Futures contract calculator

Specifications are the standard CME Group contract terms. Commissions and fees are not included; prop firms charge them per side and they count toward your loss limits.

Use it with the drawdown calculator to see how many losing trades your account can absorb, and compare futures firms on the futures rankings.

The calculator converts a price move in a futures contract into dollars. In words: divide the move by the contract's tick size to get the number of ticks, then multiply by the tick value and by the number of contracts. To size a trade, divide the dollars you are willing to risk by the dollar cost of your stop for one contract.

Worked example: you buy 2 MES contracts with a stop 4 points below your entry. A point on MES is worth $5, so the stop costs $20 per contract and $40 for both. The same 4-point stop on 2 ES contracts would cost $400, because ES is worth $50 a point. With a $300 risk budget and that stop, you could trade up to 15 MES contracts ($300 ÷ $20) but only 1 ES contract ($200 each).

Tip 1: Micro contracts let you adjust size in small steps, which helps while you learn how a firm's limits behave.

Tip 2: Check the contract limit on your account. Many evaluations cap how many contracts you can hold, and some firms count micros differently from full-size contracts.

Tip 3: Add commissions to your risk. They are charged per contract per side, so ten micros usually cost more in fees than one full-size contract with the same exposure.

• Contract: pick the market. The tick size and tick value come from the table above.
• Contracts: how many contracts you plan to trade.
• Stop loss (ticks): the distance to your stop in ticks, not points.
• Profit target (ticks): the distance to your target in ticks.
• Max risk per trade ($): the most you want to lose if the stop is hit.

To convert points into ticks, divide by the tick size. A 4-point stop on ES or MES is 16 ticks (4 ÷ 0.25). A 20-point stop on NQ is 80 ticks. A $0.30 stop on crude oil is 30 ticks (0.30 ÷ 0.01), and a $3.00 stop on gold is 30 ticks (3.00 ÷ 0.10).

The results show the tick size and value, the point value, the stop distance in points, the dollar risk and reward for your chosen number of contracts, and the most contracts your risk budget allows with that stop.

The formulas used

Point value = Tick value ÷ Tick size

Risk = Stop in ticks × Tick value × Contracts

Max contracts = Risk budget ÷ (Stop in ticks × Tick value), rounded down

NQ vs MNQ with a 25-point stop: 25 points is 100 ticks. On NQ that costs 100 × $5 = $500 per contract; on MNQ it costs 100 × $0.50 = $50. With a $400 risk budget you cannot take even one NQ contract, and the calculator shows a maximum of 0. On MNQ you could trade up to 8 contracts.

Crude oil with a 20-tick stop and a 40-tick target: a 20-tick stop ($0.20) costs $200 per CL contract, and the 40-tick target pays $400. On MCL the same trade risks $20 to make $40. With a $250 budget you could trade 1 CL contract or up to 12 MCL contracts ($250 ÷ $20 = 12.5, rounded down).

Gold with a 50-tick stop: a $5.00 move is 50 ticks, so the stop costs $500 per GC contract or $50 per MGC contract.

Futures evaluations usually state their limits in dollars: a trailing or end-of-day drawdown, sometimes a daily loss limit, and a maximum number of contracts. Work out how many full losses your drawdown allows before you choose a contract. With a $2,000 drawdown and $400 of risk per trade, five losing trades in a row would end the account. Dropping to $200 per trade gives you ten.

Micro contracts are one tenth the size of the matching full-size contract for every market in the table above, so they let you fine-tune risk in steps that full-size contracts cannot. Check how your firm counts micros against its contract limit before you scale up.

Use the drawdown calculator to see your remaining room each day, and read futures ticks, points and contract sizes for more on the specifications. To see which firms use end-of-day rather than intraday trailing drawdown, see futures prop firms with EOD drawdown, and if your evaluation is billed monthly, the challenge cost calculator shows what each extra month adds. Trading leveraged products carries a high risk of loss.

• Entering points in the ticks field. A 4-point ES stop typed as 4 ticks is only 1 point, so the calculator shows a quarter of the real risk.
• Mixing up micro and full-size symbols. MNQ and NQ look alike on an order ticket, but one is ten times the other.
• Forgetting slippage. On a fast move a stop can fill a few ticks past your price. Two ticks of slippage on 5 NQ contracts adds $50.
• Leaving out commissions. They are charged per contract on entry and exit, so they grow with the number of contracts you trade.