Can some one chime in here just so I can get a clear understanding of what a tick is. In CL future a 1 hundredth move is equal to $10, correct? Is this considered a tick? Or is a tenth considered a tick or is 1 full point. Example. I made a trade at 52.80 long. Set my sell stop order at 52.75 to risk $50. I set my sell limit order at 52.85 to close with a $50 profit. Bear with me here, just trying to get a clear understanding of futures and ticks. Technically I should have set my sale limit order at 52.90 if I wanted a 2/1 risk reward, correct? Do any of you place these orders in a back to back succession(quickly) or do you just add the stop loss order and then wait to see how far it may go up or do you just do a trailing limit to lock in as much profit as possible? I know I'm missing something hear. I put on 2 postions today, both long /CL with 2 contracts each. The first I did. It use a stop I just let it run. The second postion I added a stop order(after the enitial limit), then entered a sale limit(2nd). Both of these showed up as working until one was hit which was the sale limit to close and lock in the profit. In all both orders were for + $420. What's also crazy is after the limit was filled for profit the damn stop was filled and it made a profit too. I guess I waited to long to close it. Is it possible with these orders being so close in price that they could get filled like that? I'm confused! By the way that's a 2 part question!
A tick is the smallest amount-difference as defined by the exchange that an asset may be traded. How much a tick is may differ according to which exchange and which price-range (also as defined by the exchange) the traded instrument is going to be traded in with the order being issued. It may be confusing but some research should reveal exactly what this is for the exchanges and instruments you're considering trading. You can often experiment with the broker interface after close to verify that the specifications are correct and that you get an error if trying to use more accurate prices than the ticksize. You need to make use of the correct prices for all market orders/triggers (soon to become orders), or else the orders will fail to be accepted by the exchange. There's also the notion about following the market "tick by tick". Here is usually meant either subscribing to each market order as routed from the datafeed-provider, or aggregates of orders, as in "tick chart". A tick chart of 200, is meant an aggregate chart of 200 market orders for each bar.