What Happens If You Hold a Futures Contract Until Expiration?

Held to expiration, a cash-settled future such as ES or NQ is closed by the exchange at a price built from that morning's opening stock trades; a physically delivered one such as crude oil (CL) or gold (GC) would oblige you to make or take delivery. Retail brokers such as NinjaTrader and Robinhood do not let delivery happen: they liquidate you first, at NinjaTrader for gold about a month before the contract stops trading. On the cash side the risk is the price itself, a special opening quotation (SOQ, an index value computed from each stock's official opening trade) that can land outside the whole day's range.

Key takeaway

ES, NQ, YM and RTY settle in cash. Under CME rules, expiring ES and NQ stop trading at the stock market open on the third Friday and every position is marked to a special opening quotation, which Cboe found outside the S&P 500's high-low range on about 30% of quarterly expirations from 2009 to 2024. At retail brokers, deliverable contracts such as CL, GC and ZN do not reach delivery: NinjaTrader blocks them from the business day before the earlier of last trade or first notice.

Do you have to take delivery if you hold futures to expiration?

Only on a physically delivered contract, and at a retail broker not even then, because the broker closes you out first. Equity index futures settle in cash, so holding them to the end produces a cash credit or debit and nothing else.

CME's client documentation states: "E-Mini S&P 500 (ES) futures are cash settled upon expiration." NQ, YM, RTY and their micros work the same way. Robinhood's expiration page describes the account side: "your account will receive a credit or debit based on the final settlement price." If contract months and multipliers are new, start with how futures contracts actually work.

According to the CFTC's 2020 staff report on WTI crude, each CL contract is 1,000 barrels with Cushing, Oklahoma as the delivery point. Retail brokers do not handle that; Robinhood's page says: "Robinhood doesn't support the delivery of physically settled products." The barrels-at-your-door story fails, and one broker's explainer builds its delivery example on Micro WTI at 100 barrels, a contract that settles in cash.

Picture one fork. On the left branch, an ES long rides to the third Friday, trading stops at 9:30 a.m. ET (8:30 a.m. CT), the exchange marks the position to the SOQ and cash moves. On the right branch, a CL long heads toward a 1,000-barrel delivery at Cushing, but a broker gate shuts the branch a business day before the last trading day, and the only exit left is a liquidation fill.

A cash-settled contract runs to the end and becomes a cash entry; a deliverable one is stopped at the broker's gate before delivery can begin.

What price does ES settle at when it expires?

ES settles at the special opening quotation of the S&P 500 on the third Friday of the contract month, not at Thursday's close and not at the index value printed at 9:30 a.m. ET. CME's rule, in Chapter 358 of its rulebook, says "the Final Settlement Price shall be a special opening quotation of the Index."

Trading in the expiring month stops before that number exists. Rule 35802.G reads: "Trading in expiring futures shall terminate at the regularly scheduled start of trading on the New York Stock Exchange". NQ stops at the Nasdaq open and settles to a Nasdaq-100 SOQ. From 9:30 a.m. ET you hold a position you cannot trade, waiting for a price nobody can see yet.

Cboe's 2024 settlement paper, on S&P 500 options that settle to the same quotation (Cboe calls it SET), states: "The SOQ is not calculated until all of the constituent stocks of the S&P 500 Index have opened for trading". It is tied to no clock time, so one slow opener delays the whole number.

Holidays move the date, not the method: CME's rule moves final settlement to the first preceding business day. Friday June 19, 2026 was the Juneteenth holiday, so the June contract settled on Thursday June 18, 2026; our CME holiday calendar guide lists the closures. The SOQ is also a separate number from the daily settlement price that resets your P&L.

How far can the SOQ sit from Thursday's close, and what does it cost?

Typically about 0.16% of the index: Cboe measured a median difference of 0.16% between the SOQ and the previous day's S&P 500 close from March 2009 to March 2024, and 0.13% against the same day's close. Against the index open, Cboe's 61 quarterly expirations (March, June, September and December) clustered at 0.09% but ranged from -0.98% to +1.00%.

Cboe found the SOQ outside the S&P 500's own high-low range on about 30% of quarterly expiration days in that sample, most often above the high, and notes that "the SOQ may fall outside of the open, high, low or closing values of the S&P 500 Index on SPX option expiration days." Cboe does not say whether its median is signed, so treat 0.16% as a size, not a direction.

