MNQ, MES & MGC Tick Value: The Only Table You Need

One MNQ tick is worth 50 cents. One MES tick is worth $1.25. One MGC tick is worth a dollar. Those numbers look harmless until you multiply them by your stop distance and your contract count, and find out the same 40-tick stop costs $20 on one product and $100 on another. This is the table worth taping to your monitor, with the math already done.

None of this is textbook theory. It is the arithmetic that decides whether you survive the evaluation or blow the account on a random Tuesday afternoon without understanding why.

A tick and a point are not the same thing

A point is one unit of the index or the underlying. A tick is the smallest increment the contract is allowed to move. How many ticks make up a point depends on the contract, and that is where people get lost.

On MNQ and MES the tick is 0.25 points, so four ticks make a point. On MGC the tick is $0.10 per ounce, so ten ticks make a dollar of gold. On MYM (Micro Dow) the tick is a full point, one for one.

The number that actually matters is none of those. It is the dollar value of the tick. That is the only figure that converts chart movement into money in your account. Learn it for the contract you trade and everything else follows.

Why it trips so many traders up

Because most people learned watching the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 on the same screen. Both move in points, both have a 0.25 tick, and it looks like the same thing at a different scale. It is not. An MNQ point is $2 and an MES point is $5. The Nasdaq covers far more points per session than the S&P, which offsets part of that gap, but not all of it.

The full tick value table

These are the CME micros funded traders actually use. The values are fixed by the contract specification, not by your broker or your prop firm.

Contract	Tracks	Tick size	Tick value	Point value	Ticks per point
MNQ	Nasdaq 100	0.25	$0.50	$2.00	4
MES	S&P 500	0.25	$1.25	$5.00	4
MGC	Gold (10 oz)	0.10	$1.00	$10.00	10
M2K	Russell 2000	0.10	$0.50	$5.00	10
MYM	Dow Jones	1.00	$0.50	$0.50	1
MCL	Crude oil (100 bbl)	0.01	$1.00	$100.00	100

Look at MYM: the point is worth the same as the tick because the tick is a point. With the Dow near 44,000, a 100-point move sounds huge and pays $50. Now look at MCL: every penny of crude is a dollar, and oil moves $1.50 on a quiet day. That is $150 per contract with nothing unusual happening.

The big contracts, for reference

The full-size E-minis are exactly ten times their micros. ES is $50 a point ($12.50 a tick), NQ is $20 a point ($5 a tick), GC is $100 a point. So when somebody posts a screenshot of "300 points on NQ", ask whether it was NQ or MNQ before you get impressed. The difference is $6,000 versus $600.

MNQ: two dollars a point and the range trap

MNQ is the most traded micro among funded traders, and the one that kills the most accounts. Not because of the tick value, which is the lowest of any index micro. Because of the range.

The Nasdaq covers 250 to 500 points in a normal session and blows past 700 on CPI or FOMC days. At $2 a point, that is $500 to $1,400 of daily travel per contract. A reasonable MNQ stop sits between 30 and 60 points depending on the day, so $60 to $120 per contract.

The trap is that the small tick number invites you to hang the stop out wide. "It is only fifty cents." Fifty cents times a 240-tick stop is $120, and on a $50,000 account with a $2,500 trailing drawdown, three losers eat 15% of your cushion before lunch.

MES: the one that hurts least while you learn

MES has the more expensive tick of the two index micros ($1.25 versus $0.50), but the S&P covers much less ground: 40 to 80 points in a normal session. At $5 a point that is $200 to $400 of daily range per contract, half of MNQ or less.

What that means in practice: the same dollar stop buys you more noise tolerance on MES. A $20 stop on MES is 4 points, which is a real structure on a 1-minute chart. The same $20 on MNQ is 10 points, which the Nasdaq covers while you blink.

That is why the standard advice for a first evaluation is MES. The detailed comparison, with ranges and commission math, is in MNQ vs MES: which micro future should you trade.

