EarningsStudy research tools

[Kim]

We've Partnered with EarningsStudy — Free Core Access for SteadyOptions Members (with all services bundle subscription) 

 

Every so often we come across a tool that fits what this community is actually about — doing the work, understanding the trade, and not paying a fortune for the privilege. We've found one, and we've arranged something for you.

We're pleased to announce a partnership with EarningsStudy, an earnings-focused options analytics platform. As a SteadyOptions member with Subscription to all service bundle, you get access to EarningsStudy's full core platform at no cost — the same membership their private members pay for, opened up to our community.

 

Why we partnered with EarningsStudy

We don't put the SteadyOptions name behind tools lightly, and we don't recommend anything we wouldn't use ourselves.

What won us over is that EarningsStudy isn't a product spun up overnight to ride a trend. @krisbee along with me @Kim has been building and refining the platform for more than four years — through every kind of earnings season and every kind of market. That's the same patient, do-the-work mindset our members will recognize.

Just as important is the intention behind the offer. Our goal is simple: give back to the trading community by putting the core features in as many serious traders' hands as possible — free, for as long as possible. That's not a limited-time gimmick to harvest sign-ups. It's the reason this partnership exists, and it's why it sits so naturally alongside what we do here.

EarningsStudy's private membership normally runs at an introductory $39.99/month — itself a deliberately discounted, early-access rate. Through this partnership, your access to the core platform is fully complimentary.

What you get as part of core features

Everything below is part of the access you're being given:

• Earnings calendar — Every upcoming report across 1,000+ tracked symbols, so you spot high-conviction setups early instead of scrambling the morning of.
• 12 options strategy models — Straddles, strangles, iron flies, calendars and double diagonals, call debit spreads, and long options — each modeled and ranked by expected edge so you compare apples to apples.
• Expected move & volatility — See exactly what move the market is pricing into the print, before and after it happens, instead of guessing.
• Side-by-side strategy comparison — Stack candidate strategies against one another for the same name and event, and let the numbers pick the winner.
• Post-earnings outcome analysis — Learn how comparable setups actually resolved after the report, so your decisions are grounded in history, not hope.
• Peer earnings view — Read a company against its peer group to catch the read-through plays others miss.
• Personal watchlists & favorites — Track only the names and setups you care about, and surface them instantly.
• Track your strategy setups — Follow a setup from the moment it catches your eye all the way through the print. Pin the strategies you're watching, see how their pricing and expected move shift as the event approaches, revisit the history behind each one, and review exactly how it played out afterward — so every setup you track becomes a lesson that sharpens the next one.
• Fresh data, daily — The whole platform is refreshed every day, so you're acting on what's true now.
• …and a lot more — These are the headlines, not the full list. The platform rewards the curious, and you'll keep finding tools the deeper you go.

And this is just the core. EarningsStudy also has an additional layer of advanced features still in the wings — capabilities that aren't part of the free core offer yet. As they're released, our members will be among the first to see them.

How to get in

EarningsStudy has set this up in two paths, depending on your SteadyOptions plan.

All services bundle SteadyOptions members — you're already pre-approved

If you hold the all services bundle SteadyOptions membership, your EarningsStudy application is pre-approved. There's nothing to wait for.

1. Go to https://earningsstudy.com/
2. Sign in with the same email address you use here on SteadyOptions
3. Complete the short onboarding questionnaire
4. That's it — every core feature unlocks immediately

Because you already hold the full membership, EarningsStudy has cleared the approval step in advance. Just bring your existing email, answer a few quick questions, and you're in.

On another SteadyOptions plan — register and you're on the list

Not on the all services bundle membership? You're still welcome.

1. Register at https://earningsstudy.com/ using the same email you use on SteadyOptions
2. You'll join EarningsStudy's early-access waiting list. Once approved, it's $39.99/month.

Access is opening in waves as EarningsStudy scales up its servers to handle the volume — so registering now secures your spot in line. The sooner you sign up, the sooner you're in.

In the spirit of SteadyOptions

This is exactly the kind of thing we like to do. SteadyOptions has always stood for educating traders and handing them the real tools to stand on their own — not gatekeeping, not hype, just giving our community what it needs to trade independently and well.

Most of the time that means writing: breaking down strategies, sharing trades, explaining the why behind every decision. This goes a step further. Rather than only writing about how to read an earnings setup, we're putting the actual platform that does it into your hands. Articles teach; tools empower — and today you get both.

