A Discounted View

Recently, Crude oil (Crude) traded below its range it had formed over the past three months.   Typically narrow trading ranges like the one exhibited by Crude are followed by swift expansions. This time was no different. One technical tool that is used to measure a trading range is Bollinger Bands. Bollinger Bands were developed by noted Technician John Bollinger. They are volatility  bands that are placed two standard deviations above and below a moving average. As such, the bands naturally widen when price ranges expand and narrow when the standard deviation of price decreases .  In practice, a 20 period moving average is used to plot the average value of price over the past twenty days. Then, the 20 period standard deviation is subtracted and added to the midpoint value to create the lower and upper bands, respectively. Traders can use the upper and lower bands as well as the moving average to generate trade signals . For example, when Crude closed below the boundar