price label of bond futures

[steveg]

Sorry guys. Guess I'll need to take some time to think on this. Thought that 131'01, 131'02 ... 131'63, then 132'00 is easier for me. And bars that are 1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9,11,12,13,14 etc. in length in addition to the 5, 10, 15, 20 bars. But what do I know. Thanks

[bltdavid]

Perhaps this will help.

On the ZN chart, the y-axis shows,

130'170
130'160
130'150

How many ticks exist between 130'170 and 130'160 ?

Ryan is saying 2 ticks -- you're thinking 10 ticks.

Your thinking is wrong.
Let's examine how to correct that.

Consider the case of ES ... my chart shows y-axis labels,

4672.00
4671.00
4670.00

How many ticks exist between 4672.00 and 4671.00?

Obviously, for ES, the answer is 4 because TickSize is 0.25.

For ZN it is (almost) the same kind of example, but all Treasury
Bonds use fractionals, not decimals.

The TickSize of ZN is 0.015625, which is exactly 1/64.

But let's first look at the big daddy, ZB, the 30 year bond.
The TickSize of ZB is 0.03125, which is exactly 1/32.

Ok, so consider for ZB, we have 32 ticks, each is 1/32 and
the chart will increment from 130'00 to 130'31, once for
each tick, and then move to 131'00, like this,

130'00 - 130'01 <-- 1st ZB tick
130'01 - 130'02 <-- 2nd ZB tick
...
130'30 - 130'31 <-- 31st ZB tick
130'31 - 131'00 <-- 32nd ZB tick

ZN has 64 ticks, but actually uses the same y-axis scale as ZB.
So a ZN chart adds another digit to halve each of ZB's tick.

It follows that ZN needs 64 increments from 130 to 131, so what
they do is: each ZB tick is halved when showing the ZN ticks.

For ex, take a look at these ZN ticks,

130'000 - 130'005 tick #1
130'005 - 130'010 tick #2 <-- 1st ZB tick
130'010 - 130'015 tick #3
130'015 - 130'020 tick #4 <-- 2nd ZB tick
...
130'300 - 130'305 tick #61
130'305 - 130'310 tick #62 <-- 31st ZB tick
130'310 - 130'315 tick #63
130'315 - 130'320 tick #64 <-- 32nd ZB tick

130'320 doesn't exist because we moved to 131'000.

See that?
See how there are two ZN ticks for every one ZB tick?

Note also how the ZB chart doesn't need to show that 3rd
fractional digit -- why? because on ZB it is always zero.

Ok, so now you can see it:
The ZN chart needs to show 64 increments, so it halves each
of the 32 ZB ticks and needs that 3rd fractional digit to show
the halving.

I think you were expecting ZN charts to show 130'00 to 130'63,
and then it moves to 131'00.

Yeah, I know, bummer -- but that's not how ZN is denoted.

The ZN y-axis borrows the ZB y-axis, and then adds a 3rd
fractional digit to expand the y-axis -- it does this so ZN can
show a higher granularity of 64 increments, er, I mean, ticks.

Make sense?

[steveg]

Bitdavid and Ryan. Thank you both for taking the time (at lot of time) and effort to explain the ZN. I believe I've got it. Fwiw I think most my confusion was caused by the freakish bars during the time period contained on the screenshot. Freakish in that every bar (other than the dojis) contains an even number of ticks, mostly two. It isn't until after that time period that a bar with an odd number of ticks appears. Your help is appreciated.