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Instrument specifications

Ten instruments on one page: the seven currency futures and the three index futures, with what each actually does in a day.

Every figure here is taken from the same source as the lessons and nothing is filled in from elsewhere. Where the source does not state a number, the cell says so.

What these figures are, and what they are not

These are the futures contracts. A CFD broker quoting the same market may divide a point ten or a hundred ways and may price it anywhere from a fifth to double the futures value, and three of the seven currency contracts move in the opposite direction to the CFD pair. Check your own instrument before sizing anything off this page.

The ranges are averages measured in March 2025. Average true range is a measurement, not a property of the contract — it widens and narrows with volatility, so treat these as the proportions between instruments rather than as today's numbers.

Position sizing is lesson seven. The reasoning behind every figure below is in lesson ten for the currencies and lesson eleven for the indices.

Not sure which contract you are looking at, or what the futures symbol for your pair is? Symbols, contracts and which market you are actually on covers that before you use this table.

The seven currency futures

Average daily true range as a percentage and in pips, the average five-minute range during the US session, the tick structure and what a tick is worth, the one-minute stop, and whether the contract moves with the CFD or against it.

Scroll the table sideways for the remaining columns.

Contract Pair ATR Daily range (pips) 5-min range (pips) Ticks per pip Tick — futures Tick — CFD 1-min stop (ticks) Min range bars Vs the CFD chart
6E Fiber EUR/USD 0.95% 110 10 2 $12.50 ~$10.00 20–30 10 Same
6J Gopher USD/JPY 0.98% 97 10 1 $6.25 ~$6.70 10–20 10 Mirror
6B Cable GBP/USD 1.19% 136 11 1 $6.25 $10.00 12–20 10 Same
6S Swissy USD/CHF 1.1% 100 10 2 $12.50 — † 20–30 10 Mirror
6C Loonie USD/CAD 1.05% 125 12 2 $10.00 $10.00 20–30 10 Mirror
6A Aussie AUD/USD 1.09% 88 8 2 $10.00 $10.00 20–30 10 Same
6N Kiwi NZD/USD 0.85% 60 5 2 $10.00 $10.00 14–26 8 Same
  • The five-minute range is measured during the US session.
  • “Mirror” means the futures contract moves opposite to the CFD pair, because the contract is always quoted as dollars per unit of the foreign currency. A buy in the contract is a sell in the pair. It applies to 6J, 6S and 6C.
  • † The source states 6S at $12.50 in futures and then says the remaining contracts “match at $10”, while the same section says the CFD disagrees with the contract on three of the seven and names them as 6E, 6B and 6J. Those two statements cannot both be true of 6S, so no CFD figure is given for it here.

The rules that apply to all seven currency contracts

Three things the source applies without exception, whichever of the seven you are on:

  • The stop is 10 pips above the candlestick high, plus the distance between the candlestick and the entry point.
  • On a range bar the stop is 3 ticks beyond the candlestick, and never less than 10 ticks.
  • Range bar size is 5 per cent of daily volatility — on every one of the seven.

The three index futures

An index is a bigger instrument — two to three times the daily movement of any currency pair — so the stop, the range setting and the position size all move together. Nothing from the table above transfers by copying.

Scroll the table sideways for the remaining columns.

Contract Index ATR Daily range (points) Session range (points) Ticks per point Point — futures Point — CFD Stop (points) Range-bar stop (ticks) Min tick stop Min range bars
ES E-mini S&P 500 2.53% 20–47 1.5–3 (1-minute) 4 $50.00 ~$10.00 3 2 8 6
YM E-mini Dow 2.37% 128–340 22–40 (5-minute) 1 $5.00 ~$1.00 25 5 15 15
NQ E-mini Nasdaq-100 2.92% 36–390 30–50 (5-minute) 4 — ‡ — ‡ 30 5 20 20
  • ES is the only one of the three sized off a one-minute bar; YM and NQ are sized off a five-minute one. One ES point equals 100 pip in the CFD quotation.
  • ‡ No point value is given for NQ because the source never states one. The Nasdaq specification sheet carries the Dow's tick-value sentence pasted across it — “every 1 ticks in YM equals one point”, with the Dow's $5 and $1 — so the only dollar figures printed against NQ are demonstrably YM's. The four-ticks-to-a-point structure is safe: it is stated three separate times, and the worked “120 ticks or 30 point stop” entry only reconciles at four.
  • The instruction attached to both YM and NQ: trade them on a 5-minute block with 2 ticks per row.

The deviation ladders, and the reversal column they share

Five deviation levels, each a percentage of the average daily range. There are three different ladders — the currencies share one, ES has its own, YM and NQ share a third. What every one of them shares is the last row: the probability of a price reversal at each level is identical across all ten instruments.

Read it the practical way: once an instrument has covered its whole average day, it turns about 69 times in 100. Once it has covered a third more than that, about 80.

Ladder Deviation 1 Deviation 2 Deviation 3 Deviation 4 Deviation 5
The seven currency futures 66.67% 83.32% 100% 116.36% 133.33%
ES 70% 90% 110% 130% 150%
YM and NQ 60% 70% 90% 130% 150%
Probability of reversal 56.62% 63.06% 69.15% 74.75% 79.77%
  • The percentages are of that instrument's own average daily range, so the distance in pips or points is different for every contract — scale it off the daily range in the tables above.
  • The last row is not a fourth ladder. It is the reversal probability at deviation 1 to 5, and it is the same figure whichever of the three ladders you are reading.

Where these numbers come from

Both lessons are free and need no account. Lesson ten takes the seven currency futures one at a time, with the economy behind each; lesson eleven does the same for ES, YM and NQ and explains why an index behaves differently.

Read lesson ten