Logo
Market AnalysisJuly 27, 2026
ETF Editorial Team

ELITE Tape | ES Futures Prop Firm: Full-Size Wins the Week

E-Mini S&P 500 led ES futures prop firm traders to a rare ELITE account win as Nasdaq and Micro S&P 500 futures struggled.

ELITE Tape weekly recap - July 20-24, 2026 - daily P/L pulse, green rising into Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, red falling into Tuesday and Thursday

ES Futures Prop Firm: Full-Size Wins the Week

Week of 07202026 - ELITE Accounts Weekly Recap

Traders researching an ES futures prop firm got a useful data point this week: E-Mini S&P 500 (ES) was the standout winner across ELITE accounts, posting the week's largest profit by a wide margin. Its own smaller sibling, Micro E-mini S&P 500 (MES), told the opposite story, landing among the week's biggest losses instead.

ETF is a futures prop firm for traders who want uncapped Live Elite payouts. It was a net negative week overall for ELITE accounts. Three of the five sessions closed green, but the two red sessions, Tuesday and Thursday, were large enough that the week finished net negative anyway. Against that backdrop, ES pulling clear of the rest of the index complex, including its own micro contract, stood out.

The week's biggest loss came from a familiar name. E-Mini NASDAQ-100 (NQ) topped the loss list again, and Micro E-mini NASDAQ-100 (MNQ) again led every instrument by trading volume. Both stories, along with the rest of the week's profit and loss picture, are covered below.

What ELITE Accounts Were Trading

Micro E-mini NASDAQ-100 (MNQ) again led every instrument by trading volume among ELITE accounts, still the busiest contract on the board by a wide margin. E-Mini NASDAQ-100 (NQ) held the second spot, followed by E-Mini S&P 500 (ES) and Micro E-mini S&P 500 (MES). Micro Gold (MGC) and Gold (GC) rounded out the metals activity, while Micro Crude Oil (MCL) and Crude Oil (CL) saw lighter but steady trading. Micro E-mini Dow (MYM) and E-Mini Dow (YM) closed out the top 10 most traded instruments.

For a full breakdown of ticker symbols across contract families, see ETF's Forex and Futures Symbol Guide. Choppy weeks like this one are also a good moment to think about position sizing before adding size into a volatile tape; ETF's Risk of Ruin Calculator models how a given win rate and position size play out over a long series of trades.

Top 10 Most Traded

Where the Profits Went

E-Mini S&P 500 (ES) led every instrument in profit this week, more than four times the size of the next-best performer. Silver (SI) took the second spot, followed by Gold (GC), Natural Gas (NG), and Swiss Franc (6S). Micro E-mini Russell 2000 (M2K), Live Cattle (LE), Ultra U.S. Treasury Bond (UB), Micro Bitcoin (MBT), and E-Mini Russell 2000 (RTY) rounded out the top 10 profitable instruments.

Currency futures carried a chunk of this week's green column too, echoing a story ELITE accounts saw two weeks ago; see Currency Futures Carry the Green Column for that earlier recap.

Top 10 Most Profitable

Where the Losses Went

E-Mini NASDAQ-100 (NQ) posted this week's single largest loss, more than seven times the size of the next-largest. Micro E-mini S&P 500 (MES) took the second spot, followed by Micro Gold (MGC), E-Mini Dow (YM), and Micro Silver (SIL). Crude Oil (CL), Micro Crude Oil (MCL), Micro E-mini Dow (MYM), Nikkei/USD (NKD), and E-Micro Euro (M6E) rounded out the top 10 loss instruments.

MES landing here while its own full-size counterpart, ES, led the entire week in profit is the clearest split of the week: two contracts tracking the same underlying index, pulling in opposite directions across ELITE accounts. It is a mirror image of what happened two weeks ago, when Micro Dow stood alone as the only profitable index future in its family; see Micro E-mini Futures: Dow's Solo Climb. This week it was the full-size contract's turn to be the outlier, not the micro.

Top 10 Biggest Losers

The Day-by-Day Flip-Flop

ELITE accounts flipped between green and red almost every session this week. Monday closed positive, Tuesday reversed hard into the week's heaviest loss, Wednesday turned positive again, Thursday posted the week's second-heaviest loss, and Friday closed out the week as its strongest green session.

Public market reporting shows broader equity indexes actually moved opposite to ELITE accounts on two of those days. Tuesday, ELITE accounts' worst session of the week, coincided with a broad rally in the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq, driven by a semiconductor rebound and strong cloud results reported by Alphabet. Thursday, ELITE accounts' second-heaviest loss day, coincided with a sharp reversal in those same names: Alphabet's capital spending guidance and a steep drop in Tesla shares following an earnings miss dragged the Nasdaq down more than two percent, compounded by an oil price spike tied to a Red Sea tanker attack. Friday, ELITE accounts' strongest session, coincided with the Dow rebounding as oil prices retreated on hopes of renewed U.S.-Iran talks, even as the Nasdaq extended its slide on continued chip-sector weakness. None of this is presented as a cause of ELITE accounts' results, only as verified market context for the same calendar days.

Daily Net P&L

How Volume Moved Through the Week

Friday carried the week's heaviest trading volume among ELITE accounts, ahead of Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday and Monday saw the lightest activity, with Monday the quietest session of the week.

Daily Trade Volume

About ELITE Accounts at Elite Trader Funding

ELITE accounts are sim-funded. The trading activity in these recaps reflects position P/L in sim accounts, not Live Elite payouts. Traders reach an Elite Sim-Funded account either by passing an evaluation or by purchasing Direct to Funding (DTF), which skips the evaluation step, and those who do well may progress to Live Elite, where payouts use real capital and there is no cap.

For a full explanation of how payouts work at each stage, see How Prop Firm Payouts Work: Sim vs Live vs Guaranteed. For daily payout structure specifics, see Daily Payout Prop Firms: How Live Elite Pays You. For the longer-running story behind NQ's presence in the loss column, see NQ Futures Prop Firm: Sixteen Weeks in the Loss Column.

ETF is a futures prop firm for traders who want uncapped Live Elite payouts, built on evaluation paths and account options for every stage of that journey. Evaluations are available atelitetraderfunding.app/evaluations, including a 25K Static Evaluationfor traders who want to start small. Real trader results, community feedback, and program details are available at elitetraderfunding.app/testimonials,elitetraderfunding.app/rewards,elitetraderfunding.app/affiliates, and elitetraderfunding.app/competitions.

The Elite Trader Funding app is available now. Install it and enable push notifications to get real-time alerts on your account. Launch bonus: enable notifications when you install and receive a free Evaluation Reset.

Install the ETF app and set up push notifications.

Pricing and Product Disclaimer: Pricing, promotions, and product details referenced in this article reflect information available at the time of publication and may have changed. Visit elitetraderfunding.app/evaluations for current pricing.

Frequently Asked Questions

ES and MES both track the S&P 500 index, but ES is the full-size contract and MES is sized at one-tenth of it, giving traders a lower dollar value per point. They move together with the underlying index; the difference is contract size and the capital required per position, not the direction they trade. Both are supported on Evaluation and Elite Sim-Funded accounts at Elite Trader Funding.