Volatility & Drawdown
Volatility and drawdown
Volatility, 30d annualised
Volatility, 90d annualised
Max drawdown, 365d
Days of history used
Return, 7d
Return, 30d
Return, 90d
Return, full window
Computed from 365 daily closes for BTC. Volatility is the standard deviation of daily returns over the window, annualised by the square root of 365 — it measures how much the price moves, not which direction. Max drawdown is the largest peak-to-trough fall inside the year. All four are descriptions of the past; none of them forecasts anything, and a low reading is not safety. Source and freshness: see our methodology.
What this tool shows
Four risk statistics for one asset, computed from the daily closes we hold: annualised volatility over 30 and 90 days, the largest peak-to-trough fall inside the window, and returns over 7, 30, 90 and 365 days. Choosing a different asset reloads the page, so the tool works with JavaScript switched off.
How volatility is calculated
It is the standard deviation of daily percentage returns over the window, multiplied by the square root of 365 to put it on an annual footing. That last step is a convention, not a prediction: it lets you compare a 30-day reading against a 90-day one, and against other assets, on the same scale.
The crucial property is that volatility has no direction. An asset that rose 5% a day for a month is extremely volatile. A high reading tells you the size of the moves, not which way they went, and a low reading is not the same thing as safety — an asset can drift quietly downwards for a year at very modest volatility.
How max drawdown is calculated
It walks the series forward, tracks the highest close seen so far, and records the largest percentage fall from any of those peaks to a later trough. It answers a question volatility does not: how bad did holding this actually feel at the worst moment.
Read it together with the break-even arithmetic. A 50% drawdown requires a 100% gain to undo, which our break-even calculator makes concrete.
The window, and what it is not
The window is however many daily closes we hold — up to 365, and fewer for recently listed assets. The tool prints the number it used, so you always know. Every figure here describes the past. None of it forecasts the next day, and a statistic computed over one particular year is not a property of the asset.
Frequently asked questions
Why is annualised volatility so much larger than daily moves? The square-root-of-time scaling: a 2% typical daily move annualises to roughly 38%.
Is high volatility bad? It is neither good nor bad on its own. It determines how large a position can be before the swings exceed what you can hold, which is what the position size calculator is for.
Why do only some assets appear in the list? Only those with a genuine daily history in our cache. We would rather omit an asset than compute statistics from a series we do not have.
Is this advice? No. See our disclaimer.