Markets / Commodity intelligence
Volatility.
In perspective.
A familiar pattern, or a different market?
Explore crude oil, natural gas and gold against their historical rhythm.
Monthly report / August 2026
Crude oil / WTI
Average daily range
Published 08 Sept, 14:54 UTC. Next report: the 1st of next month, covering this month. Gaps are in percentage points (pp), with relative differences in brackets.
01 / The rolling year
How unusual was the month?
Completed calendar months, compared with the matching historical month.
| Month | Observed | Historical month | Gap | Sessions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 2025 | 2.51% | 2.70% | -0.19 pp (-7%) | 21 |
| October 2025 | 2.65% | 2.80% | -0.15 pp (-5%) | 23 |
| November 2025 | 2.52% | 3.00% | -0.48 pp (-16%) | 19 |
| December 2025 | 2.28% | 2.60% | -0.32 pp (-12%) | 22 |
| January 2026 | 3.37% | 2.80% | +0.57 pp (+21%) | 20 |
| February 2026 | 3.46% | 2.60% | +0.86 pp (+33%) | 19 |
| March 2026 | 10.71% | 2.90% | +7.81 pp (+269%) | 22 |
| April 2026 | 7.88% | 2.70% | +5.18 pp (+192%) | 21 |
| May 2026 | 5.74% | 2.50% | +3.24 pp (+130%) | 20 |
| June 2026 | 5.01% | 2.40% | +2.61 pp (+109%) | 21 |
| July 2026 | 4.95% | 2.30% | +2.65 pp (+115%) | 22 |
| August 2026 | 3.86% | 2.50% | +1.36 pp (+54%) | 21 |
In progress / September 2026
4.26% average daily range
+1.56 pp (+58%)
4 completed sessions. Provisional; today’s open session excluded.
Across commodities
August 2026 at a glance.
Published monthly metrics and gaps against the matching historical month.
| Commodity | Average daily range | Average absolute daily change | Daily return standard deviation | Range gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crude oil | 3.86% | 2.06% | 2.67% | +1.36 pp (+54%) |
| Natural gas | 3.36% | 1.73% | 2.13% | +0.06 pp (+2%) |
| Gold | 1.58% | 1.15% | 1.51% | +0.48 pp (+44%) |
Sources, calculations & monthly updates
The historical reference
Imported from Commodity_Volatility_Analysis.xlsx. The workbook contains summary values, with no dated underlying observations, source provider, or precise metric definitions. Those figures are preserved as a fixed reference; they are not independently verified historical estimates. Historical gold is labelled XAU/USD in the source.
The updated observations
Public delayed futures data from Yahoo Finance: WTI (CL=F), Henry Hub natural gas (NG=F) and gold futures (GC=F). Gold futures are a proxy for spot gold. These series are not Capital.com quotes. Contract rolls can affect daily changes. Quotes refresh every five minutes while this page is visible, subject to the feed’s own delay; they are not an exchange real-time feed.
Daily range = (high − low) / previous session close. Daily change = absolute close-to-close return. Monthly values are means of daily observations; standard deviation uses signed daily returns and the sample denominator (n − 1), without annualisation. The previous session close is carried across month boundaries. Today’s unfinished daily candle is excluded. Weekday groups use the exchange session date.
The rolling table contains the last 12 completed calendar months, with the current month shown separately as provisional. Monthly history is re-fetched to reflect provider corrections. The monthly report is stored separately on the 1st at 04:00 UTC for the previous month, with a daily retry at 04:30 UTC if needed. Invalid, stale or incomplete data never replaces the last successful report.
Reading the gap
Each monthly gap compares an observation to the same calendar month in the fixed reference. Percentage-point gap = (actual − reference) × 100. Relative gap = actual / reference − 1. Different instruments or calculation definitions can contribute to these gaps.
Corrections to workbook summaries
Event averages use all eight event rows (the summary sheet omitted one). Highest-impact events are OPEC for crude oil, EIA gas storage for natural gas and NFP for gold; the summary sheet’s labels pointed to different rows. Intraday summary statistics are calculated from the 144 brackets. Tied extrema show the first matching period. No composite ranking score is used.
Reference fingerprint: 27197dc6d163c7d3 · Live snapshot fetched 08 Sept, 17:20 UTC · Daily observations through 2026-09-04.
Market context for research; no trading recommendation.