When Does CL (Crude Oil Futures) Actually Move? Hourly Ranges on 1 minute Charts

Educational reference. Measured from 87,085 recorded 1 minute bars of Crude Oil through October 19, 2026.

09:00 is the busiest hour, averaging 0.1200 per bar — 6.0× the quietest hour at 19:00.

The same stop is a different stop at different times of day. This is the median high to low range of a single 1 minute bar of Crude Oil, hour by hour, measured from 87,085 recorded bars over the last 90 days.

Hour (ET)	Median range	Bars
00:00	0.0300	3,764
01:00	0.0500	3,807
02:00	0.0700	3,824
03:00	0.0900	3,834
04:00	0.1000	3,836
05:00	0.0800	3,832
06:00	0.0800	3,822
07:00	0.0800	3,826
08:00	0.0900	3,835
09:00	0.1200	3,839
10:00	0.1100	3,835
11:00	0.1100	3,839
12:00	0.0900	3,840
13:00	0.0800	3,836
14:00	0.0800	3,795
15:00	0.0500	3,752
16:00	0.0500	3,748
17:00	0.0500	61
18:00	0.0300	3,552
19:00	0.0200	3,586
20:00	0.0500	3,761
21:00	0.0700	3,763
22:00	0.0500	3,746
23:00	0.0400	3,752

The spread across the day

The busiest hour is 09:00, averaging 0.1200 per bar. The quietest is 19:00 at 0.0200. That is a 6.0× difference across the same instrument, the same timeframe, the same trading day.

A stop sized for 19:00 conditions will be caught routinely at 09:00, and a stop sized for 09:00 gives away far more than it needs to overnight. The same number of points does not mean the same thing at every hour.

How this was measured

Every 1 minute bar of Crude Oil recorded in the last 90 days was grouped by the hour it opened, in Eastern time. The figure shown is the median of high minus low within each group — the middle bar of that hour, not the average, so a single outlier session cannot distort it. Hours with fewer than 60 recorded bars are omitted rather than shown on thin evidence.

These are recorded market ranges, not predictions. Nothing on this page is a projection.