Act 1 · Before · Smart strike selection

Don't guess where the price will go. Let the options market draw the range for you.

Our AI instantly draws the Expected Move range from the options chain on top of the technical chart, so you can pick a strike to sell a cash-secured put or a short call for the Wheel Strategy without guessing. A second mode, new on this screen, sizes a put or call credit spread: the short strike plus the bought wing, with net credit, max loss and ROI on the capital the broker actually holds. A strike outside the band is the visual definition of "the market has not priced this move in".

01

Pick the underlying and the expiry

Everything below recomputes from these controls. Target delta and target distance are your risk appetite; account size and the collateral (or buying-power) cap are what your broker will actually let you do. Switch to credit-spread mode to pick the sold strike and the bought wing, or a width in dollars or listed strikes.

Underlying
Expiry
Structure
Selling
Max delta 0.20
Min distance 1.00x EM
Account size (USD)
Max collateral / position
Wing
Strikes between short and wing 2
Width (USD)
Short strike (sold)
Long strike (bought wing)
Liquidity
02

The expected move, drawn on the chart

Daily candles on the left, the forward cone on the right. The shaded cone is what the options market is charging for movement between now and each expiry. Candidate strikes are drawn on the same price axis, so a strike sitting outside the cone is visibly outside the move the crowd has paid for.

Expected move cone

1x expected move (ATM straddle) 2x expected move 1 sigma from ATM implied vol (wider by design, 68%) Selected expiry Strike outside the move Strike inside the move Recommended short (SELL / PICK) Bought wing (BUY), credit-spread mode
03

Seller's strike board

One row per candidate for the selected expiry. In Wheel mode, EM x is the distance from spot in expected moves: 1.0x sits at the edge of the priced-in range. ROI is premium over collateral. In credit-spread mode the row is a short plus a bought wing: net credit, max loss (width minus credit), and ROI on that max loss, annualised so a 7-day and a 45-day spread are comparable. Liquidity is graded on both legs; either one being illiquid fails the pair.

Candidate strikes

Strike Dist % EM x Delta P(ITM) Credit Liquidity Collateral Size ROI Annualised
04

Expected move by expiry

Every listed expiry inside the 45-day window, both ways. The straddle is what the market is charging; the implied-vol figure is the textbook one-standard-deviation move. A large gap is not an error: it is event risk the flat model cannot express.

Term structure and the two methods side by side

Expiry DTE ATM K ATM IV Straddle EM EM % Band holds 1 sigma vs model EM range
05

How every number on this page is computed

No black boxes. Each figure below is reproducible from the chain snapshot embedded in this file.

Expected move — primary

At-the-money straddle mid: call mid + put mid at the strike nearest spot, multiplied by a factor of 1.00. The straddle is the market's price for the expected absolute move, which is 0.798 sigma, not one sigma.

Expected move — cross-check

spot x IV x sqrt(DTE / 365) using the average of the nearest call and put implied vol gives one standard deviation. Multiplying by sqrt(2/pi) = 0.798 converts it to the expected absolute move, which is what the straddle prices. Straddle vs model compares those two like for like; the 1 sigma column shows the wider 68% band unchanged.

Assignment risk

Probability in the money is the Black-Scholes risk-neutral N(d2) from journal/optmath.py, the same pricer the rest of this toolkit uses. Delta is shown beside it as the trader's shorthand; the two agree to within a point or two for out-of-the-money strikes.

ROI and annualised return

Credit divided by collateral. A cash-secured put ties up strike x 100; a covered call is collateralised by the 100 shares you already own, so its base is spot x 100. Annualised is ROI x 365 / DTE, which is what makes a 7-day and a 45-day strike comparable.

Liquidity gates

A great ROI on a wide market is not real. Strikes are flagged on spread as a percentage of mid, on open interest and on today's volume.

Account risk

Contracts affordable is the lesser of your account size and your per-position collateral cap, divided by the collateral for one contract. A strike whose collateral exceeds available buying power is marked and never recommended.

Credit spreads (new)

A put credit spread sells the higher put and buys a lower one; a call credit spread sells the lower call and buys a higher one. Net credit is short mid − long mid, times 100. Max loss is width − credit. ROI is credit / max loss — return on the capital a US broker holds against a defined-risk vertical, which is also the buying-power reduction. Assignment risk and expected-move distance are those of the short. Either leg failing the liquidity gate fails the pair. This mode was not on the previous version of this screen.