Tick Size vs Tick Value in Futures: What One Tick Is Worth

Tick size is the smallest increment a futures contract's price is allowed to move in. Tick value is what one of those increments pays or costs on a single contract, and the two are joined by a single multiplication: the contract's unit times its tick size gives its tick value.

That multiplication is worth doing by hand once, because every dollar tick figure you read off a table is its output. It also answers a question the dollar column on its own cannot: why a half-size contract can carry a bigger dollar tick than the full-size one it was cut from.

What is a tick in futures trading?

A tick is one minimum increment of price movement in a contract. The CFTC's futures glossary files the formal version under Minimum Price Fluctuation (Minimum Tick), defining it as the smallest price increment possible in a given contract.

The glossary's Tick entry adds the event to the size. It covers a one-increment move in either direction and labels each one: an up-tick is a trade printing above whatever traded before it, a down-tick one printing below. So "tick" names the size of the step in one place and an individual step in another, which is why a 0.25 tick and a 500-tick chart can sit in the same sentence.

The increment belongs to the contract, written into the terms the exchange certifies with the CFTC. In the filing that first listed the four Micro E-mini index futures — CME and CBOT's joint submission 19-140, filed 12 April 2019 as a § 40.2(a) new-product certification — it appears twice, in the specifications table and in each product's rule chapter.

How do you calculate tick value?

Multiply the contract's unit by its tick size. The unit is what the glossary calls Contract Size: the quantity the contract stands for, which on an index future is a dollar amount per index point. The 2019 filing gives both numbers for all four Micro E-minis, and between them the four use three different units, three different increments and two different dollar ticks, which makes the arithmetic visible.

Units and increments as certified in submission 19-140, dated 12 April 2019; the ticks-per-point column is the division. Every row multiplies out — $5 × 0.25 gives the $1.25 on MES, $2 × 0.25 the $0.50 on MNQ, $5 × 0.10 the $0.50 on M2K.

Run the same check on anything you trade. Every row of the instrument table we publish carries the unit beside the tick size for this reason: gold at 100 ounces with a 0.1 increment comes to $10 a tick, crude oil at 1,000 barrels with a one-cent increment to $10.

Why can two contracts with the same tick value move at different speeds?

Because dollars per tick says nothing about how many ticks a point contains. Three of the four Micro E-minis land on the same $0.50 tick, and they get there from three different increments — one full index point on the Dow contract, a quarter point on the Nasdaq-100 contract, a tenth of a point on the Russell 2000 contract.

Read that through the ticks-per-point column and the contracts stop resembling each other. A ten-point move pays $5 on MYM and crosses ten increments. The same ten points on M2K crosses a hundred increments and pays $50. Identical dollar ticks, and a tenfold difference in what a point is worth.

This is the practical reason to carry two numbers. Stops, targets and daily ranges get discussed in points, risk is counted in dollars, and the bridge between them is the ticks-per-point figure for the contract in front of you. Borrowing it from a neighbouring product in the same family puts the dollar figures out by whatever ratio separates the two increments — the trap that makes the E-mini and Micro E-mini comparison worth reading first.

Can one contract have more than one minimum tick?

Yes, and the Micro E-minis are a plain example. The 2019 filing sets a separate increment for calendar spreads — intermonth spreads executed under Rule 542.A. — so a product can trade in one increment as an outright position and another as a spread between two delivery months.

The spread increment is 0.05 index points on three of the four contracts: $0.25 per spread on the S&P 500 and Russell 2000 micros, $0.10 on the Nasdaq-100 micro, against outright ticks of $1.25, $0.50 and $0.50. The Dow micro is the filing's exception, its spread increment the same 1.00 index point as its outright.

Two things follow for anyone reading a specification page. A single "minimum price increment" line may cover more than one case, so check whether the figure quoted is the outright; and a price that sits between two of a contract's outright increments may be a spread rather than an error. The increment that binds an outright order is the outright one, which is the figure on our instrument table.

Is a smaller contract always a smaller tick value?

No, and three pairs on our own instrument table show it. E-mini crude oil covers 500 barrels against the full contract's 1,000, and carries a $12.50 tick against $10. E-mini silver covers 2,500 ounces against 5,000, and carries $31.25 against $25. E-mini natural gas covers 2,500 MMBtu against 10,000, and again $12.50 against $10.

The reason sits in the increment: each of these takes a coarser one than the contract it was cut from. E-mini silver moves in 0.0125 where the full contract moves in 0.005 — two and a half times the step on half the ounces, which multiplies out to a larger dollar tick. Cutting the size of a contract does not cut the tick value in proportion unless the increment is left alone.

The micro contracts are where the scaling is clean: micro gold at 10 ounces comes to $1 a tick, micro crude at 100 barrels to $1, the Micro E-mini S&P 500 to $1.25, each a tenth of the contract it is cut from. Our rows were checked against CME's contract specifications on 31 August 2026 and carry the unit beside the tick, so the arithmetic is re-runnable whenever a specification changes.

Why are some tick sizes written as fractions?

Because the increment is a fraction of whatever unit the contract is quoted in, and that unit is not always dollars. Corn is quoted in cents per bushel: the CFTC's worked example of a corn price table reads its heading line as a 5,000-bushel contract priced in cents per bushel, making a quote of 252.75 two dollars and 52 and three-quarter cents a bushel.

