BAC IV Skew
As of the close, Mon 19 Oct 2026
ATM IV unchanged at 25.4% since 16-OCT-2026
- ATM IV?
- 25.39% Implied volatility at the money — an average over a band of strikes around the close spanning at least two of them, never one contract's own reading. It is what the chain is charging for a move of average size, and every other volatility figure here is measured against it. Where the page is a comparison, this is the FRONT expiry's — the first listed at least a week out, or the furthest read on a night that could not reach one — and a symbol whose front is eight days out is not being asked quite the same question as one whose front is three weeks out, which is why the days are stated.
- Skew?
- +3.74 pts The put wing minus the call wing, in volatility points. Positive means downside protection costs more than upside — the normal state of an equity chain, because people hedge crashes more than they hedge rallies. A number near zero means the two sides are priced alike; a negative one is unusual and usually means a squeeze is being priced.
- Put wing?
- 28.64% 2–7% below, 3 strikesAverage implied volatility of the contracts struck about one standard deviation BELOW the close for the expiry read — the band it actually averaged, and how many strikes it spans, is printed beneath. A fixed ten per cent was a tick-size artefact on a four-day chain and a rounding error on a four-month one. Averaged over at least two strikes, never a single contract.
- Call wing?
- 24.90% 3–6% above, 2 strikesAverage implied volatility of the contracts struck about one standard deviation ABOVE the close, on the same basis as the put wing. The gap between the two is the skew.
- Slope?
- −0.79 How fast implied volatility falls as the strike rises, in volatility points per one per cent of moneyness, fitted across the whole window. It is the skew as a rate rather than as a single gap — steeper means the wings diverge faster.
- Front expiry?
- 30-OCT-2026 11 days out, the first at least a week from the closeThe first listed expiry at least a week out, which is what a reader means by “the skew” — a two-session contract carries little open interest and reads as tick size under this label. The other expiries are shown beside it as the term structure, because a front-month skew reads differently depending on what the back months are doing. On the earnings page this label appears in place of “event expiry” when no expiry containing the expected report was read — there it is the front of the curve and nothing more, and the figures beside it say nothing about an event.
- Spot?
- $50.39 The underlying's closing price for the session these figures are computed from. Every strike below is measured against it.
The whole curve — BAC
Implied volatility across 9 bands of moneyness, and the same reading at each of the 19 listed expiries.
Or read it free on SPY.
Every point is an average over at least 2 strikes, never one contract, and the wings sit one standard deviation from the close for the expiry read — so they move with its own volatility. A shape, not a ladder.
How this is computed
Implied volatility is what the chain's prices imply about how far the underlying might move — it is backed out of the closing price of each contract, not quoted. This page publishes the SHAPE of it rather than a contract-by-contract ladder, and that is a deliberate limit: an implied volatility inverts. Given the strike, the expiry, the close and the risk-free rate — all of which are on this page — Black-Scholes maps a volatility straight back to that contract's price, so a ladder of them would be the option chain with one step removed. Every figure here is an average over at least 2 contracts, plotted against the strike's distance from the close rather than its dollar price, which is also what makes the curve comparable between symbols and between sessions. The floor is 2 different STRIKES rather than two contracts: a call and a put at one strike sit within a bid-ask of each other, so their mean is that strike's volatility to within a rounding, and bands widen until they span real ground. The wings sit one standard deviation either side of the close for the expiry read — at-the-money volatility times the square root of the time left, never narrower than a strike and a half, never inside the at-the-money band, and capped so the band fits inside the twenty per cent of moneyness the page reads — so a four-day chain is read at its own width rather than at a fixed ten per cent where every contract is a tick, a two-year one at the edge of what was read, and the band each wing actually averaged is printed beneath it. The skew is the put wing minus the call wing — positive means downside protection costs more, which is the ordinary state of an equity chain. 1054 of 1054 contracts carried a usable volatility. This reads the 19 nearest expirations, 23-OCT-2026 through 19-JAN-2029. It describes what the chain was charging at the close, not what the underlying will do, and it is not advice.