The table turns those percentages into dollars. Computed by Phoenix Technologies; method: points = level x gap, dollars = points x multiplier, using the S&P 500 close of 7,637.76 on September 17, 2026 (FRED) as an illustrative level and CME's $50 (ES) and $5 (MES) multipliers.

SOQ gap (Cboe, 2009 to 2024)	Index points	Per ES	Per MES
0.16% (median vs prior close)	12.22	$611.02	$61.10
0.98% (low edge of quarterly range vs open)	74.85	$3,742.50	$374.25
1.00% (high edge of quarterly range vs open)	76.38	$3,818.88	$381.89

If $3,818.88 per ES is more than you can lose in a day, holding into the SOQ is a position you have not sized.

Worked example, illustrative: the S&P 500 closed at 7,637.76 on Thursday September 17, 2026; take that as your ES mark, because ES's premium over the index shrinks to zero by final settlement (convergence, not the option-style time decay some guides describe; see basis and fair value). You hold one ES long overnight and trading stops at 9:30 a.m. ET Friday. A 0.16% gap is 7,637.76 x 0.0016 = 12.22 points, times $50 = $611.02 (MES: $61.10); a 1.00% gap is 76.38 points, $3,818.88 per ES and $381.89 per MES. Cboe measures the 0.98% and 1.00% edges from the index open, the moment ES stops trading, so they are added to whatever the market did overnight; we apply them to Thursday's level only to size them in dollars.

No fetched source published the real September 2026 SOQ, so we do not quote one. NQ ($20 a point) and MNQ ($2) follow the same arithmetic, but Cboe's statistics cover the S&P 500 only.

Picture a flat baseline at 7,637.76 and three bars standing on it: a short one at 12.22 points, then two tall ones at 74.85 and 76.38 points, each labelled with its ES and MES dollars. A thin band above the day's high marks where the SOQ landed on about 30% of quarterly expirations.

The median opening-quotation gap costs $611.02 on one ES; the edge of Cboe's observed range costs more than six times as much, and you cannot trade out once the open arrives.

Which futures are cash settled and which are physically delivered?

The equity index futures and their micros settle in cash, and so does Micro WTI (MCL); crude oil (CL), gold (GC and MGC), silver (SI and SIL), the 10-year note (ZN) and the euro (6E and M6E) are physically delivered. The sheet below applies each rule to the December 2026 contract.

Rules from CME, the CFTC and the broker pages named here; dates computed by Phoenix Technologies by business-day count, treating November 26 and December 25, 2026 as holidays (illustrative). Confirm every date on CME's calendar before you trade.

Contract	Settles by	Last trade rule	Dec 2026 last trade	First notice	NinjaTrader cutoff
ES, MES	Cash, S&P 500 SOQ	Third Friday, at NYSE open	Fri Dec 18	None	None
NQ, MNQ	Cash, Nasdaq-100 SOQ	Third Friday, at Nasdaq open	Fri Dec 18	None	None
YM, MYM	Cash, Dow SOQ	Third Friday	Fri Dec 18	None	None
RTY, M2K	Cash	Third Friday	Fri Dec 18	None	None
CL	Physical, 1,000 barrels	3 business days before the 25th of the prior month	Fri Nov 20	Tue Nov 24	Thu Nov 19
MCL	Cash, to CL's settlement	Day before CL, per Tradovate	Thu Nov 19 (broker-stated)	None	None
GC, MGC	Physical (MGC by ACE)	Third last business day of the month	Tue Dec 29	Mon Nov 30	Fri Nov 27
SI, SIL	Physical	Third last business day (SI at 1:25 pm ET)	Tue Dec 29	Mon Nov 30	Fri Nov 27
ZN	Physical, Treasury notes	7th business day before the last business day	Mon Dec 21	Nov 30 (unconfirmed)	Day before the earlier date
6E, M6E	Physical	2 business days before the third Wednesday, 9:16 a.m. CT	Mon Dec 14	Not in our sources	Day before the earlier date

The column most guides leave out is the last one. For gold and silver, NinjaTrader's cutoff (Friday November 27, 2026) arrives about a month before the last trading day (December 29), so the "expiration" your platform shows is not the date that ends your trade. ZN may work the same way, but its first notice date (November 30 in Discount Trading's table) was not confirmed from CME.

The deliverable rows each carry three dates, and the broker's cutoff, not the exchange's last trade, is the first one you hit.

For gold and silver, the broker cutoff arrives about a month before the date your platform calls expiration.

