Contract notional calculator
A commodity price looks small. A contract is not. Units per contract times price is what you actually control, and it is usually far more than the margin suggests.
Why the unit count is the whole story
Crude oil at $80 sounds affordable. One WTI futures contract is 1,000 barrels, so that $80 price is an $80,000 position, and a $2 move against you is $2,000 per contract. Gold at $2,400 is a $240,000 contract, because the unit is 100 troy ounces. The price on the screen is per unit; your position is per contract; the unit count is the multiplier between the two, and it is different for every product.
The cents trap
Grain futures quote in cents per bushel, not dollars. Wheat at "550" is $5.50 a bushel, and a 5,000-bushel contract at $5.50 controls $27,500. Feed the quoted 550 straight into a notional calculation and every number that follows is a hundred times too large. This tool takes the price in the currency's main unit, so convert cents to dollars before entering a grain price.
What this tool will not tell you
Whether to trade any of these products, or at what size. Notional is not a recommendation and it is not margin: it is the exposure arithmetic that has to be right before any sizing decision means anything. Contract units here should come from the exchange's own specifications, and the worked figures on this site are checked against exactly that source.
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