Consider it a thank-you to a community that has always given generously, alongside a partner who clearly wants to do the same.

Earnings move fast. Now you'll see them coming.

— The SteadyOptions Team

 

NOTE: Any questions/issues, send DM to @krisbee @Kim

[krisbee]

 

Unlocking EarningsStudy's Daily Screener

The Daily Screener — one of EarningsStudy's most-used tools, and until now reserved for SO Contributors — is being opened up to all Subscribers, free of charge. If you've been curious what the Contributors have been working from each morning, this is it, and now it's yours too.

What the Daily Screener does

Every trading day, the Daily Screener surfaces the names with earnings on the immediate horizon and lays out how the market is pricing them across EarningsStudy's strategy models — straddles, calendars, strangles, iron flies, double diagonals, long options, and call debit spreads,... — in a single, sortable view. Instead of hunting name by name, you get the day's opportunity set on one screen, ready before the bell.

A couple of things worth knowing

It's a daily tool — check it daily. The screen is built around what's reporting now. It refreshes each trading day, so its value is in the habit: a quick morning look to see which setups are live before the window closes. Yesterday's screen isn't today's.

It's built for comparison, not just a list. Each candidate is shown with strategy-level context and historical win-rate framing, so you're weighing setups against one another on their merits rather than reacting to a single number. If a name trades weekly options, you can fold those into the view as well.

It's a research tool, not a signal service. The Daily Screener is there to sharpen your own judgment and point you toward setups worth a closer look — not to tell you what to trade. As always, do your own diligence before putting on any position.

How to access it

• Already using EarningsStudy? The Daily Screener is now in your sidebar — just sign in and open it.
• Not signed up yet? Register at https://earningsstudy.com/ with the same email you use on SteadyOptions, and you'll have it alongside the rest of the core platform.

This is exactly the kind of thing we set out to do with this partnership: take the tools that were once behind an extra tier and put them in the hands of the whole community. More to come.

— The SteadyOptions Team

 

 

[krisbee]

 

New on the Daily Screener: a liquidity check on every setup

 

 

@FrankTheTank recently asked me a question that's harder to answer than it sounds: "How many of these setups could I actually get filled on?"

It's the right question. A screener can show you a beautiful historical edge — high win rate, strong median return — on a name whose options trade so wide that the edge exists only on paper. The backtest gets a clean theoretical price; you get the spread. Wide bid-ask markets are how a good-looking backtest quietly becomes a bad live trade, and most tools simply don't warn you.

So now the screener does. Every symbol on the Daily Screener carries an NBAS value — a normalized measure of how wide its options markets are, derived from the same market data the historical numbers are built on. Lower = tighter markets = the numbers on your screen are closer to something you can actually have. You don't need to know anything about how it's computed to use it: it's color-coded right in the table — green is tight, amber and orange are questionable, red is wide, and a "—" means the name had no measurable liquid options at all, which is its own answer.

 

 

How to use it

Next to the Return and Win % filters there's a new Spread (NBAS) dropdown. Select the tightest bucket and the board shrinks to names where the market is liquid enough that the historical numbers deserve your attention. When a spread filter is active, unknown-liquidity names are excluded too — if liquidity can't be measured, that's a caution flag, not a free pass.

 

 

 

The honest part

Building this taught me something I wasn't fully expecting, and I'd rather tell you than have you discover it the hard way: once you screen for liquidity honestly, a lot of the board falls away. Far more names than you'd guess carry markets too wide to trade well — including some with genuinely impressive historical stats. That's not a flaw in the backtests; it's the difference between an edge that existed in the data and an edge you can collect. This column exists to keep those two things from being confused.

Two caveats so nobody over-reads the number:

It's a relative ranking, not a fill forecast. The measurement comes from end-of-day data, and closing markets run wider than what you'll typically see intraday on liquid names. Use it to compare names against each other and against the backtest's own pricing basis — not as a prediction of your fill cost tomorrow morning.

A tight spread is a prerequisite, not a signal. Green doesn't make a setup good — it just means the market will let you have it near a fair price. It filters out false edges; it doesn't create real ones.

Before shipping, the values were cross-checked against independent live quotes on several names and lined up well. The number measures what it claims to measure.

