When Does CL (Crude Oil Futures) Actually Move? Hourly Ranges on 5 minute Charts

Educational reference. Measured from 17,573 recorded 5 minute bars of Crude Oil through October 19, 2026.

09:00 is the busiest hour, averaging 0.2900 per bar — 4.1× 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 5 minute bar of Crude Oil, hour by hour, measured from 17,573 recorded bars over the last 90 days.

Hour (ET)	Median range	Bars
00:00	0.0900	766
01:00	0.1300	767
02:00	0.1800	768
03:00	0.2200	768
04:00	0.2500	768
05:00	0.2200	768
06:00	0.1900	768
07:00	0.2000	768
08:00	0.2300	768
09:00	0.2900	768
10:00	0.2600	768
11:00	0.2600	768
12:00	0.2200	768
13:00	0.1900	768
14:00	0.2000	763
15:00	0.1300	755
16:00	0.1250	756
17:00	0.1000	62
18:00	0.0900	697
19:00	0.0700	758
20:00	0.1400	757
21:00	0.1700	757
22:00	0.1300	762
23:00	0.1200	757

The spread across the day

The busiest hour is 09:00, averaging 0.2900 per bar. The quietest is 19:00 at 0.0700. That is a 4.1× 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 5 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.