Volatility
Plain definition. Volatility is how much prices move up and down. Bigger swings mean higher volatility and more potential risk.
Technical definition. FINRA defines volatility as the way market indexes and stock prices move up on some days and down on others, with more dramatic swings meaning a higher level of volatility and potential risk. For individual stocks, a common measure of volatility relative to the broader market is beta, which compares a security’s movements with those of a benchmark index that has a beta of 1. Beta tracks how a stock moves relative to the market, not its total volatility, so a stock can have high volatility but a low beta if its movements don’t correlate with market moves.
On this site
On this site, Volatility comes up in What does the evidence show about the risks of holding XRP, and how risky is it?, How volatile is XRP, and how closely does its price move with bitcoin and the wider crypto market? and What are the scheduled US inflation and jobs reports, and why do crypto commentators cite them?.
Source
Volatility | FINRA.org (finra.org), read October 1, 2026.