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Futures tick value calculator
What a move is worth on sixteen CME Group futures: the E-minis and their micros, crude oil, gold, silver and natural gas. Enter the move in points, in ticks, or as an entry and exit price.
One point on ES is one index point. Use a minus sign for a loss.
Profit or loss, one contract: $500.00
E-mini S&P 500 (ES), CME: $50 × the S&P 500 Index. Before commissions and slippage.
Futures tick values at a glance
Tick size, tick value and the value of a full point for every contract the calculator covers. Each market links to its full specification: hours, expiries, settlement and what the research record says about trading it.
| Contract | Exchange | Tick size | Tick value | Per point |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES E-mini S&P 5000.25 index points | CME | 0.25 index points | $12.50 | $50 |
| MES Micro E-mini S&P 5000.25 index points | CME | 0.25 index points | $1.25 | $5 |
| NQ E-mini Nasdaq-1000.25 index points | CME | 0.25 index points | $5.00 | $20 |
| MNQ Micro E-mini Nasdaq-1000.25 index points | CME | 0.25 index points | $0.50 | $2 |
| YM E-mini Dow ($5)1 index point | CBOT | 1 index point | $5.00 | $5 |
| MYM Micro E-mini Dow1 index point | CBOT | 1 index point | $0.50 | $0.50 |
| RTY E-mini Russell 20000.10 index points | CME | 0.10 index points | $5.00 | $50 |
| M2K Micro E-mini Russell 20000.10 index points | CME | 0.10 index points | $0.50 | $5 |
| CL Crude Oil (WTI)$0.01 per barrel | NYMEX | $0.01 per barrel | $10.00 | $1,000 |
| MCL Micro WTI Crude Oil$0.01 per barrel | NYMEX | $0.01 per barrel | $1.00 | $100 |
| GC Gold$0.10 per troy ounce | COMEX | $0.10 per troy ounce | $10.00 | $100 |
| MGC Micro Gold$0.10 per troy ounce | COMEX | $0.10 per troy ounce | $1.00 | $10 |
| SI Silver$0.005 per troy ounce | COMEX | $0.005 per troy ounce | $25.00 | $5,000 |
| SIL Micro Silver$0.005 per troy ounce | COMEX | $0.005 per troy ounce | $5.00 | $1,000 |
| NG Henry Hub Natural Gas$0.001 per MMBtu | NYMEX | $0.001 per MMBtu | $10.00 | $10,000 |
| QG E-mini Henry Hub Natural Gas$0.005 per MMBtu | NYMEX | $0.005 per MMBtu | $12.50 | $2,500 |
How tick value is calculated
Every futures contract has a multiplier: the dollars a move of one full point is worth. The tick value is that multiplier times the smallest move the exchange allows.
tick value = tick size × dollars per point
profit or loss = (exit − entry) ÷ tick size × tick value × contractsOn ES, a tick of 0.25 index points times $50 a point is $12.50. On crude oil, one cent a barrel times 1,000 barrels is $10.00. On silver, half a cent an ounce times 5,000 ounces is $25.00. For a short position the sign flips: price falling is the profit.
Ticks, points and handles
A point is a price move of 1.00; a tick is the smallest move allowed; on the index contracts, traders call a full point a handle. The tick alone says nothing about what a move is worth. ES and NQ both tick in quarter points, yet an ES tick is worth $12.50 and an NQ tick $5.00, because one point of the S&P 500 contract is $50 and one point of the Nasdaq-100 contract is $20. The multiplier does the work.
The number that matters more than tick value
For a strategy, the question is not what a tick is worth but what it is worth against the stop. A round trip costs a tick or two of slippage plus commission, and that cost is fixed while the stop is not. So the cost of trading a market is best read in R, as a share of the risk on each trade.
That is the unit the screening engine charges costs in. At a 0.8-ATR stop on 30-minute bars, a round trip costs 0.012 R on NQ and 0.053 R on ES: an NQ tick is small against a typical NQ range, while an ES tick is a bigger bite of a typical ES stop. The same gap is why the position size calculator prints costs in R beside the contract count, and why the research notes on natural gas lead with cost.
Those figures are the menu’s, at its 0.8-ATR stop on 30-minute bars. A screen written in the Strategy Language pays the same round trip for every contract it enters, and what that is in R depends on the stop you write, or on the ATR of its bars when you write none.
Questions
- What is a tick in futures trading?
- The smallest price change a contract can make. Each exchange sets it per contract: 0.25 index points on ES and NQ, one cent a barrel on crude oil, ten cents an ounce on gold. Price can only move in whole ticks.
- How do you calculate the tick value of a futures contract?
- Multiply the tick size by the contract multiplier, the dollars one full point of price is worth. On ES that is 0.25 × $50 = $12.50; on crude oil it is $0.01 × 1,000 barrels = $10.00.
- What is the difference between a tick and a point?
- A point is a move of 1.00 in the price; a tick is the smallest move allowed. ES has four ticks to the point, crude oil a hundred, the E-mini Dow one. Traders on the index contracts also call a full point a handle.
- Which futures contract has the highest tick value?
- Of the sixteen contracts on this page, Silver (SI) at $25.00 a tick. Across all listed futures there are larger ones, such as the 30-year Treasury bond at $31.25.
- Is a micro contract's tick worth one tenth?
- On the equity-index micros, Micro WTI and Micro Gold, yes: MES, MNQ, MYM, M2K, MCL and MGC are one tenth of their full-size contracts. Micro Silver is one fifth of SI, and the E-mini natural gas contract (QG) is a quarter of NG with a coarser tick.
Know what a move is worth. Now find out if you can catch it.
Screen the idea behind the trade against tick data, after costs, with every variant counted. The verdict takes seconds.