CCI Calculator (Commodity Channel Index)
Calculate Commodity Channel Index from typical price, SMA, and mean deviation.
Reads ±100 for normal range; ±200 for extreme overbought/oversold.
Donald Lambert published CCI in 1980 for commodity traders. It works on stocks and forex too — the name is historical. The formula:
CCI = (Typical Price - SMA of TP) / (0.015 × Mean Deviation)
- Typical Price = (High + Low + Close) / 3
- SMA = N-period simple moving average of TP, default 20
- Mean Deviation = average of |TP - SMA| over the same N periods
- 0.015 is a constant Lambert chose so that ~70-80% of values fall between -100 and +100
The 0.015 constant is the key. Lambert wanted “normal” market action to live inside ±100, with strong trends pushing past ±100, and extremes hitting ±200. He picked 0.015 to make that happen for commodities of the era. The constant is built into every CCI plot since.
Reading the value.
- Above +100: strong upward momentum
- Above +200: extreme overbought
- Between -100 and +100: trading range
- Below -100: strong downward momentum
- Below -200: extreme oversold
Lambert’s original rules. Go long on a cross above +100, exit on cross back below +100. Reverse for shorts. The system catches strong trending moves but eats whipsaws in chop. Most modern traders use CCI for divergences and as a second confirmation rather than as a standalone trigger.
Mean deviation, not standard deviation. This is what makes CCI different from a normalized z-score. Mean deviation is the simple average of absolute distances from the mean. It is less sensitive to outlier bars than σ would be. Stocks have rare massive bars; mean deviation keeps them from blowing up the indicator’s scale.
Why CCI on commodities first. Commodities have cyclical seasonality — corn, wheat, oil all move in repeating annual cycles. Lambert wanted an indicator that measured deviation from a mean expected by the cycle. The cycle assumption matters less now (CCI is used everywhere), but the math survived.
Worked example. Today’s H/L/C = 102.40 / 100.10 / 101.30. Typical Price = 101.27. 20-period SMA of TP = 99.85. Mean Deviation = 1.20.
- CCI = (101.27 - 99.85) / (0.015 × 1.20)
- CCI = 1.42 / 0.018 = 78.9
Solidly positive but inside the ±100 normal range. A close that pushes CCI above 100 would be the trend trigger.
How we build and check this calculator
This calculator runs entirely in your browser, so the numbers you enter stay on your device. The math behind it is written by hand and tested against worked examples and standard references before the page goes live.
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