Tape speed is the number of trades or contracts that print on time and sales in a set period, usually one second. A fast tape means many trades are printing, and a slow tape means few are.

Should you count prints or contracts per second?

Count both. Prints per second shows how many separate trades printed, and contracts per second shows how much volume traded. A few large trades can move contracts per second a long way while prints per second barely changes.

Why does tape speed differ between platforms?

Platforms group fills differently. One platform may print each fill from an aggressive order as its own row, and another may join them into one trade, so the print count differs while the contract count stays the same.

Does a fast tape mean price will move?

No. Tape speed counts activity and says nothing about direction. A fast tape can come from buyers and sellers trading heavily at the same two prices.

Tape speed as a measure of market activity

Tape speed is the rate at which trades print on time and sales. Time and sales, also called the tape, lists each trade with its time, price, size and side. Count the rows in one second and you have prints per second. Add up the sizes in one second and you have contracts per second. The note on time and sales explained covers each column, and the note on why the tape prints the same price many times explains the repeats you will count.

Two ways to count tape speed

Prints per second and contracts per second can disagree. Take two invented ten second windows in ES, the E-mini S&P 500 future.

Window A has 50 trades of 1 contract each. That is 5 prints per second and 5 contracts per second.
Window B has 2 trades of 100 contracts each. That is 0.2 prints per second and 20 contracts per second.

Window A looks faster on the tape because rows scroll past. Window B traded four times as many contracts. Neither number is wrong. They measure different things, so write down both.

Three ES minutes compared

All numbers below are invented.

Minute	Prints	Contracts	Prints per second	Contracts per second	Average print size
10:05	1,140	3,420	19.0	57.0	3.0
12:35	210	630	3.5	10.5	3.0
14:02	300	2,700	5.0	45.0	9.0

The 10:05 minute printed the most trades. The 12:35 minute printed the fewest, about a fifth of the 10:05 rate on both counts.

The 14:02 minute printed about a quarter of the 10:05 prints, yet it traded 2,700 contracts against 3,420. Its average print was 9 contracts, three times the size at 10:05. A trader watching rows scroll would call 14:02 quiet. By contract count, it was close to the 10:05 minute.

Why a baseline matters

Normal tape speed changes through the day. In US index futures the first hour after 9:30 New York time is usually busier than the lunch hour. A raw number of 3.5 prints per second means little until you compare it with the same minute on other days.

A baseline is the average speed for the same minute over a set number of past sessions. Suppose the last ten sessions averaged 2.0 prints per second at 12:35 and 22.0 at 10:05.

Today's 12:35 minute ran at 3.5 divided by 2.0, or 1.75 times its baseline.
Today's 10:05 minute ran at 19.0 divided by 22.0, or 0.86 times its baseline.

The lunch minute was slow in absolute terms and busy for lunch. The 10:05 minute was fast in absolute terms and below its own normal. Keep the number of sessions fixed, because a baseline built on three days moves far more than one built on twenty.

Bursts inside one minute

A one minute rate averages out the bursts. Here is the 14:02 minute split into six ten second windows.

Window	Prints	Contracts	Prints per second	Contracts per second
0 to 10 s	20	100	2.0	10
10 to 20 s	25	150	2.5	15
20 to 30 s	180	2,100	18.0	210
30 to 40 s	30	150	3.0	15
40 to 50 s	20	100	2.0	10
50 to 60 s	25	100	2.5	10

The third window holds 78 percent of the minute's contracts. For those ten seconds the tape ran at 210 contracts per second, more than three times the 10:05 average. The one minute average of 45 contracts per second does not show that burst.

Window length is a setting. Pick one, write it down and keep it for every comparison.

What tape speed does not tell you

Tape speed does not show direction. The 180 prints in the burst could be mostly buys, mostly sells or an even split. The side column or a delta reading answers that question.

It does not show resting size. A burst that trades 2,100 contracts into a bid holding 3,000 leaves the price where it was. The DOM or a heatmap shows the resting orders.

It also depends on how the platform groups fills. One aggressive order for 40 contracts that fills against eight resting orders can print as eight rows or as one. The note on why your tape and another platform's tape do not match works through that case. Contracts per second does not change with grouping, which makes it the safer number to compare across platforms.

Where to measure tape speed

NinjaTrader has a Time and Sales window built in. ATAS lists Smart Tape on all plans. Jigsaw daytradr builds its ladder workflow around Depth & Sales and a Reconstructed Tape. Bookmap includes Time & Sales in its core desktop product. Liquivue has no verified standalone time and sales window. Its trade bubbles plot each trade on the heatmap, so a burst shows as a cluster of bubbles beside the resting orders, but you need a tape elsewhere for an exact print count.

A check you can run

Pick three minutes from today's session at 10:05, 12:35 and 14:00 New York time. For each one, count the prints and add up the contracts. Divide both by 60. Then find the same three minutes on yesterday's session and work out today's figure as a multiple of yesterday's.

Educational content about market data and charting software. It is not trading or investment advice. Trading involves risk.