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Tick value calculator

Every futures contract has its own tick size and its own multiplier, and therefore its own tick value — the cash one minimum price move is worth. Two contracts that look identical on a chart can differ by a factor of twenty in money. Get the number right before you size anything.

Contract specification

Example specifications only — always confirm against your own exchange's contract specification before trading.

Result

Value of one tick, per contract — —
Value of one full point, per contract—
Ticks per point—
Tick value across your position—
Point value across your position—
Money behind your stop—
Money behind your target—
Reward-to-risk in ticks—

Why tick value is the number that matters

A price chart is denominated in points. Your account is denominated in money. Tick value is the exchange rate between the two, and getting it wrong is the single most common arithmetic error in futures trading.

Consider a stop 20 points wide. On a contract with a multiplier of 5, being stopped costs 100 per contract. On a contract with a multiplier of 100, the identical 20-point stop costs 2,000. The charts look the same. The account outcomes differ by a factor of twenty.

Tick value = Tick size × Contract multiplier
Point value = Contract multiplier
Ticks per point = 1 ÷ Tick size

Tick size versus tick value

These two are routinely conflated, and the confusion is expensive because the error scales by the multiplier.

A trader who reads a tick size of 0.25 and assumes each tick costs 0.25 will underestimate the money at risk by a factor of fifty on an E-mini style contract. That is not a rounding error; it is the difference between a sized trade and a reckless one.

Why futures contracts disagree with each other

Each contract is written to deliver a specific quantity of a specific underlying, and the exchange then chooses a tick size that makes the market liquid without making the increment meaninglessly fine. The result is a set of specifications that look arbitrary but are not:

There is no convention to memorise and no standard lot to fall back on. The specification is per product, which is why any calculator that hides the multiplier behind a product name is doing you a disservice: it prevents you from checking its arithmetic.

Working in ticks rather than points

Once tick value is known, price distance becomes a less useful unit than tick count. There are three reasons to work in ticks:

  1. Placeability. Orders fill at multiples of the tick. A stop placed at a price that is not a tick multiple is not a valid order, and on coarse-tick contracts an apparently tight stop in points can still be two ticks wide.
  2. Comparability. Saying a stop is six ticks wide is informative on any contract. Saying it is 1.5 points wide is informative only if the reader remembers that contract's tick size.
  3. Noise floor. The tick is the finest possible expression of price, so tick count is the natural unit for asking whether a stop sits inside market noise. A stop two ticks wide on a liquid contract is not a stop; it is a coin flip with commission.

Scaling to a position

Everything above is per contract. A position of one contract is rare in practice, so multiply. Ten contracts on a contract with a 12.50 tick value means every tick is 125 across the position, and a stop thirty ticks away carries 3,750 of risk. That multiplication is where a trader who is confident about the per-contract numbers discovers the position was three times larger than intended.

The commission comparison nobody makes

Tick value also tells you how much room a strategy needs simply to break even. If round-turn commission plus slippage equals one tick, then a strategy must clear more than one tick per trade on average just to be flat. On a contract with a 12.50 tick value, that is a concrete hurdle: the edge must exceed 12.50 per contract before it produces anything. Expressed this way, marginal strategies can often be ruled out before any backtesting.

Frequently asked questions

How do I calculate tick value?
Multiply the tick size by the contract multiplier. Tick value = tick size x contract multiplier. On a contract with a 0.25 tick and a multiplier of 50, one tick is worth 12.50 per contract. The multiplier converts a price increment into your account currency.
What is the difference between tick size and tick value?
Tick size is a price increment - the smallest amount the quoted price can move. Tick value is that increment expressed in money. A contract can have a tick size of 1 and a tick value of 100, or a tick size of 0.25 and a tick value of 12.50. Confusing the two understates risk by exactly the multiplier.
What is a point worth on a futures contract?
One full price point is worth the contract multiplier, per contract. If the multiplier is 50, a one-point move is 50 per contract. Tick value is the multiplier scaled down by the tick size, which is why a contract with a large multiplier and a fine tick can still have a small tick value.
Why do two contracts with the same chart pattern have different risk?
Because the chart shows price, not money. Two contracts can trace an identical 20-point pattern while one carries a multiplier of 5 and the other a multiplier of 100, making the same trade twenty times larger in cash on one of them. Always convert price distance into currency before sizing.
How many ticks is one point?
It is the reciprocal of the tick size: one divided by the tick size. A 0.25 tick gives four ticks per point; a 0.1 tick gives ten; a tick size of 1 gives one tick per point. Exchanges sometimes quote tick size as a fraction, in which case convert it to a decimal first.
Should I think about stops in ticks or in points?
Ticks. The exchange can only fill at multiples of the tick, so a stop expressed in points that does not land on a tick boundary is not placeable. Thinking in ticks also makes stop distances comparable across contracts with different tick sizes.
Does tick value change with price?
No. Tick value is a property of the contract specification - tick size times multiplier - and does not change as price moves. What changes is the number of ticks a given percentage move represents, which is why tick value is the stable unit for expressing risk.
Where do I find the tick size and multiplier for my contract?
On your exchange's contract specification page for that product. These are official exchange parameters, not broker preferences, so use the exchange's own table rather than a third-party summary, which may be out of date or may describe a different listing.

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