We Teach Trading — Zero Tips, Zero Advice, Zero Recommendations. Not registered with SEBI or any financial regulator worldwide.
We Teach Trading — Zero Tips, Zero Advice, Zero Recommendations. Not registered with SEBI or any financial regulator worldwide.
Tick size is the smallest unit the market trades on. On NSE, that is 0.05 for most equities, set officially by the exchange. Everything you read on a chart, every fill you get, every footprint cell sits on top of it. Most traders ignore it. Here is what it actually is, how the official rules work on NSE, Nifty, Bank Nifty, Sensex, MCX, forex and crypto, and why it sits at the foundation of institutional order flow reading.
Most retail traders have never stopped to ask why one stock moves in one paisa increment, another in fifty paise, and a high-priced index futures contract in ten paise. They accept the tick as a feature of the screen, not a feature of the market. That is a mistake. Tick size is the smallest unit of price the exchange will accept. Every order, every fill, every footprint cell, every order book level is built on top of it. If you do not understand tick size, you do not understand how the auction works at the level institutions actually trade at.
This guide covers what tick size is, how it works in the Indian stock market and globally, the current official SEBI and NSE tick size guidelines for stocks, Nifty, Bank Nifty, Sensex, MCX bullion, forex and crypto, what an appropriate tick size looks like for different instruments, and why tick size sits at the foundation of the No Indicator Concepts (NIC) methodology taught inside our Institutional Order Flow & Volume Footprint Mentorship.
Read it slowly. The structure of the market is more important than any setup.
Tick size is the minimum price increment at which a financial instrument can be quoted or traded on an exchange. If the tick size for a stock is ₹0.05, the price can move from ₹100.00 to ₹100.05 to ₹100.10. It cannot move from ₹100.00 to ₹100.02. The order will be rejected at the exchange level.
Every tradable instrument has a tick size. Equities, futures, options, currencies, commodities, bonds, and most regulated crypto pairs. The tick is set by the exchange and approved by the relevant regulator. In India, that is SEBI. In the United States, the SEC and CFTC. In the United Kingdom, the FCA. In Singapore, MAS. In Australia, ASIC. In the European Union, ESMA under MiFID II. In Canada, CIRO. The framework is global. The numbers are not.
There is a related term you will see in your trading software: tick value. Tick value is the rupee or dollar amount one tick represents per contract, calculated as tick size multiplied by lot size or contract multiplier. Tick size is the price increment. Tick value is what one increment costs you per contract.
Understand both. Confusing them is one of the most expensive mistakes a new derivatives trader makes.
Open the market depth window on any liquid stock. You will see bids stacked on the left and offers stacked on the right, each line representing a price level. The vertical distance between any two adjacent levels is exactly one tick. Nothing finer. Nothing in between.
This matters because the order book is not a continuous price line. It is a grid. Tick size defines the spacing of that grid. A smaller tick size produces a finer grid with more levels, tighter bid-ask spreads, and more granular price discovery. A larger tick size produces a coarser grid with fewer levels, wider spreads, and more concentrated liquidity at each price.
Both have trade-offs. Smaller ticks help passive participants and reduce headline transaction costs. Larger ticks concentrate liquidity, making it easier to read where size is sitting. Regulators globally have been debating this trade-off for two decades, which is exactly why tick sizes keep getting revised.
For an institutional order flow trader, the grid spacing matters more than the average retail participant realizes. Volume footprint charts, periodic volume profile, CVD, and order book imbalance reading all operate on this grid. If you do not know the grid you are reading, you are reading nothing.
There is no single tick size for NSE equity anymore. Since April 15, 2025, the official tick size is set by price band: 0.01 for stocks below Rs 250, 0.05 for stocks from Rs 250 to Rs 1,000, 0.10 up to Rs 5,000, 0.50 up to Rs 10,000, 1.00 up to Rs 20,000, and 5.00 above that. Stock futures follow the same bands as their underlying. Index futures trade at 0.05, 0.10 or 0.20 depending on index level, and all stock and index options keep a uniform 0.05 tick. If an article tells you NSE tick size is a flat 0.05, it is quoting a rule that ended in 2024.
India has gone through three structural tick size revisions in the last two years.
The first was effective 10 June 2024, when NSE introduced a price-linked tick in the cash market for securities priced below ₹250. These stocks moved from ₹0.05 to a ₹0.01 tick, while securities priced at ₹250 and above continued at the ₹0.05 tick.
The second and more significant revision was effective 15 April 2025, which introduced a six-tier price-linked tick mechanism for equities and a three-tier mechanism for index futures.
The third was effective 3 November 2025, when NSE moved stock options from a uniform ₹0.05 tick to a price-linked structure.
