

So how does one roll over? NinjaTrader 8 makes it easy:

Go to the NinjaTrader Control Center > Tools > Database Management.

Providing you are rolling over on or after the market’s rollover date, the market should appear in the “rollover futures instruments” list. The list shows all markets that will be rolled over along with the current and new contract periods. Click the Rollover button. Click Yes if a message appears.

Go back to your charts. They should now be rolled over, where applicable. Verify this by looking at the top of the chart. For example, if you have an E-mini (ES) chart, it should no longer be ES 12-18. Instead, you should see ES 03-19.

Note that when you open up a new chart, you probably won’t see the ES 03-19 at the top of the selection list (among recent instruments). You’ll need to go to Futures > ES 03-19. In comparison, any existing charts that you had open at the time of the rollover should now reflect the new contract period.

Other platforms may roll over automatically, so keep that in mind.

Now, what about those upcoming holiday hours? Yes, CME equity products )(like the E-mini) will close early for the Christmas and New Year holidays. See the official CME calendars. To spare you the trouble of using Microsoft Excel to open the calendar files, here’s what you should know (all times are US/Eastern, GMT-5, EST, New York time):

December 24, 2018 (Christmas Eve): markets close @ 1:15 p.m.

December 25, 2018 (Christmas Day): markets remain closed until 6:00 p.m. 

December 31, 2018 (New Year’s Eve): markets close regularly at 5:00 p.m.

January 1, 2019 (New Year’s Day): markets remain closed until 6:00 p.m.

The next upcoming holiday mentioned on the CME is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which occurs later in January.