Above +100 unusual strength · below −100 unusual weakness.
The short answer
- What is the Commodity Channel Index (CCI)?
- Commodity Channel Index: the typical price's deviation from its average ÷ the mean deviation.
- When does CCI get it wrong?
- No upper limit: a reading of +300 is possible and does not mean a reversal. Its current reading on platform symbols, at the last daily close, is in the "Reading now" table on this page. Reading now →
Reading now
| Ticker | Value | Five sessions ago | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| SPY | 94.57 | 189.54 | Between −100 and 100 |
| QQQ | 9.90 | 126.32 | Between −100 and 100 |
| IWM | −106.83 | −38.45 | In the lower zone (below −100) |
| DIA | 88.34 | −31.64 | Between −100 and 100 |
A description of where the number sits against its thresholds. It is not an entry or exit signal.
Indicator limit
No upper bound: a reading of +300 is possible and does not mean a reversal.
Read it with
Average True Range: with no upper limit, ATR tells you whether a large reading is a volatility expansion rather than a reversal.
Answers: Has the move stretched?
What it actually does
The Commodity Channel Index measures how far price is from its average relative to its usual deviation: how far today's price strays from the center compared with its normal straying. It was designed for seasonal commodities and spread to all assets. Its range is unbounded, unlike oscillators confined between zero and 100.
How it is read in practice
The two classic thresholds are +100 and -100: crossing them means an unusual move away from the center. There are two schools of use: reversal (an extreme is treated as a contrary signal) and breakout (a move beyond +100 is treated as confirmation of upward strength). The two seem to contradict each other, and the environment decides which one fits.
Why its range is open
Because it isn't normalized between two limits: a reading of +300 is possible and means an exceptional move away. That makes it more useful for spotting outlier moves than bounded oscillators, which saturate at 100 and can't tell strong from stronger.
Hypothetical example
A stock jumps on news and its indicator reaches +280. The extreme itself is information: the move is outside this asset's usual distribution. A reversal trader sees an opportunity, and a momentum trader sees confirmation. What decides it is the market regime, not the indicator.
Where it errs and why
The ambiguity of its two schools is its biggest risk: the same reading is interpreted as buying and as selling depending on the school. Its open range makes comparison across assets meaningless without historical normalization.
Read it with
Read it with trend strength, which settles the right school today. Read it with True Range to tell a real extreme from the noise of high volatility. And read it with volume, which separates a supported move from an empty one.
Where to see it on the platform
The technical chart shows it among the momentum oscillators, and the market regime panel gives the classification that settles how to read it.
