OptionBench — options scanner suite (5 scanners), launching in June — looking for beta-testers

[Romuald]

 

Hi all,

I'm Romuald, an options trader and member of SO. Over the past several months I've been building a scanner suite called OptionBench, primarily to scratch my own itch — I wanted a tool that surfaces credit-spread and pre-earnings setups with transparent methodology, without hype and signal-service noise.

Then, in the future V2 version of the tool, there will be a powerful and fast options-strategies-backtester.

Public launch is targeted for June 2026. Before that, I'd like to (1) show the community what it does, (2) get critical feedback from people who actually trade options seriously, and (3) recruit a small group of beta-testers who'll get free access during the beta phase.

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What OptionBench does — V1

In the V1 there will be five scanners, a "Today" landing dashboard, and a two-week trade calendar. The UI is intentionally sober — no flashy graphics, no countdown timers, no upsell pop-ups.

"Today" dashboard

Single landing view with the day's top CPS / CCS picks (Top Score + Best POP/Risk for each side) and the upcoming earnings/events on your watchlist.

 

Weekly calendar (This Week / Next Week)

Buy-dates aggregated from all scanners across the current week and the next, filterable by win rate, cycles, years of history, and liquidity grade. Click any cell to jump straight to the underlying scanner row.

  

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The five scanners

1. IV Scanner

Scans ~100 tickers daily for IV Rank 12m, HV Rank 1y, IV/HV ratio, term structure (1M/3M), 25-delta put skew, and a directional bias signal. Useful for premium-selling candidate selection.

 

 

2. Pre-Earnings Scanner

For tickers with upcoming earnings, runs historical analogues across Long Straddle, Long Strangle ATM, Double Diagonals and Calendar Put strategies (TP +10% / +20%). Roughly 10 years of options history, win rate by buy-day (T-15 to T-1), Ret%, RV, IV Rank, liquidity grade.

 

 

3. Pre-Events ETF Scanner

Same idea but for ETFs around macro events: FOMC, CPI, NFP, ISM PMI. Backtest on every historical occurrence of each event. Shows upcoming dates with T-X countdowns and ranks setups by win rate, Ret%, and liquidity.

 

4. Credit Put Spreads ETF (CPS)

26 liquid ETFs (broad indices, sector SPDRs, international, commodities, bonds). Vectorised Monte Carlo (5,000 sims) for POP, Days-to-Close, and Touch probability.

 

5. Credit Call Spreads ETF (CCS)

Mirror of CPS for bearish setups. Same universe, same engine, same metrics.

 

Beta-tester recruitment

I'm looking for a small group (target ~10–20 people) of active options traders to use OptionBench during the beta phase, free of charge, in exchange for substantive feedback — what's broken, what's missing, what's misleading, what would make you stop using your current scanner, what would make you switch.

If you'd like in: send me a PM with your email address and a one-line note on what you currently trade (credit spreads, pre-earnings, premium selling, IV plays, etc.) so I can balance the cohort across use cases.

 

Not interested in the beta but want to be notified at launch? You can leave your email directly on the site: https://www.optionbench.com (waitlist form on the homepage — no spam, just a launch ping).

And — if you have feedback, objections, or features you'd want to see in V1, I'd genuinely rather hear it now than after launch. Reply here or PM, both work. Critical feedback especially welcome.

Thanks for reading.

— Romuald

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Past performance does not guarantee future results. OptionBench is not a financial advisor and does not recommend any specific trading strategy. Options trading involves substantial risk and may result in significant losses. This tool is for research and educational purposes only.

 

 

 

[Romuald]

Here is an interesting discussion with Srini M:

 

Romuald 889

Replied: 16 hours ago · IP 

  17 hours ago, Srini M said:

Hi - my 2 cents..

- How is this different from stockmarketguides.com/marketchameleon?

- you also have to have videos on how to use each tool in different ways. some sites have very good videos that we hardly have to spend time figuring out things. 

- most sites dump you with lots of info, mostly useless stuff, what i am looking for is - find the most profitable trades with the minimal amount of time. 

Regards

Srini

 

Hi Srini,

thanks for the honest feedback — those are exactly the right questions.

How is OptionBench different from MarketChameleon?

