So, for our example iron condor, this means that you take 1 minus 1.35 divided by 5. You don’t want to trade the iron condor as a long straddle and short straddle. Best Iron Condor Strategy for Income Investors. The position profits when the stock price rises. All we have to do is construct the “iron condor.” Iron Condor Construction. The probability that it will stay in this wide zone over the next 30 days – the length of our trade – is high. Short Call Spread) at the upper end of the range. To create such a wide profit zone range, you need to sell two credit spreads: Bear Call Spread (a.k.a. An iron condor spread is constructed by selling one call spread and one put spread (same expiration day) on the same underlying instrument. When we do iron condor trading we have to keep in mind that the potential loss is always bigger than the generated profit. An iron condor spread has a wider sweet spot than an iron butterfly. Iron condors are made up of either a long strangle and short strangle or a bull put spread and bear call spread. ... Use the Profit + Loss Calculator to establish break-even points, evaluate how your strategy might change as expiration approaches, and analyze the Option Greeks. For 8400 and the 7600 to be hit every time the chances are low, therefore its much better to trade Iron Condor than a reverse iron condor. That means when the market grinds higher, that's the true risk. The strategy is called "Iron" as its construction is made with both calls and puts as apposed to a standard Long Condor or Short Condor where the legs are exclusively calls or puts. You may not think that the upside risk is the real risk, but in this QE-driven market, non-directional upside volatility tends to be a big problem. To calculate the max loss for an iron condor, subtract the credit received from the width of the widest spread. Now lets calculate our max loss in the trade. Optimized Iron condor – A better way to trade Iron Condors As mentioned above, it is impossible to optimize IC without a dedicated program. Typically, both sides of an iron condor (the put and call side) have the same spread width. And lets calculate the maximum profit this trade can make: To make the maximum profit on expiry Nifty has to be above 8400 or below 7600. But (as always) there’s a tradeoff. A well-crafted Iron Condor strategy represents not only a conservative income-producing version of credit spread income investing, it is a credit spread technique that is operating on steroids in the monthly income production department. Iron Condor Profit Calculator A long iron condor strategy has four legs and consists in selling one OTM put, buying one OTM put with a higher strike price, buying one ITM call and selling one ITM call with a higher strike price. The iron condor option trading strategy is designed to produce a consistent and small profit. You take 1 minus the ratio of your initial credit collected to the width of the spread. A long call is a net debit position (i.e. Let’s go through the easy way to calculate an iron condor’s probability of profit. the trader pays money when entering the trade). There are too many parameters to control: Implied volatility, Skew, time to expiration, stock volatility the distance and price of 4 options, and more. Iron condors do best when there is a drop in volatility or when we have mean-reverting volatility. 23+36-6-11 = 42 points. The call buyer has limited losses and unlimited gains, but the potential reward with limited risk comes with a premium that must be paid when entering the position. An Iron Condor is a 4 legged option combination where all legs are bought/sold in the same expiration month. But even then the loss is capped to a certain amount. Even though they make up an iron condor, straddles offer a very different trade than you originally intended. In this case, your potential profit is lower.