Iron Condor Calculator

The arithmetic

The default sells the $95 put and $105 call and buys the $90 put and $110 call, for a net credit of $2.20 ($220 per condor).

• Max profit = the credit, $220, anywhere between $95 and $105 at expiration.
• Max loss = (wing width − credit) × 100 = (5 − 2.20) × 100 = $280, beyond $90 or $110.
• Breakevens = $92.80 and $107.20 — short strike minus/plus the credit.
• Profit zone = a $14.40 band, roughly ±7% around the current price.

The two numbers that decide whether a condor is worth trading

First, the credit relative to the wing width. Taking $2.20 on $5 wings is unusually generous and would only appear on a genuinely volatile underlying; a more typical condor collects a fifth to a third of the wing. Widen the wings on this page and watch max loss grow much faster than the credit does.

Second, the width of the profit zone against how much the underlying actually moves. A ±7% band over 30 days is comfortable on a large index and nearly hopeless on a single high-beta name into earnings. The condor is not a view on direction, it is a view on range — so the only question that matters is whether the range is wide enough for this specific underlying over this specific period.

Why condors feel better than they are

An iron condor placed sensibly wins most months. That is by construction, not by skill: you have sold the tails and kept the middle, and the middle is where prices usually finish. The losses, when they come, are several times the size of the wins and they cluster in exactly the periods when everything else in a portfolio is also going wrong. A run of green months tells you almost nothing about whether the position is priced correctly.

The only honest test is a full record: every condor logged when it was opened, with its credit and strikes, and the outcome attached afterwards. Remembering the ones that expired worthless is not a track record.

Managing the untested side

When the underlying drifts toward one wing, that side is "tested" and the other is nearly worthless. Many traders close the whole structure at 50% of maximum profit rather than hold to expiration, on the reasoning that the last half of the credit takes the most time and carries the most gamma risk. This chart shows the expiration payoff, so it cannot express that decision — but it does show why the last few dollars sit right next to the cliff.

Where the 100x multiplier comes from

Product specification, not convention: OCC defines a standard equity option as covering 100 shares, premium quoted in points where one point is $100^[1] — so a $1.85 premium costs $185, and every payoff here applies that multiplier to the leg structure.

One exception is worth knowing about: adjusted contracts, covered on the options profit calculator.

Calculating it is the easy half

Four legs, one credit, two breakevens — all arithmetic. The payoff is arithmetic — anyone can run it. What it cannot show is whether you believed the trade when you put it on, or are describing a winner picked out of a month of noise.

That is the gap kappi closes: the position committed before the fact, sealed and timestamped on a log nobody can edit afterwards. A screenshot of this chart proves you can use a calculator; a sealed commit proves you took the trade. $15/month, no free tier.