MC is a great general-purpose options data platform — they cover earnings 
strategies, IV scans, unusual options activity, and a lot more. We're going 
in a more focused direction:

- We only scan a curated universe (26 liquid ETFs for credit spreads, ~80 
  stocks for pre-earnings) instead of the whole market — the goal is depth 
  over breadth on the setups that actually work for retail credit-spread 
  traders
- Every metric shows its uncertainty: POP comes with a confidence band 
  (e.g., "93.32% ± 0.91"), not just a single number. Backtests show 
  sample size warnings (Low / Medium / High confidence based on number 
  of historical analogues)
- We Monte-Carlo every credit spread across 12 DTEs × 7 delta pairs × 
  5 take-profit levels (5,000 sims each) — the scanner doesn't pick 
  one "right" setup, it shows you the entire opportunity surface and 
  scores them
- Pricing target ~50% of MC, single tier, no upsell pressure
- We publish negative results too — when we backtest a strategy and it 
  doesn't have edge, it gets archived as "tested but not deployed", not 
  buried. Keeps us honest with ourselves and users.

Different positioning, not better — we're a focused tool for traders who 
already know credit spreads and want depth, not a one-stop shop.

On videos / quick learning

Fair point and I agree. For the beta, I'll have a Quick Start guide 
(5-min read) and 2-3 short walkthrough videos focused on the most-asked 
workflows: 
1) "I have 30 minutes, find me 3 credit spread candidates" 
2) "Pre-earnings setup walkthrough on a real ticker" 
3) "What do all these metrics mean and which ones matter most"
Tooltips on every metric in-app too.

On "minimal time to find profitable trades"

That's literally the design philosophy. The "Today" briefing on the 
homepage shows the 4 best CPS picks, 4 best CCS picks, this week's 
earnings tickers, and upcoming macro events — all curated, not raw 
data dumps. The full scanners are there if you want to dig deeper, 
but the homepage is built to answer "what's worth my time today".

Beta starts in a few weeks. If you want to test it and call out 
where we miss the mark, I'd genuinely value the feedback.

Romuald

Disclaimer: not financial advice, options trading involves substantial risk.

 

[TrustyJules]

Looks like a great tool but I dont have time to assess before June. 

[Romuald]

 

Beta testing OptionBench — a worked example on SPY Calendar Puts before NFP

Hi all,

 

I'm putting the finishing touches on https://www.optionbench.com , a research tool I've been building over the past months for options traders. It scans liquid US tickers across multiple strategy types (Credit Spreads, Long Strangles, Long Straddles, Calendar Puts, Double Diagonals, IV anomalies, pre-earnings and pre-event setups) and ranks historical performance per setup. The goal isn't to give signals — it's to surface candidates worth a closer look, with the math and the historical record laid out for you.

I'm looking for a few more beta testers and early users before public launch. If you're interested, reply or DM me.

To give you a concrete sense of what the tool does, here's a worked example from this morning's scan.

 

Scanner: Pre-Events ETF

This scanner looks at four recurring US macro events (FOMC rate decisions, CPI, NFP, ISM Manufacturing PMI) and backtests four option strategies around each event window: Long Straddle, Long Strangle, Calendar Put, and Double Diagonal. For each combination of (ticker × event × strategy × buy day from T-15 to T-9), it computes a win rate, average return, and various risk/structure metrics across all historical occurrences (up to 5 years). Take-profit thresholds are fixed per strategy (TP +10% for straddles/strangles/double diagonals, TP +20% for Calendar Puts).

 

 

 

The setup

The scanner flagged this row:

 

 

 

• Ticker: SPY
• Strategy: Calendar Put
• Setup: ATM strike (Δ ≈ -0.50), short exp 1 week after event, long exp 2 weeks after event, TP +20%
• Buy day: T-13 (13 business days before the event)
• Next event: NFP on June 5, 2026 (currently T-6, so the trade window has been open for 7 trading days)
• Backtest: 80.6% win rate over the last 3 years (36 cycles), average return +4.8% (losses included)

In other words: buying an ATM Calendar Put on SPY 13 business days before each NFP release, holding until either TP +20% is hit or the short leg expires, would have been profitable in 29 of the last 36 NFP cycles, with an average return of +4.8% across all cycles.

 

The detail view

Clicking the row opens a per-cycle chart.

Each colored line is one historical NFP cycle. The y-axis is the Calendar Put value in dollars over time, the x-axis is days before the event (T-13 to T+0 and beyond, since Calendar Puts can be held past the event due to the longer leg). The fuchsia dashed line is the current cycle — the trade that, per the rules, should already be open as of today (we're at T-6).

The purple-tinted zone marks the active trade window (T-13 to T-5, since after T-5 you're carrying single-leg risk only).

 

Filtering noise

36 cycles is a lot of lines. The OUTCOMES toggle hides the in-trade trajectories and shows only the exit points: green for "TP hit before the short expires", red for "no TP, exited at short expiry". You can see the distribution clearly — most exits are green, and many happen well before the event.

 

 

Focusing on the live cycle

Most useful for an actual trader: unselect all historical series and keep only the current cycle.

