What is Realized Volatility? This is also known as historical volatility and serves as a way to quantify and express how much an asset has been moving in the past. Technically, realized volatility is a backward-looking measure that takes a sample of past returns and calculates the annualized standard deviation. Related articles What is Regular / Contango? What is Risk-Reversal? What is a Gamma Profile? What is the Rule of 16? What is Long Skew?