E-mini Russell 2000 (RTY) delivery months at a glance — every contract's record over its tenure as the lead month.
Futures Seasonality · Contract-Month Study
Every RTY contract measured over its quarter as the lead contract · Updated for 2026
Small caps run the same quarterly calendar as their large-cap siblings with the volume turned up, and a shorter tape: RTY futures moved to CME in mid-2017, so each seat holds 8 or 9 tenures rather than 16. What the short file shows is amplification: everyone’s calendar, louder.
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. RTY’s history begins with its 2017 CME listing: 8 or 9 tenures per seat.
E-mini Russell 2000 (RTY) — 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 Q4 route reaches small caps hardest. The December seat’s 2020 tenure gained 26.9%, the largest index tenure in our study, as the vaccine rotation cascaded down the cap scale; 2018’s −16.6% was the same route failing at the same amplitude.
Winter has been the hard seat. Four of nine higher, with 2020’s −27.4% crash winter and 2025’s tariff winter the damage, against 2021’s +22.7% rotation winter, all-or-nothing, which is small caps in one line.
The short file agrees with the deep ones. Spring and summer lean green (this year’s +18.7% spring the file’s best), matching the pattern the other three boards establish across sixteen years. Nine observations earn conviction by agreement, not by weight.
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 Russell contract quarter is historically strongest?
The December (Z) and June (M) seats, each 6 of 9 (67%), with the December seat holding the study’s largest index tenure, 2020’s +26.9%.
Which is weakest?
The March (H) winter seat, 4 of 9 (44%), home of the 2020 and 2025 winters.
Why does the Russell study cover fewer years?
RTY futures moved to CME in mid-2017, so each quarterly seat holds 8 or 9 completed tenures rather than 16. The short file’s leans match the older boards’.
Contract tendencies are drawn from 16 years of individual E-mini Russell 2000 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.