Key Takeaways
- Iron condors are a neutral 0DTE strategy that profits when SPX stays range-bound — which it often does.
- Use symmetric short-strike deltas (about 0.10 on each side) for a balanced range and ~90% chance each side stays out of the money.
- An option's delta roughly equals its probability of finishing in the money, so 0.10 deltas imply a high probability of profit.
- Keep the spread width tight on SPX (about 5 points) to control risk per contract.
- Add a VIX filter (e.g. skip entries when VIX is above 24) to avoid trading on volatile, large-range days.
- Enter ~30 minutes after the open (around 10:00 a.m. ET), cap losses with a 200% stop-loss, and force-exit 5 minutes before close.
What Is a 0DTE Iron Condor?
An iron condor is a neutral options strategy: you sell an out-of-the-money put spread and an out-of-the-money call spread at the same time. It profits when the underlying stays range-bound — it doesn't need the market to go up or down, just to avoid a big move in either direction.
A 0DTE (zero-days-to-expiration) iron condor uses options that expire the same day. On SPX this is popular because intraday the market often chops around and does very little. There are occasional trend days, but a range-bound day is common — which is exactly the environment an iron condor wants.
Why Trade an Iron Condor on SPX?
- It's neutral. You don't need to predict direction — just that price stays within a range.
- SPX behavior fits it. Index price action frequently stays choppy and flat intraday.
- It's easy to define. Your max risk and max reward are known the moment you enter.
- It automates cleanly. Clear rules for deltas, width, and exits make it a great fit for a bot.
How to Build the Bot (Step by Step)
Here's the exact workflow from the video — building a live SPX iron condor bot from scratch.
1. Add a Trading Bot
From your dashboard, click Add a Trading Bot and choose to build your own instead of using a template, so you can see the full process.
2. Name It and Choose the Strategy
Give it a name like "S&P Iron Condor Bot," set it to Live Trading (connected to your broker — Tasty Trade in the video), select Iron Condor, and continue.
3. Set the Ticker and Pick Your Deltas
Use SPX as the underlying. To pick strikes, it helps to look at the live option chain (the video uses Tasty Trade as a visual guide). Decide on a comfortable daily range for price, then choose your short-strike delta.
A key idea: an option's delta is roughly its probability of finishing in the money. A 0.10 delta short strike means about a 90% chance price stays out of the money on that side. With iron condors, keep your deltas symmetric (e.g. 0.10 on both the put and call side) for the most balanced range — in the example this produced a ~94% probability of profit.
4. Set the Spread Width
Because SPX is a large index, keep the spread width tight — the video uses a 5-point width. The long options sit just beyond the shorts as protection and define your max loss. This setup risks roughly $415 to make about $75 per contract before stops, so risk management matters.
5. Add a VIX Filter
Big moves tend to happen when volatility spikes. To avoid trading on wild days, set a maximum VIX — in the video, no new trades are taken when the VIX is above 24.
6. Set the Entry Schedule and Time
Configure it as a 0DTE bot. The first 30 minutes after the open are often the most volatile, so the bot waits and enters around 10:00 a.m. ET each trading day to capture premium with more stability.
7. Set Take-Profit and Stop-Loss
Because this is a high-probability, low-delta trade, the video lets it run with a 100% take-profit (effectively holding toward expiration). For risk control, it uses a 200% stop-loss — meaning the max loss is capped at roughly twice the credit received (e.g. an ~$80 credit caps the loss near $160, before slippage).
8. Add a Force Exit
To avoid holding into the final minutes, set a force exit 5 minutes before close. If neither the take-profit nor stop-loss has triggered, the bot closes the position automatically.
9. Size the Position and Launch
For a smaller account, keep size conservative — the video uses 1 contract (about $160 of risk per contract). Review the summary, then launch the bot and toggle it On. From there it auto-trades every day until you turn it off.
How to Monitor the Bot
Once it's live, you can study all the analytics, positions, and logs behind the bot to see exactly how it performs over time and refine your settings.
Not Ready to Go Live? Paper Trade It First
If you'd rather test before risking real money, you can build the same bot as a paper trading bot. You can run as many paper bots as your plan allows, validate the strategy across real market days, and switch to live once you're confident.
Build Your First Iron Condor Bot
An iron condor bot is one of the simplest ways to automate a neutral, high-probability 0DTE strategy. Define your deltas, width, VIX filter, and exits once — then let the bot trade the plan for you every day.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a 0DTE iron condor?