 

 

 

 

That screenshot is the whole reason this feature exists: a setup with strong historical stats that you should almost certainly never touch, because the market for it barely exists. Before this column, that row looked identical to a real opportunity.

My updated morning routine

Open the Daily Screener → set the Spread filter to the tightest bucket → then start reading win rates and medians. Liquidity first, edge second. An edge you can't collect isn't an edge, so there's no point evaluating it.

This feature shipped because someone here asked for it — which is how most of the platform gets built. Curious about the methodology details? They're documented inside the app for members. And if there's a number you wish the screener showed, or a question you keep answering by hand, say so here or DM me. The fastest way to get a feature is to complain about its absence.

 

Thanks to @FrankTheTank @Bhavan1986 for sparking the idea & and to my teammates @Kim @Yowster @TrustyJules for helping shape the app!

 

How to access it

 

• Already using EarningsStudy? The Daily Screener is now in your sidebar — just sign in and open it.
• Not signed up yet? Register at https://earningsstudy.com/ with the same email you use on SteadyOptions, and you'll have it alongside the rest of the core platform.

This is exactly the kind of thing we set out to do with this partnership: take the tools that were once behind an extra tier and put them in the hands of the whole community. More to come.

— The SteadyOptions Team

 

 

 

SO members on the ALL bundle: full core access to EarningsStudy is free through the partnership.

Everything above is historical/educational analysis, not a trade recommendation or financial advice. Options trading involves substantial risk. Liquidity measurements are from end-of-day data and will differ from intraday markets.

 

 

[FrankTheTank]

Thanks for adding the spread filter.  I find that helpful to weed out unrealistic trades.  

[krisbee]

 

Macro events are now drawn on the charts themselves — CPI, PPI, FOMC, JOBS, GDP, PCE

 

 

Quick feature note, because this one changes how the charts read.

 

You've had the macro events calendar next to the earnings calendar in the app for a while — FOMC, CPI, PPI, JOBS, GDP, PCE, laid out against the reporting slate. As of this week, those same events are also marked directly on the strategy charts: straddle, strangle, calendar, and long options pages all now show a marker on the exact trading day each macro event lands, both on the days already traded this cycle and on the days still ahead of the print.

Why I wanted this on the chart and not just on a separate calendar page:

 

1. It explains the bumps you're already looking at. When the RV line kinks up mid-cycle, the first question should always be "was that earnings drift, or did CPI print that morning?" Before, answering that meant flipping between the chart and the calendar and counting days. Now the answer is sitting on the chart at the exact T-day it happened.

2. IV builds into known events — and your entry day might be one of them. Options premium tends to firm up going into a scheduled macro release and deflate after it passes. That means a position entered at T-5 the day before CPI is not the same instrument as one entered at T-5 the day after — even at the same distance from earnings. Part of what you're paying (or collecting) is macro vol, not earnings vol. Seeing the marker next to your intended entry day makes that visible before you commit, not after.

3. Event-on-event risk stops being a surprise. The screenshot below is [NVDA] — note [PCE] landing [right against T-0]. An earnings print with a major macro release stacked next to it is a different bet than a clean print: two catalysts, one position. That's exactly the kind of thing that's obvious on a chart and easy to miss on a list.

4. The days ahead are marked too, not just history. The chart shows the remaining trading days into the print with upcoming events already flagged — so if you're planning an entry at [T-x] and there's a [FOMC] marker two days before it, you can decide on purpose whether you want to be positioned through that release or enter after the dust settles.

 

Usual caveat, because I'd rather over-say it: these markers are context, not signals. Nothing about a CPI flag tells you which way vol resolves. What it does is make sure that when you're reading a median path across [N] historical cycles, you know which of those days were carrying a second event — and whether your planned path is carrying one now.

 

This came out of my own annoyance flipping between pages during CPI week — if there's an event type you'd want added, or you'd rather be able to toggle the markers off, say so here. That's how most of these features get built.

 

[PBJ]

is there a feature where you can save your scans or filters

[krisbee]

1 minute ago, PBJ said:

is there a feature where you can save your scans or filters

Yes, we released it last night. Check out "What's new" menu. 

[Yowster]

Thanks @krisbee for adding the macro events to the charts.  One thing to note, and it's an obvious thing but deserves to be noted - the macro events are for this cycle only, the prior cycles have no such ties to those event on a given T-x day.