"Micro" does not mean cash: MGC, SIL and M6E are deliverable, and according to a 2012 CME fact card a Micro Gold buyer receives an ACE (a certificate for 10% of a 100-oz bar warrant), not a bar. Nor are interest rate futures all cash settled, as some guides claim: NinjaTrader's Treasury futures guide says of the four Treasury contracts, "All four are physically settled", and ZN delivers notes over the Federal Reserve book-entry wire system.

Sources disagree on one cell. Tradovate says MCL trading "terminates the day before the expiration of CL", MetroTrade says it follows CL's schedule, and CME's own page could not be reached, so treat Thursday November 19, 2026 as broker-stated.

When will your broker close a deliverable position for you?

Before the contract can deliver, on a day each broker sets for itself. As of October 2026, NinjaTrader's margin and position policy says trading in physically deliverable futures is "prohibited beginning on the business day preceding the earlier of the Last Trade Date or the 1st Notice Date", and any account still holding after that "is subject to liquidation and associated fees."

Which date comes first depends on the market. For CL the last trading day does: NinjaTrader's crude oil page puts the first notice day (the first day delivery notices can be issued) two trading days later. For gold and silver, first notice falls at the end of the month before delivery (Discount Trading lists ZN there too), which is why their cutoffs sit so early.

Other brokers set other days. Discount Trading's 2026 first notice page says "Clients must be out of any deliverable positions no less than 3 business days before First Notice Day", which for December 2026 gold means Tuesday November 24, two business days before NinjaTrader's cutoff. Robinhood closes deliverable positions before the last day to trade. Check your own broker's page before you buy a deliverable contract.

Walk the December 2026 crude contract (CLZ26) through the CFTC's statement of the rule: trading ends "three business days prior to the 25th calendar day of the month prior to the contract month". Picture a strip of late-November days. November 25 is a Wednesday and a business day, so the last trading day is Friday November 20 and NinjaTrader's first notice day is Tuesday November 24; the shaded liquidation window opens Thursday November 19, where NinjaTrader's prohibition and Discount Trading's 3-business-day rule both land.

For a retail account the crude contract effectively ends on Thursday November 19, a day before the exchange stops trading it.

Being liquidated is not free, and the fill is unknown in advance. NinjaTrader's page lists execution fees of $25 for a first margin violation and $50 after, but does not say which applies to a delivery liquidation, and no broker publishes slippage on these fills; our guide to futures slippage covers the mechanics.

Why did crude oil go negative at the April 2020 expiry?

The CFTC's interim staff report does not name a root cause, but it documents the setting: the May 2020 WTI contract was physically delivered, most of its open interest had closed or rolled by the penultimate day, and on April 20, 2020 it settled at -$37.63 a barrel. The CFTC's staff report calls it "the first time the WTI Contract traded at a negative price since being listed for trading 37 years ago".

It did not happen on expiration day, as often retold. April 20 was the penultimate day; the contract expired on April 21, and the CFTC notes that traders not wanting delivery "were expected to close out of their positions by April 21". The price traded below zero from about 2:08 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. ET, with a low of -$40.32.

Open interest fell from 634,727 contracts at the start of April to 108,593 at the April 20 open, 82.9% gone, though still 69.4% above the 12-month penultimate-day average of 64,101. About 95,000 contracts closed that day, about 2.3 times the 41,096 average.

Picture two panels. In the first, a bar of 634,727 contracts shrinks to 108,593; in the second, May's 58,693 contracts traded on April 20 stand beside June's 914,148, so June traded 15.6 times as much and May was 6.0% of the two. Above them a price line runs from $17.73 at the session open to -$37.63 at settlement: $55.36 a barrel, or $55,360 on one 1,000-barrel contract held through that session, an extreme case rather than a typical loss.

By the penultimate day most May positions had closed or rolled, and May traded a small fraction of June's volume as its price fell below zero.

Traders below CFTC reporting levels rose from 4.8% of May open interest at the start of March to a peak of 21.2% in the third week of April. The CFTC does not identify retail accounts, so no public data says how many retail traders were caught. The lesson is timing: whoever is last out of a deliverable contract trades in its thinnest hours.

What do prop firms do with expiring and expired contracts?

Firms with a daily flat rule keep you away from final settlement, and at least one treats any trade in an expired month as a breach. As of October 2026, Topstep's help center says "All positions must be closed by 3:10 PM CT every weekday", so a Topstep trader cannot carry Thursday's position into Friday's SOQ, as our guide to overnight holds on funded accounts explains.