Put that together with the increment and the dollar tick appears. One cent on 5,000 bushels is $50, so the quarter-cent increment our table carries for corn comes to $12.50, and the eighth-of-a-cent increment on the mini-sized corn contract is $1.25 on 1,000 bushels.

Treasury futures quote in points of face value with the multiplier standing in for the unit. On our table the 30-year bond contract moves in 1/32 of a point — 0.03125 — at $1,000 a point, which is $31.25; the 10-year note moves in half that, 1/64, for $15.625. The two-year note shows how far the convention bends: a 0.00390625 increment at $2,000 a point gives $7.8125, the same dollar tick the five-year note reaches from a different increment and a different multiplier. The four yield-quoted micro contracts on it move in 0.001 of a yield point for $1.

What does a trading platform need to know to show the right dollar P&L?

Two per-symbol settings, and the documentation names both. Sierra Chart's Global Symbol Settings page carries a Tick Size field — the smallest amount the symbol's price moves, 0.25 on the ES futures in its own example — and a Currency Value Per Tick field holding what one tick is worth in the symbol's currency. Its example is a COMEX gold contract: 100 ounces at a 0.1 tick size gives 10.

The page also publishes the formula joining them: profit in points is divided by the tick size and multiplied by the currency value per tick. A symbol configured with the wrong pair therefore reports a plausible dollar figure that is wrong by a constant factor. The same page adds one thing to check before you rest an order: a submitted order's price gets rounded to the nearest increment, which matters when you type a limit price by hand.

Foreign exchange is where the platform hands the choice to you. Sierra Chart's page states that FX symbols have no single tick size to apply, gives .00005 as its EURUSD default with .0001 and .00001 as alternatives, and warns that changing one means checking the currency value per tick that pairs with it. On a listed future both numbers come from the contract terms; on a spot FX symbol they come from a dialog box.

What else does "tick" mean on a chart or a DOM?

Three further senses, all platform-side. The first is the trade print itself, where tick charts come from. Quantower's Tick Bars close a bar on a count of prints — 500 in its documented example — where a time-based chart closes one per elapsed period. Size never enters that count, which Quantower spells out: "A tick can be a trade of just one contract, or 10,000 contracts."

The second is the price step a ladder is drawn at. Quantower's DOM Trader view settings include a Use custom tick size option that combines depth levels so each row stands for a wider step, set from the panel's settings or by holding CTRL and spinning the mouse wheel. Each row then spans several exchange increments, a display choice rather than a change in what the contract trades in — worth knowing when the step on your price ladder does not match the specification.

The third is a unit of navigation: the same settings page has a Ticks to scroll field governing how far the price scale moves per mouse scroll, ten ticks per notch in its example. None of the three changes what a fill pays.

What is one tick worth against a funded account's drawdown?

Divide the drawdown by the tick value and you get the number of ticks the account can lose before the line is reached. Our drawdown rule publishes a $2,000 maximum drawdown on a $50,000 Classic or Horizon account, read 6 October 2026. At $12.50 a tick, that distance is 160 ticks on the E-mini S&P 500, and at $1.25 a tick it is 1,600 ticks on the Micro E-mini.

The contract ceiling sharpens it. Our contract limits allow four minis or forty micros on a $50,000 account, counted across everything held at once. Four E-minis held together turn each tick into $50, so the same $2,000 is 40 ticks of adverse price movement — ten index points — before a simulated account is finished. Spread across forty micros the figure is identical, because ten micros count as one mini.

Those are ceilings on total loss rather than position sizes, and turning one into a size you would actually trade is the subject of futures position sizing. What the tick arithmetic adds is the unit the rule is denominated in. A drawdown is published in dollars, the market moves in ticks, and the conversion rate between them depends on the contract you chose that morning.

FAQ

How many ticks are in a point on the E-mini S&P 500?

Four. The contract's increment is 0.25 index points and its unit is $50 per point, so each tick is worth $12.50 and a full index point is $50, per the instrument table we publish, whose rows were checked against CME's contract specifications on 31 August 2026. The Micro E-mini S&P 500 uses the same 0.25 increment on a $5 unit, giving $1.25 a tick and $5 a point.

Why does my DOM show bigger price steps than the contract's tick size?

Because the ladder may be combining several depth levels into one row. Quantower's DOM Trader carries a Use custom tick size setting for exactly that, reached from the panel's settings or by holding CTRL and spinning the mouse wheel. The contract still trades in the increment its exchange certified, so a fill is priced on that increment whatever the ladder shows. A separate Ticks to scroll setting on the same page governs how far one mouse scroll moves the price scale.

Is tick value the same on every platform and broker?

The increment and the unit are terms of the contract, certified by the exchange with the CFTC, so the dollar value of a tick is a property of the contract rather than of your access to it. What your screen reports is a separate question. Sierra Chart's Global Symbol Settings page shows the conversion running through a per-symbol tick size and currency value per tick, so a misconfigured symbol can display a wrong dollar figure for a correct fill.

What is a tick chart?

A chart whose bars are built from a count of trades instead of a span of time. Quantower documents Tick Bars as closing each bar once a fixed count of trades has printed, 500 in its example, against a time-based chart that closes one per period. Because a single trade can be one contract or many, Quantower notes that a tick chart is best read alongside volume.