[myang]

@krisbee @Kim Thanks for bring this tool to us! I just registered my account. Do I need to let them know I am a member of SO community? I don't have the all service bundle, so how long does it take to have the access to all the functions?

Thank you

[krisbee]

2 minutes ago, myang said:

@krisbee @Kim Thanks for bring this tool to us! I just registered my account. Do I need to let them know I am a member of SO community? I don't have the all service bundle, so how long does it take to have the access to all the functions?

Thank you

We see your account. Next steps, please check your email. 

 

[Kim]

Clarification in case it wasn't clear enough in the initial post:

All services bundle members get a free access to the tool as long as they keep their All services bundle subscription.
The rest can subscribe at incredible introductory price of $39.99.

As @krisbee continues adding new exclusive features, the price will go up, but those who join now are always grandfathered at the price they joined.

Personally I think the tool is worth at least $100-120/month, and it will get there eventually.

[krisbee]

Thank you @Kim — and welcome to everyone who registered this week.

A few of you asked what's actually inside. Fair question — the screenshots only ever show a corner of it. Here's the full picture, same platform for both paths: free with the All-services bundle for as long as you keep it, or $39.99/month at the introductory rate, grandfathered at whatever price you join at.

The scale of it first, because it's the part you can't see from a screenshot. This isn't one strategy with a win rate on top. The platform models 27 distinct strategy variants on every name:

• Calendars — put and call, each at monthly or 1–5 weeks: 10 variants
• Strangles — ATM, ATM+1, ATM+2 wings
• Iron Flies — base, wing 1, wing 2
• Double Diagonals — base, wing 1, wing 2
• Long options — 40Δ and 90Δ, calls and puts
• Straddles and call debit spreads
• Few more strategies to be opened for public soon

Every variant gets its own full return matrix — entry day × exit day, median historical return per path, every underlying earnings cycle preserved. Across 2,000+ symbols with backtested history, that comes to over 191 million backtested entry-to-exit outcomes sitting behind the screens — recomputed as new cycles complete, refreshed every trading day. When a tile shows you "Win 88%", the cycles behind it are one click away, with the VIX each one happened under. No summary stat without its receipts.

How you actually use it, day to day:

• The Summary page — type a symbol, get the whole picture on one screen: next earnings date, current setup, where today's relative volatility sits against that name's own history, and the suggested structure. It's the "should I even look closer?" page.
• The Daily Screener — every name opening an entry window, across all variants at once, filterable by median return, win rate, strategy, weeklies, and spread. Liquidity (NBAS) is one gate among several, not the headline — probability and consistency do the ranking; the spread column just keeps the backtest honest about fills.
• The return matrix — the deep dive. Compare entering T-12 vs T-5, exiting before the print vs holding through it. Click any cell for the cycle-by-cycle history.
• Holding through the print — the matrices don't stop at T-0. The T-0 → T+1 paths show what historically happened when a position was held through the release — for every variant, every name. Whether holding through earnings has historically paid or punished on your specific setup isn't a debate; it's a column.
• Post-earnings outcome analysis — after each print, see how the setups you were watching actually resolved, so the review loop is built in.
• Peer earnings view — read HD's print against TGT and WMT before they report. Read-through weeks are half the season.
• Macro events calendar — FOMC, CPI, PPI [+GDP/PCE/JOBS if live] next to the earnings calendar, because some weeks the vol you're buying isn't earnings vol. And it's not just a calendar: the same backtest engine runs on macro events too — 130,000+ backtested outcomes on straddles and strangles entered around scheduled macro releases.
• Watchlists, favorites, and setup tracking — pin a setup, watch its pricing and expected move evolve daily through the print, review it after.

Every tracked setup becomes a lesson.
And it keeps moving. Check the What's New page: 8 additional features shipped in the last 4 weeks (we are not even 2 months after go-live) — the spread filter, peer earnings date overlaying on RV charts, macro events overlaying on charts...— nearly all of them because someone here asked. Lately the pace has been one to two releases a week, and the roadmap is mostly this thread's questions, ranked.

If something's missing or confusing, DM @Kim or @krisbee — that's how the product gets built.

Everything in the platform is historical/educational analysis, not trade recommendations or financial advice. Options trading involves substantial risk.
 

[Kim]

Here is another cool feature.

