TickDirection (FIX tag 274)

charFIX 4.4FIX 4.2

TickDirection (tag 274) is a char field defined in FIX 4.4 and FIX 4.2. It appears in 2 message types, always optionally. It is an enumerated field with 4 defined values.

At a glance

Tag: 274
Name: TickDirection
Datatype: char
Dialects: FIX 4.4 and FIX 4.2
Messages: 2
Valid values: 4

What the specification says

FIX 4.4

Direction of the "tick"

FIX 4.2

Direction of the "tick".

Descriptions are quoted from the FIX Orchestra sources under the Apache 2.0 licence.

A real message using tag 274

MarketDataSnapshotFullRefresh · FIX 4.4

Tag	Field	Wire value	Meaning
8	BeginString	FIX.4.4
9	BodyLength	93
35	MsgType	W	Market Data-Snapshot/Full Refresh
49	SenderCompID	BOARTEAM
56	TargetCompID	COUNTERPARTY
34	MsgSeqNum	2
52	SendingTime	20240101-12:00:00.000
268	NoMDEntries2 entries	2	repeating group
269	MDEntryType	0	Bid
274	TickDirection	0	Plus Tick
269	MDEntryType	0	Bid
274	TickDirection	0	Plus Tick
10	CheckSum	028

Edit and decode it yourself

Shown with | separators for readability. On the wire FIX uses SOH (0x01), an invisible control byte — and because BodyLength and CheckSum are computed over the actual bytes, the two forms have different checksums. Both are valid and both decode here.

Open in the full decoder →

Generated from the FIX 4.4 dictionary and verified at build time: it parses and validates with no issues. Open the decoder to try your own message.

Valid values

A value outside this list is not a parse error — the message still decodes — but validate() reports it as validate/value-not-in-enum.

Value	Meaning	Symbolic name
0	Plus Tick	PLUS_TICK / PlusTick
1	Zero-Plus Tick	ZERO_PLUS_TICK / ZeroPlusTick
2	Minus Tick	MINUS_TICK / MinusTick
3	Zero-Minus Tick	ZERO_MINUS_TICK / ZeroMinusTick

Where tag 274 appears

Requiredness is a property of the message, not of the field: the same tag can be optional in one message and conditionally required in another.

Message	MsgType	FIX 4.4	FIX 4.2	Where in the message
MarketDataIncrementalRefresh	X	Optional	Optional	inside the MDIncGrp component
MarketDataSnapshotFullRefresh	W	Optional	Optional	inside the MDFullGrp component

Wire format

A single character. Most char fields are enumerated, so the value is one of a fixed set rather than arbitrary text. @boarteam/fix keeps the value as a string and, for enumerated fields, reports validate/value-not-in-enum when it is not a defined value.

Read tag 274 in TypeScript

decode.tsts

import { createFixEngine } from "@boarteam/fix";import { dictionary } from "@boarteam/fix-dict-fix44";const fix = createFixEngine(dictionary);const { message, issues } = fix.parse(raw);const tickDirection = message.fields[274]?.raw;// e.g. "0" — Plus Tick// The dictionary also carries the labels:const label = fix.dictionary  .fieldByTag(274)  ?.enumValues?.find((e) => e.value === tickDirection)  ?.description;

Decode this in your own code

The same engine that produced the decoded example above is an Apache-2.0 npm package with zero runtime dependencies. It runs in Node and in the browser, and parse() returns problems as data instead of throwing.

npm i @boarteam/fix @boarteam/fix-dict-fix44

Try the decoder Source on GitHub