It's a neutral options strategy using same-day-expiration options that sells an out-of-the-money put spread and call spread at once. It profits when the underlying stays within a range through the close.
What delta should I use for an iron condor?
In the walkthrough, symmetric 0.10-delta short strikes are used on both sides. Since delta roughly equals the probability of finishing in the money, 0.10 deltas imply about a 90% chance each side stays out of the money.
Why use a VIX filter on the bot?
Large market moves tend to happen when volatility spikes. Setting a maximum VIX (for example, skipping entries above 24) keeps the bot out of high-risk, wide-range days.
What stop-loss does the bot use?
The example uses a 200% stop-loss, which caps the maximum loss at roughly twice the credit received. With an ~$80 credit, the loss is capped near $160 per contract before slippage.
Can I test an iron condor bot without real money?
Yes. You can build the identical bot as a paper trading bot, test it across real market days using simulated capital, and switch it to live once you're confident in the results.
Full Video Transcript
Hey guys, this is Jordan with OptionBots and in this video we're going to build a 0DTE SPX trading bot. All right, you can see I've logged into my OptionBots account right here. We have a bunch of different bots on here, but what we're going to do is actually build one of our own and have it live and taking trades in our account. So we're going to go ahead and click over here. It says add trading bot and we're going to go ahead and build our own. So we're not going to use a template for this one and we're going to go ahead and give this one a name. Let's go with an S&P. And I want to think of the strategy we want to use for this one. Personally, I love trading iron condors on S&P. It's a very easy neutral strategy. Basically it just relies on the market staying flat and doing nothing. And because it's 0DTE and a lot of times the market kind of just chops around and does nothing. Of course, we have a few trend days like this, but for the most part, it's kind of like this, just kind of not doing much. I think going with an iron condor is great. So we're going to call this S&P Iron Condor bot. We'll just call it that. We're going to live trade. We're connected to my Tasty Trade account. And then we're going to click Iron Condor and then continue. All right. So now we have to kind of figure out how do we actually know what type of bot to build? What type of bot we want to use to enter trades. So first thing obviously with the ticker, we of course want to go with SPX. And now we have to figure out the delta and the spread width we want to use. All right. Now what I like to do is use Tasty Trade as a kind of guide so I can see the deltas and see the options change. I think it has a very nice layout. So we're going to go right here and we're going to type in SPX and we're going to go ahead and look at the SPX chains for today. Right. So we're filming this before the market even opens. So we can look at the ones that are expiring today, which is 0DTE, and kind of get a good sense of what type of strategies we're going to look at, right? So first thing we want to do is enter and think about what our delta is going to be, right? We have to enter our short strike delta and then also our spread width. So if we're looking at Tasty Trade here, the delta is going to be right here and right here. So we can kind of see exactly what the delta is going to look like on either side for the puts or the calls. So what I like to do is kind of look at my chart and say, okay, what kind of range do I feel comfortable with getting in an iron condor? And I kind of just zoom out and you know, this is one of the ways to do it. There's a bunch of different ways to actually build strategies and figure out how to build them. You can back test them, a lot of stuff like that. And back testing we have coming onto the platform in the next week or so. So really exciting stuff with that. But for now, let's just say, you know, if I'm looking at this and S&P right now is at 7375. We have a little bit of a gap down. So 7375 would be here. So that's kind of where the price is right now. And we've got to figure out kind of what our range wants to be. Me kind of just eyeballing it, I think around like here, basically above yesterday's high and below here seems like a pretty good range, right? I think for a daily range, if I just kind of go on the daily chart, it's pretty rare that we get a candle that's as big as something like this from this low all the way up to this high. It's pretty rare we get a candle of that size. So I think I'd be pretty comfortable with me getting a 0DTE iron condor in this range. So what I can do now is go back to Tasty Trade. I can say, okay, we have 7460 and we have 7305. So if we go to 7305, that's right here. So that's basically we'll call it a 0.1 delta right around there. And then if we go up here we have the 7460 which is going to be right here. That's a 0.05 delta. Now with iron condors I like to be very symmetric with my deltas. That's how you get kind of the best range. So if I got 0.1 on the call side that would be the 7445. Okay. Now if I take a look like this we would just move this to 7445. That to me still looks pretty good. It's pretty low probability that this loses money. In fact, if you're just using the deltas, those are actually a percentage chance that price goes in the money. So going with the 0.1 deltas, we're