Your Options and Volatility Toolkit
Pick a tool, pick a symbol — the universe you can analyze grows with your plan.
Volatility Surface and Skew
VolDex Term Structure
Plots at-the-money implied volatility across every listed expiration — from the nearest weeklies out to the longest-dated contracts — computed live for each ETF. The shape reveals whether near-term risk is bid relative to the long end: upward-sloping (contango) in calm markets, downward-sloping (backwardation) under stress. The companion TermDex® reading distills that slope into a single anxiety-versus-complacency gauge.
Skew Deconstruction
Breaks the implied-volatility skew at a chosen tenor into three orthogonal pieces — Level (overall IV height), Slope (the put-over-call tilt) and Curvature (how bid the wings are) — via a PCA-style fit. Each component is computed from the live chain and tracked through time, so you see why skew is where it is, not just that it moved. Slope maps to RiskDex®, Curvature to TailDex®.
Volatility Cones
Traces the full historical distribution of an underlying's realized volatility across seven horizons (7-day to 252-day) and overlays where Nations VolDex® implied vol sits right now. At a glance it shows whether options are rich, cheap or fair versus the underlying's own history — tagging each tenor RICH above the 75th percentile and CHEAP below the 25th. Reading the 7-day against the 30-day exposes the term structure of cost.
Positioning and Flow
Dealer Gamma / Gamma Flip
Estimates net dealer option gamma by strike from open interest and locates the gamma flip — the price where dealers cross from net long to net short gamma. Above the flip, dealer hedging is stabilizing (selling rallies, buying dips); below it, hedging amplifies moves. The flip often acts as a magnet where price pins, and a level it can break through sharply. A regime heuristic, not a precise flow model.
Nations Option Window®
Plots the percent change in normalized option prices across the entire S&P 500 volatility surface — from −3σ puts through ATM to +1σ calls — versus yesterday's close. A flat curve means premiums barely moved; a curve that drops in the wings shows tail risk being repriced, and a steepening left side shows skew widening. A constant 30-day maturity strips out time decay, so you see genuine repricing.
Risk Premium and Events
Variance Risk Premium™
Measures the persistent gap between the volatility options imply and the volatility the underlying actually delivers — pairing each 30-day VolDex® reading against realized vol over the same 30 days it was forecasting. A positive premium means option sellers were overpaid for risk; negative means realized movement outran expectations. A percentile rank shows how rich or cheap that premium is versus the name's own history.
Event Volatility Isolation
Deconstructs VolDex® into diffusive (background) volatility and event-driven (jump) volatility for known events inside the expiration window — FOMC, CPI, PCE, NFP, earnings and more. Using a variance-additivity framework, it strips the expected event move out of total implied vol to reveal the event-stripped baseline. It also flags whether your chosen 7- or 30-day tenor actually spans each event.
Signals and Alerts
Nations Trading Signals
Combines the live Nations volatility indexes with classic technical indicators — RSI, MACD, Stochastics, ADX, moving averages and Bollinger Bands — for a chosen symbol and timeframe. It distills the options-market read and the price-based momentum into a single, plain-English trade idea. Pick your symbol, select which indicators to weigh, and analyze.
Alerts
Get notified the moment a market crosses a level that matters to you. Set a price or Nations index trigger on any underlying ETF or index, choose email or text, and we’ll reach you when it fires — so you can act on opportunity instead of watching the screen.
Interactive Charting
Interactive Charts
Full historical data for every Nations index across all ETF symbols. Compare up to three indexes on one chart, switch between line and area, adjust the time period, and overlay moving-average and Bollinger studies.
Historical Context
Important Metrics
Average, median, and 10th / 25th / 75th / 90th percentile values for every Nations index — across full history and the prior 52 weeks — so you can put current readings in context. Updated daily.
Historical Index Value Downloads
Download the full daily history of every Nations volatility index \u2014 VolDex\u00ae, CallDex\u00ae, PutDex\u00ae, RiskDex\u00ae, and TailDex\u00ae \u2014 across all covered underlyings, as ready-to-use CSV files for your own models and backtests.
Advanced Analytics
Vol Relative-Value Screener
The one tool that ranks richness and cheapness across names rather than against a single name's own history — VolDex, term slope, variance risk premium and RiskDex in one sortable, color-coded screen.
Risk-Neutral Density
The full probability distribution the options market is pricing into expiration, via Breeden–Litzenberger on a smoothed smile. Read the implied probability of finishing inside any price band.
Implied-Move (Event) Calendar
The ATM straddle-implied move for every listed expiration and the term-structure kink that marks an embedded event — the forward-looking companion to Event Volatility Isolation.
Dealer Vanna & Charm
Extends Dealer Gamma to the second-order flows: aggregate dealer vanna and charm by strike, their flip levels, and the OPEX and Fed-day windows where these flows dominate price drift.
Strategy Backtester
State a rule — entry, structure, exit and sizing — and replay it over history for an equity curve, hit rate, average win/loss, max drawdown and trade count. Turns Trading Signals ideas into validated edge.
Vol-Targeted Position Sizer
The three-layer framework in one live calculator: a regime filter, an entry trigger, and a vol-scaled size that makes every position contribute the same risk regardless of the underlying's volatility.