Glossary term
Range
Range is the difference between the highest and lowest prices of a security, asset, or index over a specific period.
Updated
Read time
What Is Range?
Range is the difference between the highest and lowest prices of a security, asset, or index over a specific period. Investors may look at a daily range, 52-week range, intraday range, trading range, or range over any chosen time window.
The term is broad, but in market context it is usually about price movement between a high and a low.
Key Takeaways
- Range measures the spread between the high and low price over a period.
- A wider range can suggest more price volatility during that period.
- A narrow range can suggest quieter trading, but it does not guarantee low future risk.
- Range can be measured intraday, daily, weekly, yearly, or across custom periods.
- Range is descriptive. It does not explain why the price moved.
How Range Works
If a stock trades as high as $52 and as low as $48 during the day, its daily range is $4. If an index reaches 5,300 at its high and 5,000 at its low during a month, its monthly range is 300 points.
Investors use range to understand how much prices moved during a period. Traders may use range to think about volatility, support, resistance, stop placement, or position size.
Common Range Measures
Range type | What it measures |
|---|---|
Intraday range | High minus low during one trading day |
52-week range | Highest and lowest prices over the past year |
Trading range | Price band where an asset has been moving over a period |
Average range | Typical high-low movement over several periods |
Limits of Range
Range tells investors what happened, not what caused it. A wide range could reflect news, illiquidity, earnings, panic, a normal volatile session, or a temporary trading issue.
Range also leaves out direction. A stock can have a wide range and finish unchanged, or it can have a narrow range while trending steadily.
The Bottom Line
Range is the difference between the high and low price of a security, asset, or index over a chosen period. It is a useful price-movement measure, but it should be paired with volume, trend, volatility, news, and investment context.