H, M, U, Z
March, June, September, December — the quarterly cycle equity index futures use. Other products use the full twelve-month set.
Only four for index productsReference
The four numbers that decide every position you take.
Tick size, tick value, point value and the contract month. Everything about sizing a futures trade comes out of those four, and most people look up the second one and guess the rest. This is the reference table, and what each field actually governs.
The specifications
Point value is derived — tick value divided by tick size — rather than quoted separately, so the two can never disagree. Micros are one tenth of their full-size sibling in every case.
Specifications are the exchange's and this page is not the authority. They change rarely, but they do change, and your broker's contract page is the right place to confirm the product you are actually trading. The tick value calculator applies these to a position size.
| Contract | Tick size | Tick value | Point value |
|---|---|---|---|
| ES — E-mini S&P 500 | 0.25 | $12.50 | $50.00 |
| MES — Micro E-mini S&P 500 | 0.25 | $1.25 | $5.00 |
| NQ — E-mini Nasdaq-100 | 0.25 | $5.00 | $20.00 |
| MNQ — Micro E-mini Nasdaq-100 | 0.25 | $0.50 | $2.00 |
| YM — E-mini Dow | 1.0 | $5.00 | $5.00 |
| MYM — Micro E-mini Dow | 1.0 | $0.50 | $0.50 |
| RTY — E-mini Russell 2000 | 0.10 | $5.00 | $50.00 |
| M2K — Micro E-mini Russell 2000 | 0.10 | $0.50 | $5.00 |
| CL — Crude Oil | 0.01 | $10.00 | $1,000.00 |
| MCL — Micro Crude Oil | 0.01 | $1.00 | $100.00 |
| GC — Gold | 0.10 | $10.00 | $100.00 |
| MGC — Micro Gold | 0.10 | $1.00 | $10.00 |
| SI — Silver | 0.005 | $25.00 | $5,000.00 |
| ZB — 30-Year T-Bond | 1/32 (0.03125) | $31.25 | $1,000.00 |
| ZN — 10-Year T-Note | 1/64 (0.015625) | $15.625 | $1,000.00 |
| 6E — Euro FX | 0.00005 | $6.25 | $125,000.00 |
What each field governs
They sound interchangeable and they answer different questions.
- Tick size
- The smallest increment the contract may trade in. It sets the resolution of every stop and target you can place — you cannot put a stop between ticks, so on ES every level is a multiple of 0.25.
- Tick value
- What one tick is worth per contract. This is the number position sizing runs on: stop distance in ticks, multiplied by tick value, is your risk per contract.
- Point value
- What one full unit of price is worth. Useful for reading a chart, misleading for sizing — a stop quoted in points is four times a stop of the same number in ticks on ES.
- Contract month
- Which expiry you are trading. Equity index products run a March/June/September/December cycle; energies and metals roll monthly, which catches people moving between them.
Where the confusion is expensive
Ticks versus points. On ES there are four ticks to a point, so a "10-point stop" and a "10-tick stop" differ by a factor of four — $500 against $125 per contract. Sizing off the wrong one is the single most common arithmetic error in futures, and it always errs in the direction of too large.
Bond tick sizes are fractions. ZB moves in thirty-seconds and ZN in sixty-fourths, so a price of 110'16 is 110 and 16/32. Software that treats those as decimals produces wrong numbers quietly.
Micros are not a different market. Same tick size, same hours, same chart. Only the money per tick is scaled, by exactly ten. That is why a strategy developed on ES translates to MES without changing a single level.
The position size calculator takes stop distance in ticks for exactly this reason — it removes the unit ambiguity from the one calculation where it costs the most.
Reading a contract symbol
Futures symbols encode the expiry, and knowing the convention saves a lot of confusion about why a chart looks wrong.
The root is the product — ES, NQ, CL. The next character is the month code, and the last one or two digits are the year. So ESZ5 is the E-mini S&P 500 expiring in December 2025.
The month codes are historical and not intuitive: F January, G February, H March, J April, K May, M June, N July, Q August, U September, V October, X November, Z December. For equity index products only H, M, U and Z are used, since those are the quarterly expiries.
Most platforms also expose a continuous or front-month symbol — often written with a suffix like 1! — that automatically points at whichever contract currently has the volume. That is almost always the one you want for an automated strategy, because a hard-coded month becomes wrong on a predictable schedule.
Volume moves before expiry
Liquidity migrates to the next contract about a week ahead of expiry, so the front month by volume and by date are briefly different.
Follow the volumeUse the continuous symbol
A hard-coded contract month is a bug with a date on it. Front-month resolution is what stops a strategy quietly trading the illiquid contract.
Usually a 1! suffixCommon questions
What is the tick size of ES?
0.25 index points, and each tick is worth $12.50 per contract — so one full point is $50. The Micro E-mini (MES) uses the same 0.25 tick size at $1.25 a tick, making a point $5.
What is the difference between tick value and point value?
Tick value is what the smallest possible price increment is worth; point value is what one full unit of price is worth. On ES there are four ticks to a point, so the point value is four times the tick value — $50 against $12.50.
How do I read a futures contract symbol?
Root, month code, year. ESZ5 is the E-mini S&P 500 expiring December 2025. Equity index products use only H (March), M (June), U (September) and Z (December), since those are the quarterly expiries.
Why are bond futures priced in fractions?
Convention. ZB trades in thirty-seconds of a point and ZN in sixty-fourths, so 110'16 means 110 and 16/32. Treating those quotes as decimals produces wrong numbers without any error being raised.
Are micro futures the same as full-size contracts?
Same underlying, same tick size, same trading hours, same chart. Only the dollar value per tick is scaled, by exactly ten — which is why a strategy developed on ES transfers to MES without changing any price levels.
Which contract month should an automated strategy trade?
The front month by volume, resolved automatically rather than hard-coded. Most platforms expose a continuous symbol for this. A fixed contract month becomes the illiquid one on a predictable schedule, which looks like a broken strategy and is actually a calendar.
Start on a simulated account.
Connect a sim or evaluation account and run the whole product against it before you point anything at live money. Nothing about the setup changes when you do.