BA iron condor, priced on the real chain
Headline-driven vol on an industrial balance sheet. IV stays elevated because the tail risk is genuinely fat — regulatory and safety news can reprice the stock 10% on a Tuesday with no earnings in sight.
An iron condor is two credit spreads: a put spread below the market and a call spread above it. On BA at $198.07, the Oct 30 condor sells the $180 put and $225 call, buys the $175 put and $230 call, and collects $115. You keep it all if BA finishes between the short strikes 33 days from now — the engine puts that at 71%.
The October 30, 2026expiry this analysis was built on has passed, so the contracts quoted below no longer trade. The structure and the strike-selection logic still hold; the prices do not. Open the builder for today’s strikes on the real chain.
The trade, priced from the chain
33d to October 30, 2026| Leg | Qty | Price | Δ | IV | Cash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SellOct 30 $180 put | 1 | $1.83 | -0.16 | 36% | +$183 |
| BuyOct 30 $175 put | 1 | $1.24 | -0.11 | 37% | −$124 |
| SellOct 30 $225 call | 1 | $1.62 | 0.14 | 37% | +$162 |
| BuyOct 30 $230 call | 1 | $1.06 | 0.10 | 36% | −$106 |
Every leg above is priced at the chain’s own quote — the identical number the builder will show you when you click through (last traded price), captured September 27, 2026 with a 15-minute delay. Only strikes whose print survives an implied-volatility check (within 20% of its own IV) and a no-arbitrage check across the ladder are priced here. Full methodology. Greeks, breakevens, max profit/loss and probability of profit are computed by OptionTracker’s engine at r = 4.2%. Educational analysis, not investment advice.
Yield on the capital this actually ties up
Annualized figures assume the same trade repeats every 33 days at the same premium. Nothing does. Use them to compare strikes and tickers, not to forecast a year.
How a iron condor works
Four legs, one idea: you are selling the market's estimate of how far BA can travel. The short strikes ($180 / $225) define the range you're renting out; the long wings ($175 / $230) cap what a violent move can cost you.
Both spreads cannot lose. BA finishes on one side of the market, so at most one vertical goes in the money — which is why max loss is the width of ONE spread minus the credit, $385, not double it. Max profit is the $115 credit, earned by doing nothing.
Breakevens land at $178.85 and $226.15. Outside that band the position loses; between it, it wins. That band is 23.9% wide relative to spot, against 36% implied vol over 33 days.
Return on risk is $115 against $385 — roughly 30% if it works. You need a high hit rate to justify that ratio, which is exactly what the 71% probability is telling you.
When it makes sense
- You expect BA to chop rather than trend for the next 33 days, and nothing on the calendar argues otherwise.
- The chain is liquid enough to get filled on four legs near mid — on BA that is the case, which is not true of most tickers.
- You want defined risk. Unlike a short strangle, the worst case here is a known $385.
- You can name the price at which you would be happy to be wrong, and it is inside the structure rather than outside it.
Where the risk actually is
The risk shape is a plateau with two cliffs. Anywhere between $178.85 and $226.15 you make money; past the long wings you lose a fixed $385. Between short and long strike the P/L slides linearly — that is where most condors are actually managed, not at expiry.
The killer is a trend, not a spike. A slow grind through the short call over three weeks costs the same as a gap and gives you more chances to talk yourself out of closing.
Liquidity is a risk, not a convenience. The moment you most want out of a short-premium position is the moment the spread is widest, and the exit price you modelled at mid will not be available.
What is different about doing this on BA
The elevated implied vol on Boeing is not a mispricing waiting to be harvested; it is a market correctly charging for a distribution with a fat left tail and no calendar. Most short-premium frameworks assume the risk arrives on known dates and can be avoided by choosing an expiry. That assumption does not hold here, which is why the credits stay rich and why naked short premium is a poor idea on this name specifically.
BA's Oct 30 strikes are $5 apart near the money (2.52% of spot). On a ladder that wide, "pick the 0.30 delta strike" resolves to whichever rung happens to be closest — sometimes not close at all. 6.3k contracts of open interest on Oct 30 is thin, and a structure that needs four separate fills will pay for it. 17 strikes on that expiry — 81% of the board — carry prints that agree with their own implied volatility and hold up across the ladder, and those are the strikes priced here. Adequate but not deep; the usable ladder is short, and wide condors here are wider than the book really supports.
Skew is inverted: the 25-delta CALL implies 1.6% more vol than the put. That is the market pricing upside risk above downside risk — a squeeze, a takeover rumour, or a crowded short. Selling calls into an inverted skew pays better than usual and is riskier than usual for exactly the same reason. The term structure is flat inside 1.5% between the two captured expiries, so there is no calendar edge to harvest and no event visibly priced into one month over the other.
At 36% ATM implied vol, the Oct 30 options are pricing a one-standard-deviation move of $21.24 over 33 days — roughly −10.7% to +10.7%, or $176.83 to $219.31. Everything the iron condor above collects is rent on that range. If BA routinely covers 10.7% in 33 days, the credit is fair compensation rather than edge.
What actually goes wrong here, as opposed to in general: Assuming the risk lives on the earnings date. On Boeing it lives on every date.