Say you consider NVDA calendar, and you want to see how it performed in the past. It is one click away:

 

 

[krisbee]

 

Dashboard redesign is live — the app now starts with your day, not a blank search box

The dashboard got a ground-up redesign. The idea behind it: you shouldn't have to go hunting every morning — the first screen should already know what today looks like and what you care about. What's new:

Today, at the top. The day's report queue — who's in an entry window right now, before you've typed anything. Next to it, Your week: the full lane of what's coming, so Monday-you can see Thursday's setups forming.

"Opportunities for you" — with your definition of an opportunity. Three presets to start: Top winning trades (highest median return on the board, any structure), Most consistent (sorted by win rate, and only names with 2 to 3 years earnings cycles of history behind the number — no small-sample heroes), and Tightest spreads (lowest NBAS first, so tradeable markets rank ahead of wide ones).

"Where's your bar?" — the preferences wizard. This is the part I'm most pleased with. Tell the dashboard your standards once and it filters everything to match: minimum win rate, median return range, how much spread cost you'll tolerate, which structures you trade, weekly-options-only if that's your rule, and "only my symbols" if you want your watchlist and favorites and nothing else.

Filter by how the trade wins, not just what it's called. Every structure is tagged by its profit mechanism — IV crush (iron flies), needs a move (straddles, strangles, long options), near-strike + IV (calendars), IV + move (double diagonals). If you're only in the mood to sell the ramp, or only want defined-risk movement bets, one filter shows you just those setups. It's a small thing that changes how you scan.

Your tracked setups, front and center. Anything you're tracking from a strategy page now has its own panel on the dashboard — the day-by-day repricing you've pinned, waiting for you at login instead of three clicks deep.

And it's fast. 

Everything here came from watching how you all actually start your mornings — and several pieces trace straight back to questions asked on this thread. Keep them coming: if your first five minutes in the app still involve a workaround, that's the next thing I build.

 

[urfiend]

Hi Kim

Can you please explain how this calendar week comparison table works and how the selection of the eg put strike distance in the graph is selected. 

Would according to the calendar week comparison in this case a call calendar 1 w be even better?

Great site overall and so much to discover. Thank you.

 

 

[krisbee]

2 minutes ago, urfiend said:

Can you please explain how this calendar week comparison table works and how the selection of the eg put strike distance in the graph is selected. 

I'll add documentation about it later today.

[Bekim]

This is a great tool; it takes a lot of the guesswork on finding the sweet spot for an entry and whether to take or avoid a trade 

[krisbee]

 

 

@Bekim's AVGO calendar — shared with his permission

A member messaged me before market close today after closing out an AVGO calendar. Sharing it with his blessing (email address redacted):

Scaling out in thirds at +10%, +15% and +20% — that's the part I'd highlight, more than the ticker. He didn't swing for the best cell on the board; he set staged exits and let the position pay him on the way through. Exit discipline like that is what makes a good setup a good trade.

For anyone who wants to study the same setup after the fact, here's what the calendar matrix showed for AVGO in that entry window: Below is the Entry today row from return matrix.

And the standard honesty note, because one message doesn't change the math: a well-executed winner doesn't validate a strategy any more than one loser invalidates it. The losing cycles are still right there in the cell popup, and the next person opening this trade should size for them. What history gives you is a fair price for the bet — the discipline in how you enter, size, and exit is what this member supplied himself.

@Bekim found AVGO RV line is historically low this cycle & entered the trade. He is pretty new user to EarningsStudy, he is still learning how to use various options strategies. And EarningsStudy has plenty of back tested strategies. 

If you've run your own setup through the app — win or lose — We from SteadyOptions team would love to see it because the losses teach the thread as much as the wins do.

 

NOTE: I entered AVGO a little earlier than Bekim did, and a run of bad news knocked the stock from ~420 down to ~360 in the span of three days. It's a good reminder for the calendar strategy: even a 100% win rate in past cycles doesn't guarantee the next one. But with proper positioning and re-centering, the P/L can still be managed — that's the part that comes with experience.

 

SO members on the ALL bundle: full core access to EarningsStudy is free through the partnership — sign in at earningsstudy.com with your SO email.

Historical/educational analysis, not financial advice or a trade recommendation. Options trading involves substantial risk.

