Tick sizes and values, contract by contract

The commodities track catalogued its ticks and found three products sharing a $10 step. The futures board multiplies the exercise across every family - and makes tick fluency the difference between reading prices and reading money.

The conversion, always

Tick value is spec arithmetic: tick size times multiplier. A contract quoted to the quarter-point with a large multiplier can step more money per tick than another family's full point; micro variants divide the multiplier and the tick value with it. The reading rule: every contract on the watchlist has its tick value written down - a 3-tick stop on 3 contracts of a £10-per-point, 1-point-tick contract is £90, computed before entry, and the same habit prices spreads, slippage budgets and daily ranges in seconds.

What the grid does to reading

• The book is quantised: prices exist only on the grid, so depth stacks at discrete rungs - a coarse-tick contract shows fat queues at few prices, a fine-tick one thin queues at many; the same 'support' looks structurally different across grids.
• Ranges read in ticks first: a day's range in ticks, times tick value, is the day in money - the module 4 sizing input, and the honest way to compare volatility across families.
• Spreads quote in ticks: one tick wide is the floor for liquid contracts - and a two-tick market in one family can cost more money than a five-tick market in another; module 3 does the arithmetic.

The habit, installed once

Before following any new contract: spec read, tick value computed, day's typical range converted to money per contract. Three lines, five minutes, and every number the platform's later modules need - sizes, stops, budgets - inherits them. Futures reward the prepared reader with total explicitness; the preparation is exactly this small, and skipping it is how 'a few ticks' becomes a surprise denominated in someone's rent.