E-mini S&P 500 (ES) delivery months at a glance — every contract's record over its tenure as the lead month.
Futures Seasonality · Contract-Month Study
Every ES contract measured over its quarter as the lead contract · Updated for 2026
The S&P’s four quarterly seats tell the equity drift’s story in four chapters: a winter that hosts the accidents, a spring that mends them, a summer quietly better than its reputation, and a fourth quarter that runs the most repeatable route in our study.
Most seasonality tables slice the calendar. This one slices the contracts. Each delivery month below is measured over its time as the lead contract: from the open of the day it takes over the front of the board to the close of the day it hands off the lead. No roll gaps, no splicing, one contract per observation. Index contracts run a quarterly rotation: Mar, Jun, Sep, and Dec, each holding the lead for roughly 63 trading days from roll to roll.
E-mini S&P 500 (ES) — Average Change by Seat
Average change while each contract leads the board. Hover any bar for the detail.
Each row is one quarterly delivery month: how many of its seats rose while leading, the average change over the seat, and the average high-to-low range. “Typically leads” is the median window.
| Contract | Typically leads | Up / Down | Win rate | Avg change | Avg range |
|---|
Table view doubles as the accessible read of the chart above.
The summer seat is the study’s quiet champion. Fourteen of sixteen summers higher, 88%, through the months traders are taught to fear, with the gains banked by mid-August and a worst-ever of just −7.6%.
The fourth quarter repeats its route. The December seat’s mid-October low into a mid-December high has recurred strongly enough to read +0.46 on our consistency measure, 13 of 16 higher, with 2018 the one year in sixteen the rally never came.
Winter is where the accidents live. The March seat’s 62% is the board’s floor, its file holding the 2020 crash and most of the era’s corrections; the spring seat behind it, 75% with a March-bottom habit, has done the mending.
A seat’s record tells you how its stretch of the year has treated the lead contract historically. It doesn’t tell you where the current one sits today, whether this cycle is tracking the record or fighting it, or the levels that matter into the next session. That is what The Traders Brief does every morning, across energy, metals, and the indexes.
See today’s read →Which S&P contract quarter is historically strongest?
The September (U) summer seat: 14 of 16 higher, 88%, the best record on the ES board.
Which is weakest?
The March (H) winter seat at 62%, the file where the market’s late-winter accidents, 2020 above all, have landed.
When do ES contracts roll?
Quarterly, in the middle of March, June, September, and December, with expiration on the third Friday. Each contract leads for roughly 63 trading days.
Contract tendencies are drawn from 16 years of individual E-mini S&P 500 futures contract history (2010–2026), each measured over its own seat as the lead contract, and describe the past. They are not a forecast and not trading advice. Markets can and do trade against their record in any given year. © 2026 The Traders Brief.