 

 

 

[Kim]

In case you haven't seen it - https://steadyoptions.com/articles/the-last-14-minutes-why-we-stopped-looking-at-options-closing-prices-r837/

The tool now presents 3:46 data rather than closing quotes. This is a game changer. We can now see much more realistic quotes, especially for less liquid options with wider spreads.

[krisbee]

 

What's new: exit rules on the Daily Screener, and a look at the volatility term structure

Two features shipped this week. They came out of the same complaint, which was mostly my own: the screener was very good at telling me when to get in and said almost nothing about when to get out, or about what volatility was doing while I waited.

---

1. The Daily Screener now understands exit rules

Until now the screener answered exactly one question: if I enter on this date and hold to T-0, what did that return across the last N earnings cycles?

That's a real question. It's also a strangely rigid one. It assumes you sit through the entire pre-earnings window no matter what the position does — that a trade up 30% at T-7 and a trade up half a percent at T-7 are the same trade, because you're holding both to the same day.

Anyone who actually runs these knows that isn't how it goes. You take the money when it's there.

So there's now an Exit rule control, and it's the first thing in the filter row.

Hold to T-0 is the screener you already know. Take profit at +10% re-scores the whole board against a different plan: leave the moment the position is up 10%, and only hold to T-0 in the cycles where it never gets there. Every number on the page then answers the new question instead of the old one. That's the whole feature.

What a cell tells you now

With a target selected, each cell leads with how many past cycles reached it — one small block per cycle, filled where it hit — and the median return of that rule underneath.

The block strip matters more than it looks, because it carries the sample size as well as the hit count, and the number of qualifying cycles isn't the same for every symbol. A newer listing might only have two or three on file. 2 of 2 and 8 of 8 are both perfect scores; only one of them is evidence, and now you can tell which without opening anything.

Grey cells are their own answer: no cycle ever reached the target, so every cycle fell back to holding and the figure shown is just the hold-to-T-0 return. Not a target result at all.

The example that convinced me

This is COST, real board, last N cycles.

Held to T-0, the 90-delta long call is a bloodbath across the first three entry days: −21.9%, −29.4%, −27.2%. On the old screener you'd skip it without a second thought, and you'd be right to.

Switch the exit rule to +10% and the same three entry days read 6 of 8, 5 of 8, 3 of 8.

 

The trade gets there. It just doesn't stay there. Held to the end it hands everything back and then some; taken at +10% it worked in six of the last eight cycles from that entry day.

 

Click any cell for the receipts (Full details shows up on the right pane)

[Subscribe to see more details]

---

2. Volatility term structure, through the pre-earnings window

The second feature answers a different complaint: IV is up — is that my earnings, or is that the macro calendar?

The volatility chart now plots the term structure across the run-up: the 7, 30, 60 and 90-day tenors together, plus the front and second expiry IV, from T-30 through to earnings.

Seeing the tenors on one axis is the point. A front expiry pulling away from the back of the curve is the earnings premium building, and you can watch it happen day by day instead of inferring it from a single number. Flat separation means the premium isn't there yet.

Macro events are marked on the same timeline — FOMC, CPI, PPI, PCE, jobs, GDP — which is what stops you misreading the chart. IV rising into your entry doesn't automatically mean the earnings premium is inflating; sometimes there's a CPI print sitting inside your holding window doing it instead. Those are two different trades and they deserve two different decisions.

 

---

Where to find all this

The profit-target view is now the default Daily Screener. Nothing is hidden — set the exit rule to Hold to T-0 and you have exactly the board you had last week, and the Classical View button next to the filters takes you back to the old layout entirely.

There's also a Help button on the screener now that opens a full walkthrough in the side panel: how to read a cell, what the colors mean, and the win-rate-versus-hit-rate distinction above. Worth five minutes before you rely on the numbers.

---

How I use it now

1. Spread filter to the tightest bucket first — liquidity before edge, as always.
2. Exit rule to +10%, Hit rate % to 60% or more.
3. Scan for strong cells in the early columns. An entry day well before earnings gives the target room to get there.
4. Open the cell and read the cycle list before committing to anything. If the hit rate rests on two cycles, I haven't found anything yet.

As always: if there's a number you wish the screener showed, send me a message. That's how both of these got built.

---

SO members on the ALL bundle: full core access to EarningsStudy is free through the partnership — just sign in at earningsstudy.com with your SO email.

