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Iron Butterfly

neutral Capped loss

Advanced: a higher-credit, tighter cousin of the iron condor.

When to use it

Sell an ATM call and put, buy protective wings. Collects a large credit but needs the stock to pin near the strike. Defined risk.

Max profit

The net credit, if price pins the body at expiry.

Max loss

Wing width minus the credit.

Payoff at expiry
illustrative shape — not to scale
profit zone loss zone X axis = stock price at expiry →
How it's built

Strikes shown low→high. Sell = collect premium · Buy = pay premium for protection or upside.

Hermes-evaluated setups

Best backtested per-ticker setups for this strategy. None currently clear our 80% conviction floor (common for directional / long-volatility structures, which win less often but pay more when they hit) — shown for completeness over ≥20 trades. Win rate is confidence-adjusted (95% lower bound); Avg P/L is per one-contract position.

Ticker Win Rate Avg P/L Sharpe Trades DTE
MRVL 59% +$213.00 1.8 30 30
TXN 76% +$186.00 2.1 43 21
NKE 74% +$169.00 2.1 30 30
MSFT 59% +$167.00 1.4 42 21
NOW 67% +$166.00 1.3 31 30
APP 59% +$145.00 1.5 30 30
GOOG 66% +$142.00 1.3 30 30
UPS 70% +$141.00 1.2 30 30

Backtested results are not a guarantee of future performance.