Free trader tool
Futures Tick Value Calculator
Ticks, dollars and contracts for every liquid futures market — ES, NQ, gold, crude and all the micros. Enter your entry and stop and see exactly what the trade risks, and how many contracts your own rule allows.
Your 0.5% rule allows up to 2 contracts at this stop distance.
- Ticks to your stop
- 120
- Risk per contract
- $60.00
- Risk on this position
- $60.00
- Ticks to your target
- 240
- Reward on this position
- $120.00
- Reward : risk
- 2.00 : 1
- Contracts your rule allows
- 2
- Day margin required
- $100.00
Sizing is arithmetic. Whether the setup is worth taking is not — replay it candle by candle and count what it actually did before you risk a tick on it.
How the contract size is worked out
NQ, where one 0.25 tick is worth $5. The calculator runs this for your own numbers, instrument by instrument, as you type.
Sizing futures like forex lots
Futures move in ticks with a fixed dollar value set by the exchange. A 20-tick stop costs $100 a contract on NQ and $250 on ES.
How futures risk is actually calculated
Three numbers, in this order. Ticks: the distance from your entry to your stop divided by the contract’s tick size. Dollars per contract: those ticks multiplied by the tick value. Position risk: that figure multiplied by how many contracts you hold.
Take NQ with a thirty-point stop. Thirty points divided by a 0.25 tick is 120 ticks. At $5 a tick that is $600 per contract — on an account of $25,000, a single contract is 2.4% of the account on one trade. The same setup on MNQ costs $60, which is 0.24%. Nothing about the chart changed; the only thing that changed was which contract you clicked.
That gap is why futures traders blow accounts on setups that were fine. The entry was not the problem and the stop was not the problem — the tick value was ten times what they assumed.
Tick size and tick value by contract
Set by the exchange, not your broker, so these hold wherever you trade. Day margin is the typical intraday requirement and does vary between brokers — it is in the table because people confuse it with risk, and the two columns sitting side by side is the fastest way to see that they are unrelated.
| Contract | Tick size | Tick value | Per point | Typical day margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES E-mini S&P 500 | 0.25 | $12.50 | $50 | $500 |
| MES Micro E-mini S&P 500 | 0.25 | $1.25 | $5 | $50 |
| NQ E-mini Nasdaq-100 | 0.25 | $5.00 | $20 | $1,000 |
| MNQ Micro E-mini Nasdaq-100 | 0.25 | $0.50 | $2 | $100 |
| YM E-mini Dow | 1 | $5.00 | $5 | $500 |
| MYM Micro E-mini Dow | 1 | $0.50 | $1 | $50 |
| RTY E-mini Russell 2000 | 0.1 | $5.00 | $50 | $500 |
| M2K Micro E-mini Russell 2000 | 0.1 | $0.50 | $5 | $50 |
| GC Gold | 0.1 | $10.00 | $100 | $1,200 |
| MGC Micro Gold | 0.1 | $1.00 | $10 | $120 |
| SI Silver | 0.005 | $25.00 | $5,000 | $2,000 |
| CL Crude Oil | 0.01 | $10.00 | $1,000 | $1,500 |
| MCL Micro Crude Oil | 0.01 | $1.00 | $100 | $150 |
| NG Natural Gas | 0.001 | $10.00 | $10,000 | $2,000 |
| ZB 30-Year T-Bond | 0.03125 | $31.25 | $1,000 | $1,500 |
| ZN 10-Year T-Note | 0.015625 | $15.63 | $1,000 | $800 |
| 6E Euro FX | 0.00005 | $6.25 | $125,000 | $1,200 |
| 6B British Pound | 0.0001 | $6.25 | $62,500 | $1,200 |
Margin is not risk
A broker will open one MNQ for about $100 of day margin. A thirty-point stop on that contract risks $60, so the margin looks generous. Now hold four of them through a news candle that runs eighty points against you: the margin was $400, the loss is $640, and the account is smaller than the deposit it put up. Margin answers “will this trade open”. Only the stop answers “what does this trade cost me if I am wrong”, and that is the only question sizing cares about.
