CBOT
Soybean Meal (ZM) Tick Value & Contract Specs
Tick value $10.00 per tick — 100 short tons of soybean meal.
Soybean Meal futures (ZM) cover 100 short tons and are the one contract in the grain room quoted in dollars per ton rather than cents — meal at $330 means $330 per short ton, so a contract is $33,000 of notional with no hundredfold conversion to remember. The tick is $0.10 per ton, worth $10.00 per contract, and a full dollar move is $100.
Meal is the protein half of the soybean crush and, by value, usually the larger half. It feeds livestock — hogs, poultry and cattle — which makes ZM responsive to herd sizes and feed margins in a way that ZS is not. That connection runs directly into the livestock contracts: expanding hog herds lift meal demand, and the same feed-cost arithmetic drives Lean Hogs and Live Cattle margins from the other side. Traders work ZM primarily through the board crush, buying beans against selling meal and oil or the reverse, because the processing margin mean-reverts more reliably than any of the three legs trades on its own. Being dollar-quoted, ZM slots into a standard position-size calculation without adjustment — the calculator below is pre-filled.
- Exchange
- CBOT
- Contract size
- 100 short tons of soybean meal
- Tick size
- 0.1
- Tick value
- $10.00
- Point value (multiplier)
- $100
- Trading hours
- Sun–Fri 7:00pm–7:45am CT, then Mon–Fri 8:30am–1:20pm CT
- Margin
- Margin varies by broker and tends to track soybean margin, since the two trade as a processing spread.
How ZM tick value works
Tick value is the dollar amount one futures contract gains or loses when the price moves one minimum increment (one tick).
tick value = tick size × multiplier. For ZM, that is 0.1 × $100 = $10.00 per tick, per contract.
One contract represents 100 short tons of soybean meal. P&L for a move from entry to exit is (exit − entry) ÷ tick size × tick value × contracts.
ZM contract months and ticker symbols
A futures ticker is three parts: the root, a one-letter delivery month, and the year. ZMZ2026 is the December 2026 ZM contract. The month letters skip I and L, which would read as 1 and 7 on a ticker.
| Code | Month | Listed for ZM? |
|---|---|---|
| F | January | Yes — ZMF |
| G | February | No |
| H | March | Yes — ZMH |
| J | April | No |
| K | May | Yes — ZMK |
| M | June | No |
| N | July | Yes — ZMN |
| Q | August | Yes — ZMQ |
| U | September | Yes — ZMU |
| V | October | Yes — ZMV |
| X | November | No |
| Z | December | Yes — ZMZ |
Which ZM contract am I looking at?
Most charts default to the continuous front-month series rather than a dated contract — one stitched-together chart that rolls to the next month as the current one nears expiry. Every platform spells it differently, which is why the same contract appears under so many names.
| Written as | Platform | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| ZM1! | TradingView | Continuous front-month contract. "2!" is the next one out, and a dated contract is written in full, e.g. ZMZ2026. |
| ZM00 | Barchart | Continuous front-month series. "ZMZ26" style codes name a specific month and year instead. |
| ZMc1 | Refinitiv / Reuters | Continuous front month; c2 is the second month out. |
| /ZM | thinkorswim, tastytrade | The leading slash marks it as a future rather than a stock. A specific month is /ZMZ26. |
| ZM=F | Yahoo Finance | The "=F" suffix denotes the front-month futures series. |
| $ZM | StockTwits, social | A cashtag, not an exchange symbol. It usually means the front month, but it is informal and ambiguous. |
A dated code such as ZMZ26 always means one specific contract; the continuous forms never do. Check which you are quoting before comparing a price to someone else’s — around a roll they differ.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the tick value for ZM?
- $10.00 per tick — a 0.1 tick size × a $100 multiplier (point value).
- What is one ZM contract worth?
- One contract represents 100 short tons of soybean meal. Notional value = price × $100; use the tick value calculator with the current price for an exact figure.
- Which exchange lists ZM?
- Soybean Meal (ZM) trades on the CBOT.
- What are the trading hours for ZM?
- Sun–Fri 7:00pm–7:45am CT, then Mon–Fri 8:30am–1:20pm CT.
- How much margin do I need to trade ZM?
- Margin varies by broker and tends to track soybean margin, since the two trade as a processing spread.
- What are the ZM contract months?
- ZM lists January, March, May, July, August, September, October and December.
- What does ZMZ2026 mean?
- It is one specific ZM contract: the root ZM, the delivery-month code Z, and the year. Z is December, so ZMZ2026 is the December 2026 contract. The codes run F G H J K M N Q U V X Z for January through December — I and L are skipped because they read as 1 and 7 on a ticker.
- What is ZM00, ZM1! or /ZM?
- All three name the same thing: the continuous front-month ZM contract, written differently by different platforms. Barchart uses ZM00, TradingView ZM1!, thinkorswim and tastytrade /ZM, Yahoo Finance ZM=F, and ZM on social media is usually written $ZM. None of them is a separate instrument — each stitches together whichever dated contract is currently the front month.
- How is P&L calculated for ZM?
- P&L = (exit price − entry price) ÷ 0.1 tick size × $10.00 tick value × number of contracts. Use the tick value calculator to compute this directly.
More futures contract specs
- LE — Live CattleTick value $10.00 · CME
- HE — Lean HogsTick value $10.00 · CME
- ZC — CornTick value $12.50 · CBOT
- ZS — SoybeansTick value $12.50 · CBOT
See all futures contract specs or use the futures contract & tick value calculator with any symbol or custom specs.
Specs last reviewed 2026-09-15. Exchanges can amend contract specs — always confirm against the exchange or your broker before trading.