"Trading can occur up to 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time (ET) on the 3rd Friday of the contract month." But in general, just follow the volume flow.
I find you ask questions without looking at all. Have you checked the CME website under ES futures and contract specs? It clearly lists the 5 months with a calender.
You'll see the volume switch into Dec'19 during the second week. If you're on IB, they'll switch any futures charts/headers during the second week, as well. But follow the volume flow, for sure, just for the educational end of it.
Yep. Ninja sends out roll-over notices on equities about a week before the LTD. But you'll see volumes extend a bit further than that, depending on the instrument.
And there's something else... The LTD used to be described as "The Thursday before the 3rd Friday of the contract month." Seems they cleared up the procedure just recently, because the Thursday before the 3rd Friday bit was unwieldy.
Thank you guys for the replies. @Robert Morse Mostly looking for practical information from forum traders as compared to the theory on the websites.
The difference between trading deliverable commodities months is different than financial futures. You can trade them right up to the day they expire and be cash-settled. There is no reason to switch as a day or swing trader to another month unless your holding period will exceed that expiration. It just makes no difference.
https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us-index/e-mini-sandp500.html and so on for every CME traded contract. If you are trying to always trade the most liquid, just switch when you see Dec. trading more than Sep. Or do the same in your own trading software by following multiple months. I personally don't pay attention to this as a short term trader. Been doing this for long enough to notice immediately when volume starts to dry up. Then I check the expiry and roll over my charts. Simple