The current tick size framework for NSE equities and stock futures is:
Rules verified as of June 2026, per NSE circulars
Price band | Tick size |
|---|---|
Below ₹250 | ₹0.01 |
₹250 to ₹1,000 | ₹0.05 |
₹1,001 to ₹5,000 | ₹0.10 |
₹5,001 to ₹10,000 | ₹0.50 |
₹10,001 to ₹20,000 | ₹1.00 |
Above ₹20,000 | ₹5.00 |
Stock futures carry the same tick size as the underlying equity. The price band a security falls into is reviewed on the last trading day of every month, based on closing price, and the revised tick applies from the first trading day of the next month. NSE publishes the applicable tick size in its daily security file. If a stock crosses a band threshold mid-month, the existing tick continues until the next monthly review.
The tick size framework for NSE index futures (Nifty 50, Nifty Bank, Nifty Financial Services, Nifty Midcap Select, Nifty Next 50, and similar) is:
Index level | Tick size |
|---|---|
0 to 15,000 | ₹0.05 |
15,001 to 30,000 | ₹0.10 |
Above 30,000 | ₹0.20 |
At current levels, Nifty 50 futures trade at the ₹0.10 tick and Nifty Bank futures trade at the ₹0.20 tick.
Note that index derivatives lot sizes were also revised by NSE under SEBI's contract-value rebase lining, effective from the January 2026 series after the December 2025 expiry. Nifty 50 lot size is currently 65, and Nifty Bank lot size is currently 30. A one-tick move on a Nifty 50 future at lot size 65 represents ₹6.50 in tick value. A one-tick move on Nifty Bank at lot size 30 represents ₹6.00. These are not large numbers in isolation. They become large when you understand how many ticks separate a poor entry from a clean institutional entry.
For stock options, NSE revised the tick size from a uniform ₹0.05 to a price-linked structure effective 3 November 2025. Index options on Nifty, Bank Nifty, Fin Nifty, and Sensex continue to trade at a uniform ₹0.05 tick.
BSE Sensex futures trade at a tick size of ₹0.05 with a current lot size of 20, giving a tick value of ₹1.00 per contract. Sensex weekly and monthly options also operate at the ₹0.05 tick. BSE follows a similar price-linked framework for cash market equities under SEBI's broader microstructure guidelines.
Always verify the current applicable lot size and tick size in your broker's contract master file or on the NSE and BSE websites before placing an order, as exchanges revise these specifications periodically.
The Multi Commodity Exchange of India sets contract-specific tick sizes for each commodity it lists. There is no price-linked formula. Each contract has a fixed tick. The relevant tick sizes for actively traded MCX bullion contracts are:
Contract | Lot size | Tick size | Tick value |
|---|---|---|---|
Gold (Big) | 1 kg | ₹1 per 10 g | ₹100 |
Gold Mini | 100 g | ₹1 per 10 g | ₹10 |
Gold Ten | 10 g | ₹1 per 10 g | ₹1 |
Gold Guinea | 8 g | ₹1 per 8 g | ₹1 |
Gold Petal | 1 g | ₹1 per 1 g | ₹1 |
Silver | 30 kg | ₹1 per 1 kg | ₹30 |
Silver Mini | 5 kg | ₹1 per 1 kg | ₹5 |
MCX also lists contracts in crude oil, natural gas, copper, zinc, aluminum, lead, nickel, mentha oil, cotton, and several other commodities. Each has its own contract specification. Always verify the current contract specification on the MCX website or in your broker's contract master file before placing an order on any commodity contract, as specifications are revised periodically.
Gold on MCX is one of the cleanest instruments for footprint reading on Indian shores. The contract is liquid, the tick value is meaningful at ₹100 per tick on the Big Gold, the trading session runs into late evening which gives traders exposure to both Indian and US session order flow, and price discovery on this contract is heavily influenced by COMEX gold futures in Chicago.
Forex sits in two layers. The NSE and BSE currency derivatives segment under SEBI regulation, and the global interbank and retail OTC forex market regulated by the FCA, CFTC, ASIC, MAS, CySEC, and several others depending on jurisdiction.
On the NSE currency derivatives segment, USDINR, EURINR, GBPINR, and JPYINR futures and options trade at exchange-set tick sizes. Verify the current tick in your broker's contract master before trading any currency futures or options contract.
In the global spot forex market, tick size is referred to as a pip. For most major pairs such as EURUSD, GBPUSD, and AUDUSD, one pip is 0.0001. For JPY-quoted pairs such as USDJPY and EURJPY, one pip is 0.01 because the price itself is quoted to two decimals. Most regulated retail brokers also offer pipette pricing, which is one tenth of a pip (0.00001 on majors, 0.001 on JPY pairs), giving the price an extra decimal of granularity.