Only a position opened after the 5:00 PM CT Thursday reopen could still be open when the expiring ES stops at 8:30 a.m. CT Friday, and neither Topstep nor Tradeify publishes what happens to it then. Topstep's help center says "TopstepX auto-updates every futures product to the current front month", which changes the contract you see; the page does not say an open position moves.

Tradeify's Evaluation Services Agreement, last modified October 2026, is stricter. Section 6.11 states: "The Trader is strictly prohibited from placing an order in, entering, holding, adding to, or exiting any position in an Expired Contract." It applies whether or not a platform "continues to display, quote, chart, or accept orders in that contract month", so an accepted order is no defence. Check the firm's current rules before buying.

Tradeify's rollover guide names the trap: "rolling the module does not roll an open position." Copying adds a second one. A copier keyed to a specific contract month keeps routing to it until its symbol map is rolled, a chart on a continuous contract symbol hides which month you hold, and a copier repeats what the master does, a missed roll included.

Should you hold a futures contract to expiration or roll it?

Roll or close every deliverable contract before your broker's cutoff, and hold a cash-settled index contract to the SOQ only if you have sized the opening gap. Holding saves the exit fill but hands you an opening price you cannot trade against; rolling costs two fills but keeps you in a liquid month. Our guide to roll dates and the front month covers when to roll.

Deliverable contract (CL, GC, SI, ZN, 6E and their deliverable micros): you are not choosing. Be out or rolled before your broker's cutoff; for December 2026 that is Thursday November 19 for CL and Friday November 27 for gold and silver at NinjaTrader; confirm ZN's date with your broker.
Cash-settled index at a retail broker: holding is allowed. If your daily loss room is under $3,818.88 per ES held, or $381.89 per MES, the 1% case alone can exceed it, so flatten before 9:30 a.m. ET on expiration day or roll.
Holding on purpose: it makes sense mainly when the position offsets something that settles to the same quotation, such as A.M.-settled SPX options.
Prop account: follow the daily flat time, never touch an expired month, and check the month your platform displays against the month you hold.
Copying several accounts: roll the master and the symbol map on the same day.

Go deeper

Frequently asked questions

Can a retail trader take physical delivery of crude oil futures?

Not through brokers such as NinjaTrader or Robinhood, which close deliverable positions before delivery can start. Delivery on CL is 1,000 barrels at Cushing, Oklahoma, which needs storage and a broker willing to arrange it. Discount Trading mentions arrangements through its trade desk as the only exception to its 3-business-day rule.

Can you hold MNQ to expiration?

Yes. MNQ is financially settled on the third Friday of the contract month at $2 a point, so it ends in a cash credit or debit like NQ. Its final price comes from the Nasdaq-100 opening quotation, so the same opening-gap risk applies at one tenth of NQ's size.

Will Tradeify close my account for one trade in an expired contract?

Not as the ordinary response, as of October 2026. Section 6.11 of its Evaluation Services Agreement treats an isolated occurrence by voiding or restating the trades, with profits forfeited where they came at a non-market price. Termination is reserved for repeated or deliberate conduct.

Will my broker warn me before closing a position to avoid delivery?

Do not count on it. NinjaTrader's Euro FX page says it reserves the right to close your open position without notification to avoid delivery. Treat the broker's published cutoff as your deadline, not a reminder email.

Do Treasury futures put bonds in my account at expiration?

They are physically settled: the seller delivers eligible Treasury securities through the Federal Reserve book-entry wire system. Retail brokers close positions that risk delivery, so in practice a retail account is flattened before first notice. ZN's first notice date was not confirmed from CME for this article, so check the exchange calendar.

Do futures lose value as expiration approaches, like options?

No. A futures contract has no time value to decay. Its price converges on the underlying instead: ES is settled at the S&P 500's special opening quotation, so any premium or discount to the index is gone by final settlement. A long bought at a premium gives that premium back if the index stands still, which can look like decay but is convergence.

Is the SOQ the same as SET for SPX options?

Yes, for the S&P 500. Cboe uses SOQ and SET interchangeably for the special opening quotation that A.M.-settled SPX options settle to. ES settles to the same kind of S&P 500 opening quotation under CME's rule.

Can I still trade an expiring ES contract on Friday morning?

Only until the stock market opens. CME Rule 35802.G ends trading in the expiring month at the regularly scheduled NYSE open, 9:30 a.m. ET (8:30 a.m. CT), on the third Friday. Any position still open is then marked to the special opening quotation, which is not known until every S&P 500 stock has opened.