CCI vs RSI: They Moved Together at a 0.85 Correlation, CCI Gave 3 to 4 Times the Overbought Signals, and the RSI Bounce Lost Less on 3 of 4 Charts

“CCI or RSI?” is one of the first questions people ask after they find the oscillator folder in MetaTrader. The standard answer is that RSI is bounded between 0 and 100 and CCI is not, so CCI “shows strength better”. That is true of the scale. Whether it changes the trades is a separate question, and it can be measured on the same bars with the same exit.

The full CCI test, with all five rules, is in CCI tested on forex. This page puts it next to RSI.

What is the difference between CCI and RSI?

Both rise when recent candles push away from the recent average and fall when they pull back. The formulas differ, the idea does not.

How was it tested?

• Data: EURUSD M5, 16,926 bars from June 3 to August 26, 2026; gold M5, 13,736 bars from June 16; M15 built from the same bars.
• Bounce rules: CCI 20 coming back inside ±100 against RSI 14 coming back inside 30/70. The RSI rule is the one from RSI trend vs overbought and oversold.
• Centre-line rules: CCI 20 crossing 0 against RSI 14 crossing 50.
• Same exit: stop 1.5 ATR, target 3 ATR, 48 bars, one trade at a time; 1 pip on EURUSD, $0.30 an ounce on gold.
• Is the gap real: 2,000 bootstrap resamples of the trade results. A gap counts as outside the noise if the 5th to 95th percentile range of the difference does not include zero.

How closely do CCI and RSI move together?

A correlation of 0.85 means that if you know where RSI is, you can guess CCI quite well. A small surprise: CCI 20 tracked RSI 14 more closely than CCI 14 did. RSI uses Wilder’s smoothing, which reacts more slowly than a simple average of the same length, so the longer CCI is the closer match.

The signal counts tell the rest. Almost every RSI bounce had a CCI bounce next to it. Most CCI bounces had no RSI bounce anywhere near. CCI is RSI with three times as many alarms.

Which one gives more signals?

The bounce signals differ because the levels mean different things. RSI 14 stayed inside 30/70 on 89% to 92% of bars on these four charts, so a move past 70 is rare. CCI 20 stayed inside ±100 on only 58% to 60% of bars. On the centre line the two fire about equally often, because both just ask whether price is above or below its recent average.

Which one lost less?

Pips on EURUSD, dollars an ounce on gold, trades in brackets.

On the bounce, RSI was ahead on three charts. On EURUSD M5 the RSI bounce made 0.46 pips a trade before cost and the CCI bounce lost 0.32, so CCI’s extra signals were worse than nothing even before the spread. Gold M15 went the other way, with a heavy RSI loss on only 110 trades, and the bootstrap could not separate the two there.

On the centre line CCI lost less on all four charts. On EURUSD M5 the gap was 0.44 pips a trade, just short of the noise line. One run here passed all three checks: RSI 14 crossing 50 on gold M5 made $0.29 a trade, made money in both halves, and beat the 95th percentile of random entries by $0.03. One pass out of sixteen runs, by three cents, is what chance alone tends to give.

Did it hold in both halves?

Mostly not. The RSI bounce on EURUSD M15, the only bounce with a profit, made 1.26 pips a trade before July 15 and lost 0.84 after. The CCI zero cross on gold M5 lost $0.39 in the first half and made $0.87 in the second. Only RSI 50 on gold M5 was positive in both halves, at $0.42 and $0.21. How often a rule that wins in one half fails in the next is in EA optimization, in sample and out of sample.

So should you use CCI or RSI?

• Do not use both as confirmation. At a correlation of 0.85 the second one mostly repeats the first. Two oscillators agreeing is not two pieces of evidence, as in indicator combinations tested.
• For overbought and oversold, RSI 30/70 is the quieter choice. It fired a quarter as often and lost less on three of four charts.
• For a centre-line read, the two are almost the same. CCI’s zero cross was slightly better here, but not by enough to trust.
• Neither is a strategy. RSI settings for longer charts are in RSI settings for swing trading, and a third oscillator in the same family in Stochastic vs RSI for scalping.

Frequently asked questions

Is CCI better than RSI?

Not for overbought and oversold. The RSI 30/70 bounce lost less than the CCI ±100 bounce on 3 of 4 charts. On the centre line CCI lost slightly less, within the noise.

Are CCI and RSI the same?

Close. CCI 20 and RSI 14 had a correlation of 0.85 to 0.86 on EURUSD and gold, M5 and M15. The scale differs: RSI is 0 to 100, CCI has no limits.

Why does CCI give more signals than RSI?

Because ±100 on CCI is a common reading and 30/70 on RSI is a rare one. CCI was outside ±100 on about 40% of bars, so it crossed back in 3 to 4 times as often.

Can I use CCI and RSI together?

You can, but they mostly say the same thing. About 76% to 80% of RSI signals had a CCI signal on the same side within 3 bars.