 

You get a clean view of how today's trade is tracking.

Hovering T-8 shows that the TP of +20% was actually hit 5 trading days ago: entry was $1.65 at T-13, value reached $1.99 at T-8 → +20.6% return. So in real terms, this trade would already be closed in profit.

The tooltip also shows "Ranked 5/36 historical cycles" — meaning today's entry price was the 5th highest of the 36 historical cycles. We paid up. But the trade still worked, which is the interesting part of this example.

The lower subplot tracks relative value (Calendar Put cost divided by spot), where today's entry ranked 15/36 — squarely in the middle of the historical distribution. So while the absolute dollar cost was high (SPY is at all-time highs), the cost relative to spot was unremarkable.

 

 

What I'd like from beta testers

• Use the tool over a few sessions
• Tell me what's confusing, what's missing, what's wrong
• Suggest scanner ideas or metrics that would help your actual workflow

The tool isn't a black box: every number on the dashboard maps back to an explicit, documented calculation, and I'm happy to walk through the methodology with anyone interested.

 

Reply here or DM to sign up.

 

— Romuald

https://www.optionbench.com

 

 

 

 

[Romuald]

An 85% win rate. Would you take this trade?

Here's a setup that came up on TLT this week — the kind that looks like the sensible, high-probability play.

A bull call spread, built defensively: buy the 82 call (deep in the money, delta 0.87), sell the 85 call (at the money, delta 0.51), 46 days out. Spot is sitting right at $85, your breakeven is down at $84.08, so you're already through breakeven before the trade does anything.

 

This image is from the Trade Doctor of my upcoming website https://app.optionbench.com/

After clicking on "Analysis, doctor!", here are the resuts (a few seconds later):

The simulation gives it an 85% probability of profit.

Eighty-five percent. Deep in the money. Breakeven already behind you.

Would you take it?

I almost did. Then I ran it through the diagnostic I've been building, and it asked three questions the win rate doesn't.

Question 1 — What's the payoff?

The spread costs $2.08. Its maximum win is $92. Its maximum loss is $208.

Read that again. You're risking $208 to make, at best, $92 — you can lose more than twice what you can win. And it gets tighter, because the plan is to take profit at +15%, which on a $2.08 debit is about $31. So the reward you're actually reaching for is roughly $31, against $208 at risk.

That's the deal hiding behind "85%": win small, win often, and when you lose, lose several times the size of a win.

Question 2 — What's the expectancy?

Run the Monte Carlo and the average P&L comes out at +$0.08 per share — about 4% of the capital at risk, over an average holding period of eleven days. It's positive, which matters. But it's thin. You're committing $208 of capital to harvest a few dollars of edge, and the 85% win rate is most of what makes the trade feel like more than that.

 

Question 3 — Is this even a good version of this trade?

This is the one that got me. I ran a few neighbouring strikes on the same underlying, same expiration. Some of them carried a similar 85%-plus win rate with two to three times the expected value. Same probability of profit on the surface. A completely different edge underneath.

If you sort your ideas by win rate, these trades look interchangeable. They aren't. The number that ranks them — expected value relative to capital — is the one that never makes it onto the headline.

The point

To be clear: this isn't a blow-up trade. It's defined risk — the loss is capped at the debit, and the tool says so. The danger here isn't ruin. It's quieter than that: a high win rate, a tiny payoff, and a thin edge you can't see if "85%" is the only number you look at.

Win rate is the most seductive statistic in options and the least informative on its own. It tells you how often you'll be right. It says nothing about how much you make when you are, how much you lose when you're not, or whether the trade two strikes over is quietly three times better.

How many "high-probability" trades have you taken that looked exactly like this one?

To help you, the Trade Doctor shows up a validation checklist and some advice:

Where this comes from

This is Trade Doctor, one of the tools at OptionBench. You build a position leg by leg and it runs a statistical health check before you trade — probability of profit, yes, but also the expected P&L relative to the capital you're risking, the loss profile, liquidity, implied-vol context and event risk. Probability is one line on the checklist. This shows you the rest of it.

OptionBench is entering beta. Beta testers get free access to every tool — Trade Doctor, the BOSS strategy scanner, and the rest — for June and July. If you've already signed up to test, you'll receive an email shortly inviting you to log in. We've had a great response and the beta list is well filled, but if a few more of you would like to put the tools through their paces, send me a DM and I'll get you in.

— Romuald

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Figures are from a live TLT options chain (TLT @ $85.00) and are for research and educational purposes only. OptionBench is not a financial advisor and does not recommend any strategy. Options trading involves substantial risk and may result in significant losses.