What does negative covariance indicate about the values of two variables?

In statistics, a negative covariance indicates that two variables have an inverse relationship. Specifically, it signifies that as the value of one variable (X) increases, the value of the other variable (Y) tends to decrease.1

While covariance is a useful measure of association for determining the direction of a relationship, it does not indicate the strength of that association because its magnitude is dependent on the units of the variables involved. For a more precise understanding of the relationship, statisticians often prefer using correlation, which is a normalized version of covariance that provides both direction and strength on a standardized scale.1