Implied move translates each expiry's implied volatility into the number you actually want: how big a move is the options market pricing in by that date? One bar per expiry, days to expiry along the X axis, each bar the one-standard-deviation move priced in by then.
Add it to your chart
- Open Indicators in the top bar.
- Search for Options Implied Move and click it once. The bars render in their own pane under the chart.
Fullscreen
Use the legend's maximize button, or double-click the pane, to fill the chart with it; Esc restores the previous layout. Maximized, the bars get denser ticks and larger text.
How to read it
Each bar is roughly a 68 percent confidence band: the market "expects" price to stay inside plus or minus that move by that expiry about two-thirds of the time, if the priced vol is right.
- Read the front bars for event pricing and the far bars for how much uncertainty the market carries further out.
- The Unit toggle switches between percent of price (default) and USD, the same number scaled by the current chart price.
The math
Per expiry (conventions):
move=IVATM×DTE/365
where IVATM is that expiry's own at-the-money implied volatility, read from the OTM-stitched smile at the expiry's forward, and DTE is days to expiry.
Settings
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Unit | Percent of price or USD | Percent |
| Theme | Color theme for the pane: series colors, fills, and accents (six choices) | Aurora |
| Fill style | Reserved for a future filled look; today's bars don't render an area fill | Soft |
| Refresh | Poll cadence in seconds (30 to 600) | 60 |
Assumptions
- The move-to-percent conversion assumes lognormal returns (the standard square-root-of-time scaling); it says nothing about skew or the fat tails options markets actually price.
- The USD figure anchors to your chart's own last close when it sits within 3 percent of the venue's own forward for the nearest expiry, and falls back to that forward otherwise, so a wildly divergent price series can't distort the dollar figure.
- Refreshes on the pane's own poll, default 60 seconds, same as the rest of the suite.
Trade around it, honestly
- Event pricing: does the move priced into the post-CPI expiry look big or small against your own view? That gap is the trade.
- Stop and target sanity: a target far outside the priced move needs a reason vol is wrong, because the market is telling you the odds it assigns.
- Straddle shopping: the bar is approximately what a straddle buyer pays, so it doubles as a cost-of-optionality readout.
- Skeptical caveat: this is a statement of price, not a forecast. By construction, realized moves exceed the implied one about a third of the time, and event days are exactly where the distribution is least normal.