Brent Crude technical indicators: RSI, moving averages, 52-week range

Metric definitions & methodology

This page reports market statistics computed from daily closing data. It states figures and their historical context only — no interpretation, ratings, targets, or forecasts.

RSI (14) — Relative Strength Index

Introduced by J. Welles Wilder in New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems (1978): a 14-period smoothing of average gains versus average losses (RSI = 100 − 100 / (1 + average gain / average loss)); the 14-period Wilder recursion runs over a trailing 252-session window. By Wilder’s convention, readings above 70 are termed overbought and below 30 oversold (some practitioners use 80/20). This page reports the value and its own-history percentile without labelling the instrument. The displayed value is today’s reading from that recursion; the percentile compares it against this instrument’s entire available history.

20-day volatility

Sample standard deviation of the last 20 daily simple returns, expressed as a daily percentage, and also shown annualized (×√252). This is realized (historical) volatility, computed from past closes — not implied volatility.

ATR (14) — Average True Range

Wilder’s 14-period average of the daily true range — the greatest of (high − low), |high − previous close|, and |low − previous close| — computed over a trailing 252-session window. Reported in USD/bbl and as a percentage of price.

Moving averages

Simple (unweighted) means of the closing price over the trailing 20, 50, and 200 sessions.

52-week range position

Where the latest close sits between the lowest low and highest high of the last 252 sessions, as a percentage (0% = period low, 100% = period high).

N-day returns

Simple close-to-close percentage change over each trailing horizon shown (in trading sessions).

Volatility by rate-era (cycle)

Mean daily realized volatility (sample standard deviation of daily returns) within each US-rate-cycle window: ZIRP-2009 (2009-01 to 2015-11), tightening-2015 (2015-12 to 2018-12), ZIRP-2019 (2019-01 to 2021-12), tightening-2022 (2022-01 to 2023-12), easing-2024 (2024-01 onward); pre-crisis covers dates through 2008-12. Where an instrument’s history starts mid-era, the first available date is noted.

“Percentile of own history”

Each percentile ranks today’s reading against this instrument’s own past readings of the same metric — not against other instruments. The basis is labelled “since YEAR (N observations)”. Flat placeholder bars (days a feed stamped a single settle price, so open = high = low = close) and the current unfinished session are excluded, so N counts genuine trading sessions and can be fewer than the calendar days since that year. Percentiles appear only once enough history exists to compute them. The rank is empirical with no interpolation: the count of past readings strictly below today’s value, plus half of any exactly equal to it, divided by the observation count (the midrank rule for ties). Dividing by that count places the percentile in [0, 100), so a fresh all-time extreme reads just under 100 rather than exactly 100.

Session (open, high, low, prior close)

The current session’s raw daily bar: opening price, intraday high and low, and the previous session’s close. Reported as-is from the daily feed.

Gap (overnight)

The opening price versus the prior session’s close, as a percentage ((open − prior close) / prior close). It isolates the overnight move — the part of the day’s change that happened before the session opened — from the intraday move. Reported as a fact, not a signal.

Intraday range

The session’s high minus its low, as a percentage of the close. It shows how much the price actually travelled during the session, which a close-to-close change alone can hide (a near-flat close can still be a wide-range day).

Close position

Where the close settled within the session’s high–low range (0% = at the low, 100% = at the high). Withheld on the rare bar whose close falls outside its own high–low, where a position figure would be undefined.

Relative volume (RVOL)

Today’s reported trading volume divided by its own trailing 20-day average volume. Because it is a ratio it is scale-free — it reflects how today’s activity compares to the recent norm, independent of any multi-year drift in this contract’s overall trading volume. The percentile ranks today’s RVOL against this instrument’s full history of daily RVOL readings.