Quotes and the volatility meter

Choosing a symbol

Everything in SmartStrikes follows one current symbol: the chart, the options table and the quote row all show the same stock. Its ticker sits at the left of the quote row, with a small ▾ arrow and the company name underneath.

• Tap the symbol to open Symbols. Type a ticker or company name, narrow the results with All, Stocks, Futures or Crypto, and tap a result. Results that have option chains are marked Options.
• Before you type, it lists your Recent symbols, so going back to one you looked at is a single tap.
• Tap VIX, SPY, QQQ or DIA in the account card to switch to it straight away.

Tapping a row in Research also changes the current symbol.

The quote row

• Last: the last trade price, with today's change since yesterday's close in brackets, in dollars and then percent, for example (+1.23, +0.8%). It's green when up and red when down.
• Bid (Sell) and Ask (Buy): the current best bid and ask. SmartStrikes doesn't place orders yet; tapping them says trading is planned for a future release.
• Wheel grade: a round letter badge from A to F (see below).
• The volatility meter: three coloured segments in a softly glowing border (see below).
• Connection dot: green for live market data, or it says Connecting…, Reconnecting… or Offline. When offline, tap it to retry.
• ⓘ opens the Metrics & Events sheet for the symbol.
• The ? in a speech bubble opens SmartAssist, and the ⚙ gear opens Settings.

When the window is narrow, the row rearranges itself, and the volatility meter is the first thing dropped to make room. It comes back when there's space.

Wheel grades

The letter badge rates how well the stock suits the wheel strategy, from SmartStrikes' own stock grading: A Strong Wheel Fit, B Good Wheel Fit, C Mixed Wheel Fit, D Weak Wheel Fit and F Poor Wheel Fit. Tap it for the details: a summary, assignment comfort, valuation status, key bull points and key risks, a Main Concern when there is one, and when it was last reviewed. A Stale tag means the grade is past its expiry date.

Every user sees the same grade. It describes how the stock fits SmartStrikes' wheel criteria; it doesn't consider your positions or finances, and it isn't a recommendation to trade.

Cash-settled indexes such as VIX, SPX, NDX and RUT are always graded F: their options settle in cash, so there are never shares to be assigned, and the wheel needs shares.

Not graded yet?

A ? badge means the stock hasn't been graded. Tap it, then Request a grade. Each person counts once per symbol, and the most-requested symbols are graded first. You can request up to 10 new symbols a day. Futures can't be graded, so they have no button.

The volatility meter

The volatility meter is the small bar of three coloured segments at the end of the quote row. It rates how well the symbol's options are paying for selling put premium right now. Hover over a segment, or long-press it on a phone, to see its value and what it means, for example "IV @21D: 48.2%, Supportive for put-selling premium".

What the colours mean

• Bright green: strong for put-selling premium.
• Green: supportive.
• Light red: weak.
• Red: unfavourable.
• Grey: data missing.

As a guide to the scale, the IV21 segment turns bright green at an implied volatility of 55% or more, and red below 20%.

The glow

The meter's border glows. The glow sums up all three segments plus IV Rank, which counts in the rating but has no segment of its own. The stronger the overall rating, the brighter and wider the glow; an average or weaker rating gets only a faint edge.

A larger, labelled version of the same meter is at the top of the ⓘ Metrics & Events sheet.

Without a connected Tastytrade account, the meter is worked out from your own Alpaca key. Alpaca has no IV Rank, so the 5D segment stays empty; its tooltip says it's only available in SmartStrikes Pro with a connected Tastytrade account. See Lite and Pro.

Metrics & Events

The ⓘ button opens a sheet titled with the symbol, its name, sector and industry. It gathers the figures you'd otherwise look up elsewhere:

• Volatility: the labelled volatility meter, then IV Rank, its 5-day change, IV percentile, IV30, HV30, liquidity and related figures.
• Dividend: ex-date, pay date, rate per share and yield.
• Earnings: actual and consensus EPS, the expected report date, quarter end and P/E.
• Historical Earnings: past report dates with their EPS.

A dash means there's no value for that symbol.

The account card

• Account: a drop-down of your Tastytrade accounts. Picking one makes it the active account for the whole app. With privacy mode on, account numbers show only their last 3 digits (••••345).
• NetLiq, Stock BP, Option BP: the active account's net liquidating value and buying power, streamed live from Tastytrade.
• VIX, SPY, QQQ, DIA: each with its last price and change since the previous close. Tap one to make it the current symbol; the one you're viewing is tinted. Without Tastytrade there's no VIX quote, so the header shows VIX est., an estimate worked out every 5 minutes from SPY's option prices with Cboe's VIX formula.
• Capital allocation gauge: turns the VIX level into a rule-of-thumb range of capital invested versus cash, the same for every user. Tap it for a page that explains the bands and lets you try other levels. To base it on QQQ's implied volatility instead, turn on Settings → General → Capital allocation → Use NASDAQ ~30D volatility. The gauge is educational, not advice.
• Sector Rotation: a slow-moving view of which market sectors are favoured or unfavoured in the current market phase, updated on weekdays a few hours after the close. Hover or tap a sector for details.

On a wide screen the gauge and Sector Rotation share a small carousel beside your balances, with ‹ › arrows on its edges. On a narrower screen the whole card is one carousel you can swipe through.