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Open Lines: Expected Move Calculator for SPY, QQQ and SPX Options

By Charlie Nguyen · Cboe snapshot from Fri Oct 30, 2026, 8:25 AM ET, refreshed each trading day

How far is the options market pricing SPY, QQQ or SPX to move by the next expiry, and what are the odds of a close past your strike? Open Lines reads the expected move straight from the option chain for 0DTE, 1DTE, 7DTE and 45DTE, shows the odds of closing below or above each level, and gives the POP, POT and P50 for short strikes.

Moves, odds and credits are model estimates from a delayed daily snapshot. Read the disclaimer before you use them.

How to use the expected move calculator

1. Pick SPY, QQQ or SPX. The page opens on QQQ. Each tab loads that symbol’s option chains from the daily Cboe snapshot.
2. Check the market card. Above or below the 200-day, VIX contango or inversion, and a calm or stressed front of the curve.
3. Read the four cards. 0DTE, 1DTE, 7DTE and 45DTE: the chain’s ± move, the model’s 1-in-6 prices, and the odds of closing below or above each level.
4. Check your short strike. Each card shows a short put and call at the 1-in-6 lines with POP, POT and P50, or type your own strike.
5. Confirm with your broker. Quotes are a delayed snapshot. Check live prices before you trade.

What the expected move is

Every option price carries a forecast of how far the market can move by expiration. Implied volatility is that forecast. Turn it into dollars for the time left and you have the expected move, the one-standard-deviation range the options market is paying for. Open Lines reads it from each expiry’s own chain instead of the 30-day VIX:

expected move = price × at-the-money implied vol × √(trading time to expiry)

From the snapshot on this page (Fri Oct 30, 2026, 8:25 AM ET), QQQ at 697.97 (implied by the option quotes premarket; the last close was 715.34, −2.4%) has 6 calendar days to the 2026-11-05 expiry. The chain’s at-the-money vol is 23.8%, so the expected move is ±$23.89 (3.4%). The same chain prices ±$8.86 for the 2026-10-30 0DTE expiry and ±$55.72 for the 2026-12-11 45DTE expiry. The move grows with the square root of time, so a 45-day trade needs far more room than a 0DTE, but not 45 times as much.

Time is counted in trading sessions. Before the open today counts as a full session, during the day only what is left of it counts, and each weekend or holiday day adds a tenth of a session by default. That is why a Monday expiry bought on Friday is priced as a little more than one session, not three.

Reading the closing odds table

Each card lists levels at half-sigma steps from −2σ to +2σ around the price, with the model’s chance of closing below and above each one on expiration day. Those odds are not a plain bell curve. They blend the chain’s own risk-neutral distribution, which carries the put skew, scaled by how big moves have really been against implied vol, with real past moves from days when the VIX (VXN for QQQ) was close to today’s level.

On that 7DTE card, the model gives a 12% chance that QQQ closes below the −1σ level (674.00) and a 13% chance it closes above the +1σ level (722.00). A plain bell curve would say about 16% for each. The gap is the model at work: the chain’s skew, the forward price, and how far QQQ has really moved on similar days.

The two 1-in-6 prices on each card are where that model puts the 16th and 84th percentile closes. When options are expensive compared with real moves, they sit inside the chain’s ± range.

Selling options with the expected move: POP, POT and P50

If you sell puts, calls, credit spreads or iron condors, the expected move is the first number to know. A short strike inside it can be reached on an ordinary day. A strike past it needs the market to move more than the options are pricing. Each card shows a short put at or below the 1-in-6 down price and a short call at or above the 1-in-6 up price, and “Check a short strike” does the same for any strike you type. Why sell out there? I lay out the history and the edge in The Expected Move, and Why I Sell Options Outside It.

POP is the chance the option finishes past its breakeven, from the same closing odds. POT is the chance the price touches the strike before expiration. P50 is the chance you could buy the option back for half the credit or less along the way. POT and P50 come from 4,000 simulated price paths that end on the model’s closes, with the option marked at its own implied vol. More on each number: POP vs POT vs P50 explained.

Example from the same card: the QQQ 675 put (the first quoted strike at or below the 1-in-6 down price of 679.01) had a mid credit of $2.76, a POP of 90%, a POT of 21% and a P50 of 94%. The 720 call above the 1-in-6 up price had a mid of $1.75, a POP of 87%, a POT of 31% and a P50 of 94%. POT is usually well above the chance of finishing in the money, which is why a strike that looks safe at expiration can still be tested.

Selling SPX put credit spreads? The SPX Desk gives the daily read for 1, 7 and 45 DTE and the 7DTE trade with its own POP, POT and P50. On Fed days, read why I wait until after the FOMC statement before opening new spreads.

The market card: 200-day average and the VIX curve

Above the cards, Open Lines checks the backdrop: whether the symbol and SPX are above their 200-day averages, whether the VIX curve is in contango (VIX below VIX3M, the usual calm shape) or inverted, and whether the front of the curve is calm (VIX9D below VIX). In the snapshot on this page the VIX was 17.20, the VIX3M 19.37 and the VIX9D 15.87. Inversions and a stressed front often come with bigger moves than the chain prices.

Data and method

Option bids and asks, prices, daily closes (SPY since 2004, QQQ since 2009, SPX since 1990) and the VIX, VIX3M, VIX9D and VXN come from Cboe’s free delayed quotes. The page takes one snapshot each trading day and computes everything as of that snapshot’s time, so the cards, the table and the odds always agree with each other. Outside market hours the price used is the official close, unless the option quotes imply a price at least 0.1% away from it (premarket or overnight moves): then the page centers on that implied price and shows the gap. During the session it is the delayed last print. The forward comes from put-call parity, the smile from each strike’s mid price, and the closing odds from a 50/50 mix of the chain’s distribution and history. IV Rank (1y) uses a year of daily VIX or VXN closes. You can change every assumption in Settings.

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