| What’s the realized 1-week move on crude? (strike selection for a 7-day strangle) | Show me the distribution of the weekly high-minus-low range on CL since 2020, in dollars per contract | A percentile ladder. Put your short strikes against the 84th/16th (one sigma) and 95th/5th (the tails). If the chain’s implied move sits outside the 84th, you’re being paid for a move it usually doesn’t make. |
| How wide is the RTH session? (0DTE) | Show me the distribution of the 09:30 to 16:00 range on ES since 2022, in points | Same ladder, session-scoped. Ask in the units you trade — points, ticks, dollars, percent. |
| What has it done lately, not on average? | List the last 20 overnight gaps on NQ | ”List” returns the raw values instead of a distribution — the recent regime at a glance. |
| Sell put spreads after a 20-day low — does it bounce? | On ES daily bars, buy at the close when the close is below the lowest low of the prior 20 days. Hold 5 days, 2× ATR(14) stop. Long only. Since 2020 | A backtest of the futures position your spread is a proxy for, held for your DTE. Win rate ≈ how often you’d finish on your side of the strike; avg win vs. avg loss is the asymmetry to size width against. |
| Add the call-spread side | Add the short side: sell when the close is above the highest high of the prior 20 days, same hold and stop | The mirror is built from the opposite boundary (highest high), not a copy-flipped operator that fires every bar. |
| Is the setup an edge at all, or am I just selling premium? | Show this strategy's entry condition as a setup scorecard | Forward-return distributions of the raw condition — no exits, no stops — vs. the unconditional baseline (1h and 5h intraday; 10 sessions daily). If conditional looks like baseline, there’s no directional edge; move to the vol row below. |
| Only when IV rank is above 50 | Only trade when the 14-day normalized ATR is above its 80th percentile over the last 250 days — then your rule | A rolling percentile of realized vol: the same shape as IV rank, computed on what the underlying actually did. Combine with a z-score fade to test “sell the spike, lean toward reversion”. |
| Only in a high-VIX regime | Only take trades when VX is above its 50-day simple moving average — then your ES rule | Cross-market gates work: the condition reads VIX futures, the trade is in ES. VX below 16 and VX above its 20-day high work too. |
| After a squeeze, does the breakout follow through? (long straddle) | On GC daily bars, when the Bollinger Band width (20, 2) is below its 50-day median, buy a close above the upper band and sell a close below the lower band. Hold 10 sessions, 2× ATR stop | The realized-path half of a long-vol trade over your expiry. No theta or vega here — only whether price moves. |
| On NFP Fridays, trade the 8:30 range break | On MES 1-minute bars, Fridays only: buy a break above the high of the 08:30–08:45 range and sell a break below its low. Stop 1× the range, target 2×, only between 08:45 and 11:00, first trade of the day, flat at the close | Weekday gate + clock-anchored range + time window are all native — the calendar isn’t, so this is all Fridays. If it pays across all Fridays, the morning structure is the edge, not the print. Clock times are US/Eastern. |
| FOMC afternoons | On ES 1-minute bars, buy a break above the high of the 14:00–14:05 range and sell a break below its low, only between 14:05 and 15:30, max 2 trades per day, 20-tick trailing stop, flat at the close | Eight event days in ~250. Run the same rule at 10:00–10:05 to see whether 2pm is special at all. |
| Gamma-scalp around my long straddle | On CL 5-minute bars, buy when the 20-bar z-score of the close is below −2 and sell above +2. Exit when it crosses back through 0. Max 4 trades per day, alternate directions, flat at the close. $1.25 commission per side, 1 tick slippage | The futures leg of a long-gamma book. Total P&L is what the hedging leg costs or earns; average hold is your realized hedging frequency; max consecutive losses is the whipsaw streak. |
| Delta-hedge at the wing — what does the whipsaw cost? | On ES 1-minute bars, buy when the close crosses above the prior session's high and exit when it crosses back below; short when it crosses below the prior session's low and exit when it crosses back above. Max 6 trades per day, flat at the close | Every trade is a hedge you’d have put on and taken off at that band. Trade count is how often; P&L is the cost. |
| When should I roll? | On CL daily bars, buy at the close above the 20-day SMA and exit 3 days before roll — compare with exit 1 day before roll | ”Days before roll” and “days before expiration” are conditions; AskFutures knows each contract’s dates. |
| At what band width does the whipsaw beat the premium? | Propose an optimization over the z-score threshold and the stop multiple — then Run it | Ranges centered on your values, up to 500 combinations, nothing runs until you approve. Look for a plateau, not a peak; sweep the hold (3, 5, 10 sessions) as your DTE ladder. |
| How far past my short strike does it go before coming back? | Show me the trades, with MAE and MFE, and the 10 worst | MAE (max adverse excursion) per trade is the column options traders are missing: the 95th percentile of MAE is your wing. MFE is where a take-profit or an early assignment would have hit. |
| Reduce commissions to $0.75 a side | Say it when you create the strategy: … assume $0.75 commission per side and 1 tick slippage | Commission is dollars per side; slippage is ticks per round turn. |
| Test one year back | Since 2020 or last 3 years | The default is already the trailing 12 months, so “1 year back” changes nothing. |