MGC: gold plays by different rules

MGC covers 10 troy ounces of gold. The tick is $0.10 per ounce, so one tick is exactly $1.00 and one dollar of gold is $10 of account. It is the easiest of the group to compute in your head: gold moves $5, you make or lose $50 per contract.

What changes with gold is not the arithmetic, it is the behavior:

• Wider spread. MGC holds a one-tick spread through most of the US session, but it opens to two or three ticks when activity thins out. Market orders cost you more there than on MES.
• It moves outside US hours. Gold reacts to the Asian and London sessions. MNQ and MES are asleep at those hours.
• Inflation prints and rates run it. A CPI release can move gold $30 in two minutes. That is $300 per contract in 120 seconds.

Typical MGC daily range runs $15 to $35, so $150 to $350 per contract. Close to MES in dollar terms, with the volatility arriving at different times of day.

Turning your stop into dollars before you click

Here is what all of the above is for. The formula is grade-school math:

Dollar risk = stop in ticks x tick value x contracts

Worked examples:

• 2 MNQ with a 12-point stop: 12 x 4 ticks x $0.50 x 2 = $48.
• 1 MES with a 6-point stop: 6 x 4 x $1.25 x 1 = $30.
• 3 MGC with a $3 gold stop: 3 x 10 ticks x $1.00 x 3 = $90.

Run it backwards and it gets more useful. If your max loss per trade is $100 and you want 2 MNQ, you get 100 / (0.50 x 2) = 100 ticks, or a 25-point stop. If the chart structure demands 40 points, you do not trade 2 contracts. You trade 1. Or you skip it.

That is the correct order of operations. The chart decides where the stop goes, then the calculator decides how many contracts fit. Never the other way around. The full sizing framework is in how many contracts should you trade on a funded account.

Commissions and slippage: the cost nobody subtracts

Tick value is clean. Your P&L is not. Every round turn on a micro costs you somewhere between $1.00 and $1.60 once you add commission, CME exchange fees, NFA fees and the data piece. It varies by firm and routing, but that is the real range.

On MNQ, $1.40 of cost is almost three ticks. You enter and you are already down three ticks before price moves. If your target is 8 ticks, you are handing 35% of the gross to costs.

Scenario	Gross per trade	Round-turn cost	Net	Cost as % of gross
1 MNQ, 8-tick target	$4.00	$1.40	$2.60	35%
1 MNQ, 40-tick target	$20.00	$1.40	$18.60	7%
1 MES, 8-tick target	$10.00	$1.40	$8.60	14%
1 MGC, 10-tick target	$10.00	$1.50	$8.50	15%

The uncomfortable conclusion: scalping 6 or 8 ticks on MNQ only works with a very high hit rate and clean execution. Most people who try it pay for the account in commissions.

And that is before slippage. A market order on MNQ during regular hours fills where you asked or one tick worse. In the minute of the jobs report it can fill four ticks worse, and those $2 per contract show up in no table anywhere.

Four math mistakes that cost funded accounts

One: using the big contract value. Somebody reads that an ES point is $50 and sizes an MES stop with that number. They end up risking five times less than they think, or five times more when they run the target calculation the other way.

Two: mixing ticks and points in the order. NinjaTrader lets you set the stop in ticks or in price. Typing "40" while thinking points when the field wants ticks leaves you with a 10-point stop. On MNQ that stop gets hit 80% of the time.

Three: sizing the trade but not the day. A hundred dollars per trade is fine. A hundred dollars per trade times eight trades is $800, and the daily loss limit on a $50,000 account is usually around $1,100. Two of those days and you are out. How that limit moves is covered in trailing drawdown explained.

Four: forgetting the drawdown is also measured in ticks. A $500 cushion on MNQ with 3 contracts is 333 ticks. Sounds like plenty until you notice the Nasdaq covers 300 ticks in forty minutes of a trend day.

Write your contract's tick value on a sticky note and put it on the monitor. It looks amateurish and it prevents more losses than half the indicators sitting in your platform. The day you know by heart how many ticks fit inside your max risk is the day you stop improvising position size at 9:31.