The 5-day range measures absolute price movement across five consecutive trading sessions, so it reads volatility independently of direction. The 5-day range percentage standardizes that expansion over a rolling five-session window, so today's reading stays comparable to one from years ago even as the share price changes.
The calculation
5-Day Range % = (Highest High − Lowest Low) / Lowest Low × 100
Core principle
The range uses wick-to-wick extremes, the highest high and the lowest low across the five sessions, not closing prices. It measures the full price territory visited during the trading week.
The range is the distance between the highest high and the lowest low across the five sessions.
Key characteristics of the metric
Percentage over dollar value: the page shows a dollar figure for clarity (for example, $14.78 on SPY), but every calculation uses the percentage, so readings stay comparable across years and across share prices.
Rolling window: the five-day window rolls forward every day. It always covers the most recent five trading sessions, not a fixed calendar week.
Direction neutral: a 2% range means price covered 2% of ground and says nothing about direction. A straight 2% rally and a 2% week that whipsaws and closes flat produce the identical reading.
Raw percentage readings vary widely by asset class: a 2% 5-day range is routine for a leveraged ETF but wide for a mega-cap utility. To solve this, the tool converts each raw range percentage into a relative percentile rank against the stock's own historical distribution.
Ranked against itself
The tool calculates the 5-day range on every daily bar, ranks the full distribution, and shows where today sits as a percentile. A 2.00% reading on SPY can rank tighter than 70% of SPY's own days, landing near the 30th percentile. The same 2% move sits at a different percentile on another name, which is what makes the reading comparable from one ticker to the next.
Today's reading sits somewhere among all the past ones, and the readings closest to it become the sample.
Building the historical sample set
Once today's percentile rank is established, the tool isolates the past sessions whose own range percentile sat closest to it, forming the matched sample set that every forward number is measured from:
Step
Action
Objective
1
Calculate today's 5-day range %
Standardize the current wick-to-wick movement
2
Rank it against the ticker's own history
Place the reading in the context of that asset's norms
3
Gather the closest historical matches
Form the sample used to compute forward odds and projections
On SPY that sample came to 97 occurrences. The count tells you how much evidence sits behind the forward numbers; how closely those days resemble today is the next chapter.
Analyst caution
A percentile ranking is only as good as the record behind it. A name that has traded only a few years is ranked against those few years, so a single macro event can shift its percentile far more than it would for a name with a long record. The page presents both the same way.
Chapter 3
Distribution Extremes: The Tails
Not all sample sets are equal. The reliability of the forward projections depends heavily on where today's reading lands within the historical distribution.
In the middle of the distribution many past days sit close to today, so the sample is a close match. In the tails few days do, so the matched days are less like the current week.
Middle distribution versus tail extremes
Reading position
Percentile zone
Match density
Reliability
Normal regime
40th to 60th
High: a dense cluster of similar days
High: the sample reflects closely comparable conditions
Extreme regime
Below 5th or above 95th
Low: few similar days on record
Use caution: the matched days are less like today
Practical takeaway
When a range reading sits deep in the tails, tighter than 2% of days or wider than 98%, treat the forward projections with heightened caution: the stock has very few comparable days there, and the ones that do match can be noticeably different from the current week.
Chapter 4
Price Projections
The banner across the top carries today's reading and what followed the sample.
The Range Read
The first cell gives the raw range in percent and dollars, the percentile in plain words, and a label. In the worked example SPY read:
5-Day Range: 2.00% ($14.78) · Tighter Than 70% of Days → TIGHTER THAN USUAL
The label just translates the percentile into words. It carries no view on direction or on what to do next.
The forward cells
Two horizons, each dated so you know exactly what period is being described, and each split three ways:
Horizon
Green/red odds
Avg green
Avg red
Next day
56% / 44%
+0.62%
−0.39%
Next week
59% / 41%
+1.37%
−1.07%
Measured on SPY, 21 July 2026, from a sample of 97 matched days.
As with every tool in this family, the averages are one-sided. "Avg green" only averages the up outcomes, and "avg red" only averages the down ones. Always read them next to the odds. Never look at the averages by themselves.
Both horizons here lean green, and both have up-moves larger than the down-moves. That is a favorable-looking combination.
Careful
People often call a tight range a coiled spring ready to release, but if the forward odds look ordinary, the fair conclusion is that a tight range did not predict much on this ticker.
Chapter 5
The Three Charts
One Chart View toggle, three ways of looking at the same sample of matched days: the Price Cone, the Bar Graph and the Chart Log.
1. Price Cone
The default. It projects forward 45 sessions from today's price, drawing the percentile bands of what the matched days actually did, converted into prices.
Median line (50th percentile): the central outcome of the sample, not a target.
Cone width (10th to 90th): how much the matched days disagreed. A narrow cone means consistent outcomes; a wide one means high variance.
2. Bar Graph
This asks a different question: how often did price travel a set distance, and how quickly? You choose the move size, and the chart answers in both directions at once. Green bars above the line show the share of matched days that rose that far within a given number of days; red bars below show the share that fell that far.
By Touch vs By Close
Setting
What counts
Use it for
By Touch
Any intraday high or low that reached the level, even if price came back before the close
Path risk: stop-loss triggers or intraday margin
By Close
Only a daily close beyond the level
Settlement risk: holding-period targets or trend sustainability
Touch numbers are always equal to or higher than close numbers. A wide gap between the two flags heavy intraday movement that did not hold into the close.
3. Chart Log and the event register
The Chart Log shows the full price chart with every matched day marked, so you can see the wider context each time the same setup appeared. Below it, the event register lists every matched day with its date and its forward return.
Any column sorts, which makes it easy to find the largest gains and worst drawdowns in the sample. Those extremes often matter more than the average when you are sizing a position.
The front page runs the same analysis across every ticker at once, so you can compare this week's ranges without opening them one at a time.
The range columns
5-Day Range % and 5-Day Range $: the same reading shown in both percentage and dollar terms.
Typical 5-Day Range: the midpoint of that stock's normal range, so you can see at a glance whether this week is running above or below it.
Tighter Than: the percentile expressed in plain language.
Range Read: the label that translates the percentile.
Price Projections
The same projections from Chapter 4 appear here: avg green, avg red, and the odds, shown for next day and next week.
Each figure is calculated from that ticker's own matched days. The numbers are therefore not comparable side to side in the way they look. Two rows both showing 59% are each describing their own stock.