On 1-minute micro Nasdaq bars, the cost of a trade takes 9.8% of the bar's average range; on 1-hour bars, 1.3%. Going down in timeframe mostly multiplies costs, and in our data the same strategies did worse the smaller the bar.
The math that comes before any backtest
A trade with 1 MNQ costs about $2.20 between commission and slippage: 1.1 points. That cost is the same whether you hold the trade for 15 seconds or 3 hours. What changes is how much price moves in that time:
| Bar | Average range | Cost takes | In 2025-2026 (more volatile) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 minute | 11.2 points | 9.8% | 6.7% |
| 5 minutes | 25.3 points | 4.3% | 3.0% |
| 15 minutes | 43.1 points | 2.6% | 1.8% |
| 60 minutes | 85.7 points | 1.3% | 0.9% |
A 15-second bar typically moves between 2 and 5 points: the cost takes between a fifth and more than half of its range. And the micro is expensive for this: per point of movement, a trade with MNQ costs between 50% and 70% more than with the full-size contract.
The same strategy, at 1 minute and at 15 seconds
We took an intraday momentum strategy that on 1-minute bars is one of the few that survived our tests, and changed only the bar length: 618,806 15-second MNQ bars, with costs. The profit factor fell from 0.99 to 0.81: one of its exit rules, checked every 15 seconds, triggered on noise (54 of 94 exits) and cut the winners short.
Sweeping 96 settings with separate fitting and test data, 82% made money in fitting and only 20% in the test. With so many bars and combinations, there's always one that "works" in the past.
1 minute versus 5 minutes, seven years
16 combinations of breakout and trend strategies on four micros, from 2019 to 2026, tested on unseen data: at 1 minute, none held up; at 5 minutes, 2. The same family took 26,584 trades at 1 minute versus 5,796 at 5 minutes on MNQ: almost five times the costs.
Calculator: how much does the cost weigh on your bar?
Check your chart for your bars' average range (high minus low) and enter your cost per trade. It's calculated in your browser.
1.1 points is the cost of 1 MNQ ($1.20 round-trip commission + 1 tick of slippage on entry and another on exit). On NQ it's about 0.7 points.
The problem of what happens inside the bar
On small, range or tick bars, the target and the stop often fit inside a single bar, and the backtest doesn't know which was hit first. One of our systems with a 3-point target and stop on 1-minute NQ bars looked like a winner; with real ticks, the edge vanished (we told the story here). And the backtest's limit orders fill as if no one were ahead of you in the queue: in scalping, that decides between winning and losing.
What to do with this
- Do the math before going smaller: if the cost is more than 5% of your bar's range, your edge has to be very large.
- For scalping, the full-size contract beats the micro, if your account allows it.
- Use the small timeframe to execute, not to decide: the trade idea should make sense on bigger bars.
- If your target and stop fit inside a bar, your backtest is worthless until you check it with ticks.
How it was calculated
Average range (high minus low) of MNQ bars in the regular session, May 2019 to June 2026, against a cost of 1.1 points per trade. The 15-second test uses MNQ from February to July 2026; the 1- versus 5-minute comparison, seven years of four micros with 1 tick of slippage and period-by-period testing. Lab results, simulated.
Simulated and hypothetical results, with the limitations that implies. Not investment advice. Firm rules change: check them on each firm's website. This article contains no affiliate links.