The best-known currency futures contract is certainly the Euro-FX future, which is listed on the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) and can be traded 24 hours a day in electronic Globex trading.
The ticker symbol is 6E.
In this foreign exchange future, the euro is traded against the US dollar.
The contract size is 125,000 euros.
Quotations are to four decimal places, e.g. 1.3110 USD for the dollar rate.
The smallest price change, called a tick, is therefore fixed at 0.0001.
The tick value is 12.5 USD (0.0001 USD * 125,000 EUR/contract).
Multiplying the currently traded price by the contract size gives the current contract value.
With a dollar rate of 1.3110, a futures contract has a contract value of 163,875 USD (1.3110 multiplied by the contract size of 125,000).
The following table shows the contract size, tick size and tick value for the most important foreign exchange futures.
All currency futures are always traded against the USD dollar:
| Foreign exchange future | ticker | Contract size | Tick size | Tick value / contract | Margin |
| Euro FX | 6E | EUR 125,000 | $ 0.0001 per EUR | $ 12.5 | $ 2,500 |
| Swiss franc | 6S | CHF 125,000 | $ 0.0001 per CHF | $ 12.5 | $ 2,625 |
| British pound | 6B | £ 62,5000 | $ 0.0001 per GBP | $ 6.25 | $ 1,837 |
| Japanese yen | 6y | 12,500,000 JPY | $ 0.000001 per JPY | $ 12.5 | $ 2,851 |
| Canadian dollar | 6C | 100,000 CAD | $ 0.0001 per CAD | $ 10.0 | $ 1,422 |
| Australian dollar | 6A | 100,000 AUD | $ 0.0001 per AUD | $ 10.0 | $ 1,668 |
| New Zealand dollar | 6N | 100,000 NZD | $ 0.0001 per NZD | $ 10.0 | $ 1,688 |
| Mexican peso | 6M | 500,000 MXP | $ 0.00001 per MXP | $ 5.0 | $ 2,225 |
For more contract information you can visit the website of the CME Group.
Read my other articles about futures:
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- How to calculate the Tick Value of Futures
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- Orderbook – The most common Order Types for Futures Trading
- What is Future Trading – Tutorial for beginners
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