Forex is the largest market by daily turnover in the world, and tick granularity is part of why interbank price discovery is so efficient. It is also why retail forex is structurally difficult. Spreads tighten and widen continuously, and pip-level reading without proper institutional volume footprint context is essentially trading noise.
Crypto is the messiest segment when it comes to tick size, because there is no single global regulator and no harmonized microstructure standard. Each exchange sets its own tick size for each pair, and the same asset can trade at meaningfully different tick sizes on different venues.
On major regulated venues, Bitcoin spot on Coinbase typically trades at a $0.01 tick. CME-listed Bitcoin and Ethereum futures use exchange-specified tick sizes that vary between the standard and micro contracts. Verify the current tick size on the official CME contract specification page before trading any CME crypto futures contract.
Smaller altcoins frequently trade at 0.0001, 0.00001, or even smaller tick sizes depending on the price level of the coin and the venue.
In India, SEBI does not regulate spot crypto. Crypto exchanges operate under the Ministry of Finance for AML and PMLA purposes, with the FIU-IND as the supervising authority for registered Virtual Digital Asset Service Providers. Tick size on Indian crypto exchanges is set by the exchange itself with no statutory floor.
If you trade crypto, the practical lesson is simple. Always check the tick size of the specific pair on the specific venue before you build any setup on it. The same chart looks completely different at a $0.01 tick than at a $5 tick.
This is a question I get often, and the honest answer is that there is no perfect tick size. There is only an appropriate tick size for the price level and liquidity profile of the instrument.
A useful framework, used by exchanges and regulators globally, is the tick-to-price ratio. Calculate tick size divided by price, expressed in basis points. Most regulators target a tick-to-price ratio in the single-digit basis-point range for a healthy market. If the ratio is too small, the tick is too fine. Spreads collapse, queue priority becomes meaningless, and high-frequency participants gain a disproportionate edge in order book micro-arbitrage. If the ratio is too large, the tick is too coarse. Spreads stay artificially wide, retail execution costs rise, and price discovery becomes blunt.
When a tick is appropriate, the order book reads clearly, the bid-ask spread reflects real two-sided interest, and volume footprint reading produces clean signals. When a tick is too small or too large, the noise overwhelms the signal. That is not a methodology problem. It is a microstructure problem.
The Indian framework as revised in April 2025 broadly aligns with how MiFID II handles tick sizes in the European Union and how the SEC has been moving in the United States through Rule 612 amendments. The numbers differ. The principle of price-linked tick sizing is shared.
Inside the No Indicator Concepts methodology, we teach order flow reading as the disciplined observation of the auction process itself. No moving averages. No oscillators. No lagging derivatives of price. Just price, time, and volume, read directly from the order book, the time and sales feed, and the volume footprint.
The grid that all of this is plotted on is the tick. Every cell on a volume footprint chart represents one tick of price on one bar of time. Every bid and offer in the order book is one tick apart. Every imbalance you read is an imbalance at a specific tick. Every absorption you identify happens at a specific tick. Every initiative buying or selling print on the tape happens at a specific tick.
When a trader does not understand the tick they are reading, they are looking at the same chart everyone else looks at, but with a worse understanding of what each cell means. They cannot tell the difference between thin price action with no liquidity and a clean rotation through a tight grid. They cannot tell whether a twenty paise move on Nifty futures is one tick or four ticks. They cannot tell whether a footprint cell with fifty thousand contracts traded represents real institutional absorption or a normal print on a high-liquidity tick.
This is also why we built the curriculum the way we did. The first concept taught inside our flagship Institutional Order Flow & Volume Footprint Mentorship is market microstructure. Tick size. Lot size. Contract multiplier. Order types. Order book mechanics. Auction theory. We do not start with setups. We start with the structure of the market, because the structure is what produces the setups.
Volume footprint is one of the most powerful tools in institutional trading, and it depends entirely on tick size for its resolution. A footprint chart aggregates traded volume into a price-time grid where each row is one tick (or one tick group) of price and each column is one bar of time.
If the underlying tick is too fine, the footprint cells become sparsely populated, individual prints look isolated, and meaningful clusters of absorption or imbalance get spread thin across too many rows. If the tick is too coarse, multiple distinct price levels collapse into the same row, and you lose the ability to distinguish reaction zones from continuation zones.
The April 2025 NSE tick size revision changed this resolution materially for Nifty futures, Nifty Bank futures, and high-priced stocks. Nifty Bank futures moved from a ₹0.05 tick to a ₹0.20 tick, which means each footprint row now represents four times the price range it did before. Nifty futures moved from a ₹0.05 tick to a ₹0.10 tick, which is a doubling of row range. High-priced stocks now move in ₹0.50, ₹1, and even ₹5 ticks depending on their price band. The footprint reader has to recalibrate for each instrument.