Everything above is historical and educational analysis, not a trade recommendation or financial advice. Options trading involves substantial risk. Historical figures are derived from end-of-day data and will differ from intraday markets and from your actual fills.

 

 

[krisbee]

 

One grid, five questions — the new return matrix (Beta)

The return matrix has always answered one question: what does the median cycle pay for every entry/exit pair? That is a good question. It is not the only one worth asking, and the same grid can answer the others without changing shape.

The Beta matrix lets you change what the color means. Same entry × exit triangle, same history behind it, five different questions. It is live on every pre-earnings strategy page: Calendar, Straddle, Strangle, Iron Fly, Double Diagonal, Long Options, Call Debit Spread, etc.,

Screenshot 1 — MU straddle, colored by median return. Today’s entry, T-7, is the boxed row.

The five questions

Color the cells by	The question it answers
Median return	What does a typical cycle pay? This is the Classic view.
Return per day held	Which pairs pay fastest? Median return divided by days held, so a two-day hold and a seven-day hold are compared on equal terms.
Win rate	How often did the pair finish positive at all?
Reached target	How many cycles reached +5%, +10%, +15% or +20% by that exit day?
Cycles behind it	How much history is each number actually built on?

Reached target is the one I would look at first.

Screenshot 2 — Same grid, now counting cycles that reached +10% by each exit day.

On MU, a T-7 straddle reached +10% in 4 of 8 cycles by T-2 — and holding on to T-0 added no new ones. Those last two days bought more exposure, not more hits. The median view cannot tell you that; this one says it in a glance.

The rows you can actually trade

Half the triangle is entry days that have already passed. Only entries I can still take is on by default and fades them, so the ranking on the right lists only trades you can still put on today.

It also makes the grid easier to read honestly. Look at the T-6 row in screenshot 1: one day later than today’s T-7 entry, the same straddle is red across the board.

Every number opens up

A median over eight cycles hides a lot. Hover any cell and you get every cycle behind it with the VIX that ruled it — gains in green, losses in red. Click it and the side panel pins the cycle list, with the actual calendar dates of your entry and exit.

 

Screenshot 3 — Hover a cell: every cycle, its return and its VIX.

Screenshot 4 — Click a cell: the side panel pins it, with real entry and exit dates.

That is the honest read on MU’s best pair. T-7 → T-0 has a +11.9% median, but the individual cycles ran from −34.8% to +54.5%, and five of the eight were winners. A real edge with wide dispersion — size accordingly.

Straddle vs Strangle, head to head

Two matrices side by side ask you to subtract two colour scales in your head — and they were never on the same scale. In Beta, Compare with Strangle draws one grid instead: each cell is Straddle minus Strangle, teal where the straddle wins and amber where the strangle does. Click a cell for the cycle-by-cycle scorecard.

Screenshot 5 — MU, T-4 → T-0: the strangle leads by 4.6 points (+8.8% against +4.2%) and won 6 of 8 cycles.

The scorecard is the part two separate grids can never show. A small median edge that came from one lucky cycle looks identical to one that held up in six of eight — until you count them. It works the other way round from the Strangle page, and the wing selector lets you compare against a specific wing or the best one.

Three wings, one row

Strangle, Iron Fly and Double Diagonal each have three wings, which used to mean three rows per entry day and a matrix three times taller than the rest. Beta folds them into one row: each cell is split into three bands — Base, Wing 1 and Wing 2 from top to bottom. A third of the height, all three wings visible at once. Pick a single wing, or Best, and the numbers come back into the cells.

Screenshot 6 — MU strangle: one row per entry day, one band per wing.

Hover a banded cell and the three wings line up cycle by cycle:

Screenshot 7 — MU strangle, T-6 → T-3: every wing lost in the same five cycles.

When all three wings agree like that, the wing is not the problem — the timing is.

Screenshot 8 — The same banded view on Iron Fly. Double Diagonal work the same way.

How to turn it on

• Open any pre-earnings strategy page and load a symbol.
• Above the History Matrix, click Beta. Classic is one click away, and your choice is remembered.
• The VIX filter, earnings cycles and “3 days before current day” settings all carry over.

It is labelled Beta because I want your feedback before it replaces anything. Tell me which view you end up using — and which question you wish the grid could answer that it cannot yet.

 

[ranieri93]

thanks for this @krisbee