Definition
Plain language
How wildly a price swings around.
As stated in the literature
Dispersion of returns over a window, typically reported as standard deviation or an average true range; used here as one of the dashboard indicators.
Also called: volatility range
Why it matters: It captures how unpredictable a price is in the short run, which is often more relevant to risk than the direction the price is heading.
For example, a stock that moves a few cents most days has low volatility, while one that jumps five percent up and then four percent down has high volatility.
Heard on the show
“The volatility reading and the market-regime label are invented.”Episode 251 — When a Fake Dashboard Makes an AI Agent Just as Confident