The rules
- NR4, NR7, NR21: the latest finished bar’s high-low range is the narrowest of the last 4, 7 or 21 bars, itself included. Crypto’s forming daily candle is left out until it closes.
- ID/NR4: an NR4 bar that is also an inside bar (its high is below and its low above the previous bar’s).
- NR breakout: the latest close is above the high (or below the low) of an NR4-or-narrower bar 1–3 bars back, and every close since the first one outside stayed out.
- Narrow-range days: NR4-or-narrower bars among the last 10 finished bars. 3 or more marks a market that keeps coiling.
- WR7: the latest bar’s range is the widest of the last 7, the opposite of NR7.
About this setup
- What it is
- NR7, popularised by Toby Crabel, is a day whose range is the narrowest of the last seven. Narrow ranges tend to come before wider ones, because volatility moves in cycles of contraction and expansion.
- How traders use it
- Traders mark the high and low of the narrow-range bar and trade a break of either side, often with a stop on the other side, which keeps the risk small. NR21 and ID/NR4 are stricter versions; WR7 shows where the expansion has already happened.
- Caveats
- A narrow range doesn’t say which way the break will go, and the first break often fails and reverses. Narrow bars are common in quiet markets around holidays and before big announcements.
Calculated in your browser from daily candles; crypto’s daily candle is still forming until 00:00 UTC, so today’s values can change. Not investment advice.
Frequently asked questions
Which markets can it scan?
Four, picked with the Market buttons above the table. Crypto (the default) scans the 250 busiest USDT pairs on Binance. Crypto perps scans the 200 busiest USDT perpetual futures on OKX. Both are free public data and need no key. US stocks scans about 600 US stocks and ETFs with your own free Alpaca key, and CME futures scans about 25 front-month CME Group contracts (stock indexes, Treasuries, oil, gas, metals, grains, livestock, currencies and CME bitcoin) with your own free Massive key.
Why do stocks and futures need a key?
Stock and futures prices are licensed data, so a website can’t hand them out for free. Alpaca (for stocks) and Massive (for futures) give anyone a free data key. Your key is saved only in your browser and sent only to that provider. See how to get a free Alpaca key and how to get a free Massive key for futures.
Is the data real-time?
Crypto and crypto perps are live from Binance and OKX, on daily candles that start at 00:00 UTC (today’s candle is still forming). Alpaca’s free stock data is 15 minutes behind the market, and Massive’s free futures plan is 8 hours delayed. Turn on auto-refresh next to the results to update the table in place every 30 seconds, minute or 5 minutes.