Picking the strike on BA
Condor strike selection is two decisions: how far out the short strikes sit (delta), and how wide the wings are (width). Deltas on BA at $198.07:
| Band | What it means | When it fits |
|---|---|---|
| 0.10 Δ shorts | ~80% of the distribution inside the band | High win rate, small credit. One loss wipes out several wins — position sizing is everything.On BA: the Oct 30 $175 put at $1.24, 8% annualized |
| 0.16 Δ shorts | Roughly the 1-standard-deviation band | The most common setup. Credit ≈ 1/3 of width is the usual quality check.On BA: the Oct 30 $180 put at $1.83, 11% annualized |
| 0.25 – 0.30 Δ shorts | Tighter range, richer credit | Only when you actively expect mean reversion. Gets managed often.On BA: the Oct 30 $190 put at $4.50, 26% annualized |
| Wing width | Wider wings = more credit, more risk | Width sets max loss. Pick the risk you can size, then find strikes — not the reverse. |
The Oct 30 put chain below gives you real deltas to place the short strikes against. A useful filter: if the credit is less than a quarter of the spread width, the condor is not paying you enough for the tail.
The premium varies 24.2× across the nine strikes below. Everything the delta table is trying to tell you is visible in that gradient. Open interest concentrates at $195 on this expiry, which is usually where the fills are cleanest.
| Strike | vs spot | Mid | Δ | IV | % of strike | Ann. | OI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $170 | −14.2% | $0.62 | -0.07 | 37% | 0.4% | 4% | 107 |
| $175 | −11.6% | $1.24 | -0.11 | 37% | 0.7% | 8% | 358 |
| $180used | −9.1% | $1.83 | -0.16 | 36% | 1.0% | 11% | 225 |
| $185 | −6.6% | $2.89 | -0.22 | 34% | 1.6% | 17% | 319 |
| $190 | −4.1% | $4.50 | -0.31 | 35% | 2.4% | 26% | 364 |
| $195 | −1.5% | $6.35 | -0.40 | 35% | 3.3% | 36% | 515 |
| $200 | +1.0% | $9.00 | -0.50 | 36% | 4.5% | 50% | 241 |
| $205 | +3.5% | $11.03 | -0.60 | 34% | 5.4% | 60% | 132 |
| $210 | +6.0% | $15.00 | -0.70 | 32% | 7.1% | 79% | 142 |
BA puts expiring October 30, 2026· 15-min delayed capture · “Ann.” annualizes the mid as a percentage of the strike (the cash a cash-secured put sets aside) over 33 days.
Managing the position
- Have an exit at 2× the credit received in losses. Condors do not recover often enough to justify hoping.
- Manage at 21 days to expiry regardless of P/L. Gamma past that point makes the position behave very differently from the one you opened.
- Decide the exit before the fill. A short-premium position with no stated profit target and no stated loss point is not a trade, it is a subscription to whatever the market decides.
- Roll for a credit or do not roll. A roll that costs money is a new trade financed by refusing to book a loss on the old one, and the accounting hides that from you.
Common mistakes
Legging in on four legs
Enter as a single order at a net credit. Chasing individual legs on BA costs more in slippage than the improved fill you were hoping for.
Selling condors into low IV
At 36% ATM you are being paid for 33 days of BA risk. If that number is below the name's typical realized vol, the structure has negative edge no matter how pretty the payoff diagram looks.
Selling premium because the credit is large
Credits are large when the market thinks the move might be. Rich premium is a forecast, not a discount, and the two are only distinguishable after the fact.
BA iron condor FAQ
What is the max loss on this BA iron condor?
$385 per condor — the width of one vertical minus the $115 credit. It is reached anywhere beyond $175 on the downside or $230 on the upside at October 30, 2026.
Where are the breakevens?
$178.85 and $226.15. BA finishing anywhere inside that band at expiry is a profit; the maximum $115 requires a close between the short strikes.
How much is BA expected to move by Oct 30?
The Oct 30 options imply a one-standard-deviation move of $21.24 — about 10.7% of the BA share price — over the 33 days to expiry. That is the market's estimate, not a forecast: roughly a third of the time the actual move is larger.
How wide are BA option strikes?
About $5 apart near the money on the Oct 30 expiry — 2.52% of the share price per rung. That sets how precisely you can place a short strike, and how granular a spread's width can be.
Build it yourself
Everything above is one construction at one moment. Open it in the builder to drag strikes along the ladder, scrub the expiry, and watch max profit, breakevens and probability of profit recompute live against the real BA chain — free, no account.
Related reading
- Strike selection with delta and IV"Sell the 30 delta" is the most repeated rule in retail options and nobody can tell you what it means. Here is what delta actually measures, where it stops matching probability, and how far off it gets on a high-IV name.
- What a cash-secured put actually paysThe annualized-return column is the one everybody screenshots. It is also the one that tells you least. Here is the whole ladder — return, probability, breakeven, and the loss that takes six winners to repair.
- The wheel strategy, with real numbersEveryone can recite the four steps. Almost nobody can tell you what a completed cycle returned on the capital it tied up. Here is one, priced off a real chain and folded by the same engine that runs our tracker.
Other BA strategies
- BA covered callSell upside on shares you already own and get paid for the cap.
- BA cash-secured putGet paid to place a limit order below the market.
- BA bull call spreadBuy a call, sell a higher one — cheaper upside with a ceiling.
- BA bull put spreadSell a put spread below the market: credit now, defined risk.
- BA long straddleBuy the call and the put — pay for a move in either direction.
- BA long strangleOTM call plus OTM put — cheaper than a straddle, needs more move.
- BA long callDefined-risk upside with a deadline attached.
- BA long putDefined-risk downside, or insurance with an expiry date.
- BA calendar call spreadSell the near-dated call, buy the far one — rent time twice.