You cannot size a trade you can’t price. Every stop, every target, every risk decision on a funded futures account runs through three small numbers per contract — and getting them wrong is how a “small” stop turns out to be half your drawdown.
What tick size, tick value and point value mean
Three terms do all the work:
- Tick size — the smallest price increment a contract can move. ES ticks in 0.25 index points; crude oil ticks in $0.01 of price. It’s the resolution of the market.
- Tick value — the dollars one tick is worth, per contract. This is the number that turns price movement into P&L.
- Point value — the dollars in one full point (or handle). It’s just the tick value scaled up by how many ticks make a point.
The relationship is simple: point value = tick value × (1 ÷ tick size). ES ticks are 0.25 points worth $12.50 each, so a full point is four ticks — $50. Nail these three per instrument and position sizing becomes arithmetic.
Index futures: ES, NQ, YM, RTY and their micros
The four U.S. equity-index futures are the prop-trading core, and each has a 1/10-scale micro that shares its tick size but carries one-tenth the dollar weight.
| Contract | Tick size | Tick value | Point value |
|---|---|---|---|
| ES / MES (S&P 500) | 0.25 | $12.50 / $1.25 | $50 / $5 |
| NQ / MNQ (Nasdaq 100) | 0.25 | $5.00 / $0.50 | $20 / $2 |
| YM / MYM (Dow) | 1.0 | $5.00 / $0.50 | $5 / $0.50 |
| RTY / M2K (Russell 2000) | 0.10 | $5.00 / $0.50 | $50 / $5 |
Two traps hide in that table. First, NQ and RTY share a $5.00 tick value but not a tick size — RTY’s 0.10 tick means ten ticks per point, so a 10-point move behaves very differently in dollars than the same “10” on NQ. Second, YM’s tick is a full point, so the point value and tick value are the same — don’t multiply by four out of ES habit.
Commodities: GC and CL plus MGC and MCL
Commodities carry more dollars per point than the indices, which surprises traders arriving from ES.
- GC (Gold): 0.10 tick, $10.00 per tick, $100 per point. MGC is the micro: 0.10 tick, $1.00 per tick, $10 per point.
- CL (Crude Oil): 0.01 tick, $10.00 per tick, $1,000 per point. MCL is one-tenth: 0.01 tick, $1.00 per tick, $100 per point.
Crude is the one that catches people out. A “one-dollar” move in oil — a routine daily range — is $1,000 per CL contract. A stop that sounds small in price terms is enormous in dollars, so most funded traders trade MCL until their drawdown buffer can genuinely absorb full CL.
Rates and FX: ZB and 6E
The rate and currency contracts price differently again:
- ZB (30-Year T-Bond): quotes in 32nds of a point. The minimum tick is 1/32 = $31.25, and a full point is $1,000. If a stop is “eight ticks,” that’s eight 32nds — $250, not eight of anything else.
- 6E (Euro FX): a €125,000 contract with a 0.00005 tick worth $6.25. A full “big figure” move (0.0100) is $1,250 per contract. FX futures pack far more notional per lot than the tick value hints at.
These two are worth memorizing separately precisely because their conventions — 32nds, five-decimal pips — don’t match the clean quarter-point index rhythm.
Turning ticks into dollars of risk per contract
Once you know point value, per-contract risk is one multiplication:
Risk per contract = stop distance (in points) × point value.
- 8-point stop on ES: 8 × $50 = $400 per contract.
- 30-point stop on MNQ: 30 × $2 = $60 per contract.
- $0.40 stop on MCL: 0.40 × $100 = $40 per contract.
To find how many contracts fit a fixed dollar risk, flip it: contracts = dollar risk ÷ risk per contract. Want to risk $120 on that ES trade? $120 ÷ $400 is well under one — so ES is the wrong instrument for that budget, and you’d trade MES instead. The position size calculator does this across every contract above so you never eyeball it. Expressing each result as an R-multiple then lets you compare a crude trade against a Nasdaq trade on the same scale.
Using tick math to set stops that fit your drawdown
Tick math is the bridge between a chart level and a trailing drawdown limit. The workflow that keeps funded accounts alive runs in one direction:
- Start from the drawdown, not the chart. Decide the fixed dollars you’ll risk per trade — a small slice of your buffer.
- Read the stop the market gives you — the point distance to where the idea is wrong.
- Solve for contracts using point value, and round down. Never round up to force a bigger position.
The mistake that breaches accounts is doing this backwards: picking a contract count first, then hunting for a stop that “feels” affordable. Let the numbers pick the size. Run the resulting worst case through the prop-firm drawdown calculator to confirm a normal losing cluster stays clear of the line.
Shibiki uses the same tick math under the hood: it can push a hard per-account risk limit to the broker, so an order that would exceed your per-trade dollar risk on any of these contracts simply won’t send — the cheat sheet enforced automatically, even on tilt.
Related: Position size calculator · Prop-firm drawdown calculator · R-multiple