This is one of the reasons we do not teach our students to copy settings from a YouTube template. The correct row grouping, tick aggregation, and bar period depend on the specific instrument, its tick size, its current liquidity profile, and the timeframe being read. We teach the principles. The student applies them per instrument, with our review.
The most common tick-related mistake I see across the Kumar Singh Global Trading Academy student base, especially new entrants from engineering and IT backgrounds where systems thinking is strong but market microstructure exposure is weak, is treating tick size as a settings field rather than a structural input.
They set their stop loss in points without checking how many ticks that represents. They place market orders on illiquid stocks without checking the spread in ticks. They build back tests on historical data without adjusting for the April 2025 tick size revision or the January 2026 lot size revision, which means their fills, slippage, and P&L on any pre-revision back test are now structurally wrong. They read footprint charts without ever asking what the tick aggregation is set to.
The correction is simple. Before you place any trade on any instrument, write down three numbers. The current tick size. The current lot size or contract multiplier. The current tick value. If you cannot recite those three numbers for the instrument you are about to trade, you should not be trading it yet.
This is not an advanced concept. This is basic professional discipline. It is also the kind of habit that separates the traders who build genuine skill from the traders who keep losing without understanding why.
Inside the Institutional Order Flow & Volume Footprint Mentorship, tick-level reading is integrated across the entire 20-module curriculum. The early modules ground the student in market microstructure. The middle modules apply that grounding to volume candle, volume footprint, CVD, and periodic volume profile reading. The later modules tie everything back to institutional reference levels, market structure, and trade execution.
Two cornerstones of the curriculum specifically depend on a clean understanding of tick size. The Institutional Order Flow & Volume Footprint 1-2-3 Formula, which is proprietary to Kumar Singh Global Trading Academy, reads order flow at the tick level to identify the three-phase auction structure institutions trade against. The Periodic Volume Profile Research module, also proprietary, builds composite profiles whose horizontal resolution is a function of the underlying tick. Neither concept can be taught, nor learned, without the tick foundation in place first.
If you want to know more about the NIC methodology and how the program is structured, the cornerstone page is here: No Indicator Concepts (NIC). If you are ready to apply, the NIC Pro Group Mentorship and NIC Pro 1-on-1 Mentorship pages list the full curriculum, prerequisites, and process.
Tick size is the smallest building block of every market you will ever trade. Stocks, futures, options, currencies, commodities, crypto. Equities on the NSE and BSE. Index futures on Nifty, Nifty Bank, Sensex. Bullion on MCX. Forex on the interbank network. Crypto on every venue with a price feed.
If you want to read markets the way institutions read them, you have to start where the market starts. At the tick.
That is why the Institutional Order Flow & Volume Footprint Mentorship begins where it does, and it is why the No Indicator Concepts methodology has the structural integrity it does. We teach the structure first. Always.
Explore NIC Pro 1-on-1 Mentorship | Explore NIC Pro Group Mentorship | Learn More about NIC (No Indicator Concepts)
Authored by Kumar Ravishanker Singh (professionally known as Kumar Singh), Founder of Kumar Singh Global Trading Academy (OPC) Private Limited. Independent Trader, Trading Mentor, Entrepreneur, and Independent Technical Researcher.
This article is published for educational purposes only. It is not investment advice, financial advice, securities advice, derivatives advice, commodities advice, currency advice, crypto advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell, hold, or transact in any financial instrument, contract, or product on any exchange or venue, in any jurisdiction.
Kumar Singh Global Trading Academy (OPC) Private Limited is an independent trading education and mentorship company. It is not registered as an Investment Adviser, Research Analyst, Portfolio Manager, Stock Broker, Sub-Broker, Commodity Broker, Currency Broker, Authorised Person, Distributor, or any other intermediary with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), and it is not registered, licensed, authorised, or supervised by any other financial regulator anywhere in the world, including but not limited to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in the United States, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the United Kingdom, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) in Australia, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in Singapore, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) and competent authorities under EU MiFID II in the European Union, and the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) in Canada.
Trading in equities, derivatives, commodities, currencies, and crypto carries substantial risk including the loss of capital. Past performance, examples, and references to specific instruments are illustrative and do not constitute a recommendation. Tick size, lot size, contract multiplier, expiry, margin, and all other contract specifications are subject to revision by the respective exchanges (NSE, BSE, MCX, CME, COMEX, and others) and regulators, and should be independently verified with the relevant exchange and your broker before placing any order.
