Oil price alerts: know when crude reaches your price

Setting an alert

1. Open the Alerts tab and tap the plus button.
2. Under Commodity, pick the price to watch. Free accounts can choose WTI or Brent; Pro accounts can choose any of the 15 prices in the app.
3. Under Alert When Price Goes, choose Above or Below. The current price is shown while you decide.
4. Enter the Target Price, per barrel for crude, in the currency you display prices in. On the free version that is US dollars.
5. Tap Create Alert and allow notifications when asked. Without notification permission, the alert has no way to reach you.

Alerts can be switched off, edited or deleted from the same tab, and the same alerts are available in the iPhone and Android apps.

How the alert is checked

Each time the app's price service records a new price, it compares it with every active alert on that commodity. If the price is at or beyond your level, at or above it for an Above alert or at or below it for a Below alert, you get a push notification such as "WTI Crude Oil has fallen below" followed by your price. While futures are trading, from Sunday evening to Friday afternoon New York time, new prices are recorded every few seconds. Benchmarks published once a day, such as Dubai or the EIA's weekly retail averages, are checked when the new figure arrives.

A triggered alert stays on, but it won't fire again for 30 minutes, so a price that hovers around your level doesn't fill your lock screen. If the level no longer matters, switch the alert off or delete it.

Choosing levels worth an alert

An alert is most useful when it marks a price that would change what you do. Common ways to use one:

• A budget line. A business that buys fuel, or a household that heats with oil, can set a Below alert at a price that made earlier purchases cheaper and an Above alert where costs start to hurt.
• Round numbers and recent extremes. Whole-dollar levels and the past month's high and low are where news coverage and many market participants pay attention.
• A band around today's price. One Above and one Below alert a few percent away will tell you when the market makes an unusually large move. That takes two alerts, so it needs Pro. The calculator on this page shows how far any level is from the current price, in dollars and percent.
• Two benchmarks. To follow both crudes, or the gap between them, set one alert on WTI and one on Brent. There is no alert on the Brent-WTI spread itself.

Alerts report what the market did. They don't predict where it is going, and they are not trading advice.

What an alert can't do

• It isn't an order. Nothing is bought or sold when an alert fires.
• It can't promise your exact price. The notification goes out on the first recorded price at or past your level. In a fast market, or when trading reopens on Sunday evening after weekend news, that price can be some distance beyond it.
• It depends on your phone. Notifications that are turned off, Focus modes and a weak connection can delay or hide an alert.
• It watches a price, not a percentage. To catch a 5% move, set the level 5% away from the current price.

Notifications for the weekly EIA reports

Separately from price alerts, the app can tell you when the EIA publishes its Weekly Petroleum Status Report, normally on Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m. Eastern, and its natural gas storage report, normally on Thursdays at 10:30 a.m. Eastern. Both regularly move prices when they come out. The switch is called EIA Weekly Reports in the app's settings. For what the alert levels refer to, see the oil price today.