looking at about a 90% chance on either side that price does not go in the money, which means we have about a 90% chance plus of making money on this trade. You can see right here, probability of profit is actually 95% for this particular setup. Now, obviously, we want to add in our width. So we're going to go ahead and go with the 0.1 deltas on here. Now spread width, because we're doing S&P, I want to keep it pretty small. So we're just going to go five points, right? So we'd be buying one point above as protection and one point below as protection. And you can see our probability of profit on this trade is still 94%, which means every single day we get into this trade, there's a 94% chance it will make money statistically. Now the reason it does that is because there's a very large risk-reward, right? Meaning we're risking about $415 to make about $75. Now that's before we put in our stop loss and our take-profit. So we'll get to that in a second, but let's go with a five-point spread width. Now VIX range, I'm going to keep it as it is. Actually, you know what? Now that I think about it, I don't really want to be trading this when the VIX is pretty crazy. Especially when we get some big moves. If I look at SPX, we get some pretty big range moves when the VIX gets a little bit crazy. So if we go ahead and look at the VIX here, I'm going to go and anytime this gets above, we'll call it kind of this huge spike like 24, we're not going to take a trade. So we're going to go right here. We're going to put the max in at 24. Entry schedule, we want to do 0DTE, obviously. And then entry time. Now personally, if I go back to S&P, we have a pretty wide delta, so I want to capture a lot of premium. So I really want to do this earlier in the day. And personally, I just know that in the first like 30 minutes, there's a lot of volatility. It can get a little crazy. So for me, I want to wait 30 minutes. So I'm going to go ahead and get this in at right around 10:00 a.m. All right. So 10 a.m. every day, we're going to get in this S&P and we can continue. Now it comes to take-profit and stop losses. So for this, what I really want to do is think, you know, because we have such a low delta and we're going with a very high probability trade. I really want to let this one kind of play out, right? So I'm going to go with just 100% take-profit, which is basically not really going to exit unless it expires. And with the stop loss, I want to make sure I cap my losses because again, we're putting up about $410 of capital on this trade, which is also my max loss. And I don't want to lose $400 on a trade, right? And the credit we're receiving is about 85 or 90 bucks, give or take. So for me, I want my max loss to be about two times as much. Okay? So for that, we're going to go ahead with a 200% stop loss. All right? And so basically what that means, if we get in this at a credit of let's say 0.85, or let's say 0.8, right? So $80 is how much I can make on this trade. My max loss is going to be $160. And that's before slippage and liquidity and things like that. But around $160 is how much I would lose on this trade. And for me, that's comfortable. So that's that. And then force exit. We want to get out of this with five minutes before close. Personally, I just don't like holding things within the last few minutes. So if the take-profit or the stop loss doesn't hit, it's going to close out of the position within five minutes before this expires. We can go ahead and hit continue. Now risk. Again, I'm running let's say a small account, so I want to keep this pretty small. Again, we're risking about $160 per contract. So I'm going to go ahead and just do one contract. Keep it really simple. And then hit continue. And there we go. So we have our SPX Iron Condor bot. It's an iron condor on SPX with a 0.1 delta, spread width of five. So it would look something similar to this trade right here. You can see it looks pretty solid. And if we go back and check just to make sure everything looks good, the VIX between 1 and 24. Entry time is at 10:00 a.m. Eastern time. We get in every day, 100% take-profit, 200% stop-loss, 5 minute force exit before close, and it's connected to my live Tasty Trade account. We're going to go ahead and launch that. And boom. Just like that, we now have the bot ready. All we have to do is go right here and turn this on. And just like that, this will auto trade for me every single day until I decide to go ahead and turn it off. And we can study all the analytics, all the positions, all the logs behind it. So we can see exactly how this bot is performing over time. And if you're someone who wants to try out this platform but you're not quite ready to go live, you can also do this with a paper trading bot. You can set up as many bots as you want to paper trade, depending on the plan you're on, and go ahead and test your bots. You can see I have a lot of different paper bots that I'm testing right now before I go ahead and turn them live. But there we go. We have it. And this was about an eight to nine minute video and we fully got it done and ready. Obviously, you can be a lot faster if I'm not making a video around it. But if you guys want to kind of give this a shot and test out our platform and become an automated trader instead of trading manually, then go ahead and hit the link in the description. And with that being said, guys, I hope you enjoyed and I'll see you in the next video.
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