Micros exist so the size can be right
Every micro is one tenth of its parent, so the choice between MES and ES is not a choice about conviction — it is the difference between a 0.3% loss and a 3% loss on the same idea. If your risk rule says one full-size contract is too big for your stop, the answer is not a tighter stop that the market will hit anyway. It is the micro, and more of them if the maths allows.
Size the trade, then check the edge
Everything above is arithmetic — it tells you what a trade costs, not whether it is worth taking. That part only comes from watching the setup play out enough times to know what it actually does, which is what a replay is for. Load the contract, step the market forward candle by candle, and log the result without knowing what happens next.
Backtest NAS100 candle by candle, or start on the S&P, gold or crude — same data, same tick values, no money at stake while you find out whether the idea holds.
Frequently asked questions
What is a tick in futures?
A tick is the smallest price increment a contract is allowed to trade in, set by the exchange rather than your broker. The E-mini S&P moves in 0.25-point ticks; crude oil moves in one-cent ticks; the 10-year note moves in half-32nds. Price cannot sit between ticks, which is why a stop placed between them is not a real stop.
What is tick value, and how is it different from tick size?
Tick size is how far price moves in one tick. Tick value is what that movement is worth in dollars, per contract. On the E-mini S&P the tick size is 0.25 and the tick value is $12.50; on the Micro E-mini it is the same 0.25 tick worth $1.25. Same chart, same setup, one tenth the money at stake.
How do I calculate my risk on a futures trade?
Divide the distance between your entry and your stop by the tick size to get ticks, multiply by the tick value for dollars per contract, then multiply by the number of contracts. Thirty points on NQ is 120 ticks; at $5 a tick that is $600 per contract, or $60 on the micro.
Why is the tick value on the micros exactly one tenth?
Because the micro contracts are one tenth the notional size of their full-size parent by design — MES to ES, MNQ to NQ, MYM to YM, M2K to RTY, MGC to GC, MCL to CL. It is the reason a small account can trade an index at a sane risk instead of being priced out or over-sized.
How many futures contracts should I trade?
As many as your stop allows, not as many as your margin allows. Take your risk budget in dollars, divide by the dollar risk of one contract at your stop distance, and round down. Day margin decides whether the broker will let the trade open; it has nothing to do with how big the trade should be.
Is day margin the same as risk?
No, and confusing the two is the most expensive mistake in futures. Margin is a deposit the broker holds while the position is open — often $50 on a micro index contract. Your risk is what the trade loses if the stop is hit, which can easily be several times the margin. Sizing off margin is how a $2,000 account takes a position that can lose $600.
Do tick values change between brokers?
No. Tick size and tick value are contract specifications published by the exchange — CME, CBOT, NYMEX or COMEX — so they are identical wherever you trade. Commission, day-trade margin and data fees vary by broker; the tick does not.
What about a stop that lands between ticks?
It gets rounded to a tradable price, so your real risk is slightly different from the one you calculated. On instruments with a coarse tick — the Dow at one point, silver at half a cent — that rounding is worth real money on a tight stop. Place stops on tick boundaries and the number this calculator gives you is the number you actually get.
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<iframe src="https://crtlab.pro/embed/futures-tick-value-calculator" width="100%" height="780" style="border:0;max-width:720px" title="Futures Tick Value Calculator by CRTLAB" loading="lazy"></iframe>
<p style="max-width:720px;font:14px/1.5 system-ui,sans-serif;opacity:.7;margin:.5rem 0 0">
<a href="https://crtlab.pro/tools/futures-tick-value-calculator">Futures Tick Value Calculator</a> by <a href="https://crtlab.pro">CRTLAB</a>
</p>Size it here. Test it on real futures history.
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