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Topic
Volatility
28 guides in Finabase Learn
- Average true range (ATR) A volatility measure averaging each bar's true range, which includes any gap from the prior close; usually over 14 periods.
- Average True Range (ATR): volatility, stops and position size How Wilder’s Average True Range measures volatility including gaps, a worked Micron example, using ATR for stops and position sizing, and how Finabase computes it.
- Beta A measure of how much a stock tends to move with the market; a beta of 1.5 means it has moved about 1.5 times as much on average.
- Beta: market beta explained, and what Finabase’s BETA study shows What beta measures, how the regression slope is calculated, why McDonald’s market beta was near zero in 2026, and what Finabase’s 5-bar BETA chart study measures.
- Black Monday 1987: the 22.6% crash and why circuit breakers exist What happened on October 19, 1987, how portfolio insurance and broken market links deepened the fall, how the Fed responded, and how circuit breakers followed.
- Bollinger Bands Bands set two standard deviations above and below a 20-period moving average, widening and narrowing with volatility.
- Bollinger Bands: formula, the squeeze and walking the bands How Bollinger Bands set a two-standard-deviation envelope around a 20-day average, a worked IBM example, the squeeze and band walks, and how Finabase scores them.
- Circuit breaker An exchange-wide trading halt triggered when the S&P 500 falls 7%, 13% or 20% in a day, giving markets time to pause.
- High-wave candle: what it means, TA-Lib rules and test results How to identify a high-wave candle, the double-shadow rule Finabase’s detector applies, why its label follows body color, and what 3,876 real cases did next.
- How crypto markets differ from stocks: hours, venues and volatility Why crypto trades 24/7 on fragmented venues with no market-wide halts, how its volatility compares with SPY in a year of daily data, and what spot ETFs changed.
- Implied volatility The future volatility the market is pricing into an option, backed out from its premium with a pricing model.
- Iron condor A four-leg options strategy that sells an out-of-the-money put spread and call spread, profiting if price stays in a range.
- Limit up-limit down (LULD) A US mechanism that pauses trading in a single stock when its price moves outside a percentage band around its recent average.
- Long-legged doji: rules, the TA-Lib quirk and real results How a long-legged doji differs from a plain doji, why TA-Lib flags exactly the same 4,119 candles for both, and how to find the genuinely wide ones.
- Normalized ATR (NATR): volatility as a percentage of price How NATR turns the Average True Range into a percentage of price, a worked Uber example, comparing volatility across stocks with Micron, and Finabase’s NATR.
- Risk and return: volatility, drawdowns and the equity premium Why higher expected returns come with bigger swings, how to measure risk with volatility and drawdown, and what five years of SPY and AGG data show.
- Short squeeze A rapid price rise driven by short sellers rushing to buy back borrowed shares, which feeds the very rally that is forcing them out.
- Short squeeze: how it works, warning signs and the GameStop case What a short squeeze is, how short interest, days to cover and borrow costs set one up, and what the SEC staff found about GameStop in January 2021.
- Standard deviation A statistic that measures how widely values spread around their average; in finance, the standard yardstick for an asset’s volatility.
- Straddle An options position that buys (or sells) a call and a put with the same strike and expiration, a bet on how much a stock moves rather than which way.
- The COVID crash of 2020: the fastest bear market and recovery How the S&P 500 fell 34% in 33 days in February–March 2020, the four circuit-breaker halts, the Fed and CARES Act response, and the record set by August 2020.
- Trading halt A temporary stop in trading of a single stock or the whole market, ordered for pending news, extreme price moves or regulatory concerns.
- Trading halts and Limit Up-Limit Down (LULD) pauses explained Why US stocks get halted, how news-pending halts and SEC suspensions differ, and how LULD price bands, limit states and 5-minute pauses work, with examples.
- Vega The option Greek that estimates how much an option’s price changes for each one-point change in implied volatility.
- VIX Cboe's volatility index, computed from S&P 500 option prices, measuring the market's expected 30-day volatility; often called the fear gauge.
- Volatility How much and how quickly a price moves up and down, usually measured as the annualized standard deviation of returns, historical or implied.
- Volatility and the VIX: historical vs implied volatility explained How historical and implied volatility differ, what the Cboe VIX measures and how it is built, what its 1990–2026 history shows, and why VIX products behave differently.
- What is bitcoin? How it works, its supply cap and its price history How bitcoin’s network, proof of work and 21 million coin schedule work, with halving arithmetic and twelve years of price and drawdown data.
Educational content, not investment advice. Finabase Learn explains how markets and tools work. It does not recommend any security or strategy, and examples are for illustration only. Investing involves risk, including the loss of principal. Rules and figures are for the United States unless stated and can change — check the cited source before you act.