Frequently Asked Questions

SPXMoves is a data and analysis platform for options traders focused on the S&P 500 (SPX) and its expected move. We publish the weekly and daily expected-move levels — the standard-deviation bands where price is statistically most likely to trade — track how often those levels actually hold, and layer on tools like the Simple Sheet, DAITA earnings analysis, and the FOMC/CPI/PPI trackers. We give you the data, the levels, and scored calls; you make your own trading decisions.

Annual membership is $240/year and starts with a 14-day free trial. Membership unlocks the full platform — SPX weekly and daily levels, the Simple Sheet, DAITA earnings analysis, all of the infographics and trackers, performance history, and Telegram alerts. If you'd rather not commit to a full membership, you can also buy à la carte products such as the quarterly Earnings Pass or the TradingView / ThinkorSwim indicator packages on their own.

Yes to both. You can cancel anytime from your account settings, and your access continues through the end of the billing period you've already paid for. The most important part: once you join, your rate is locked in for life. As long as you keep your subscription active and renew each year, you'll never pay more — even when the price goes up for new members. The lifetime lock only lasts while your subscription stays active; if you cancel and rejoin later, you pay whatever the price is at that time.

No. SPXMoves is not financial advice, and nothing on the platform is a recommendation to buy or sell anything. We publish data, expected-move levels, statistics, and scored calls — how you use them is entirely your decision. Trading stocks, options, futures, and other securities involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. You alone are responsible for your own trades, your own risk management, and your own education, and you should consider consulting a qualified professional before trading.

Weekly SPX levels are set after Friday's close for the week ahead. Daily SPX levels are posted at the 4:15pm ET market close. The Simple Sheet is updated every Wednesday. Earnings data updates as companies report, and the FOMC, CPI, and PPI trackers update around each scheduled release.

Expected Move is a calculated value based on how funds are trading SPX options. It is set for the following week on Friday close and sets the expectation of movement by the following Friday. While the weekly expected move held more significance before SPX had daily expirations, it remains more important than daily moves. However, daily expected moves now provide valuable intraday trading insights.

Standard Deviation helps us understand where prices are most likely to trade. The 1 standard deviation (1SD) level represents where approximately 70% of trading should occur – think of this as the 'most likely' area. As we move further away from 1SD, the probability of trading at those prices decreases significantly. For example, the 3SD level represents the 99th percentile, meaning there's only about a 1% chance of prices trading beyond this level. This is similar to how most natural phenomena follow a 'bell curve' distribution.

Every Friday, large funds sell the upper and lower 1 standard deviation SPX options. When these levels are breached with volume, they must hedge their SPX options using E-mini futures (ES) contracts. The +/-1.5 SD level often indicates when funds are 'sufficiently dynamically' hedged (since this is mostly algo-driven to protect against gamma squeeze events) and frequently serves as an excellent point for taking profit or initiating reversal trades. If this level is easily breached, expect movement to the +/-2SD before a reversal.

The consecutive closes outside expected move counter helps assess market efficiency. When there are no breaches, the expected move is considered efficient, indicating the market is 'getting it right' with trade occurring 70% of the time between these levels (following a normal distribution). This scenario favors strategies like Iron Condors. Multiple breaches suggest market inefficiency, making it more advantageous to buy rather than sell short-term options.

Expected Move Touches track how close prices get to either the upper or lower expected move within a specific handle range. This measurement accounts for higher market volatility and the spread between ES contracts (approximately 50 handles in current conditions). More consecutive touches increase the likelihood of hitting the weekly expected move, suggesting option buying opportunities.

This refers to the alignment between weekly and daily expected moves. If the weekly +/-1 standard deviation levels remain untouched by Wednesday, we examine Thursday and Friday's expected moves. When these align with the weekly +/-1SD level, it signals a strong price magnet. When you see the crown show up on the weekly and daily charts, expect the market to trade to that level so you can either buy options or buy futures contracts targeting that price as an exit point.

The Volatility Analysis tracks one-month averages for both weekly and daily expected moves, providing context for current market conditions. Expanding expected moves typically indicate lower likelihood of breaches, as market makers adjust to avoid losses. The analysis includes visual graphs plotting the last 4-5 Expected Moves relative to the one-month average.

The Simple Sheet is a predictive tool using specific questions about price action and technical indicators to forecast market movement from Wednesday's close to Friday. It includes a sample testing system and tracks prediction accuracy with explanations. Some proprietary criteria used in calculations remain confidential.

While weekly expected moves set broader market context and are generally more reliable for longer-term positioning, daily expected moves provide valuable intraday guidance. The interaction between these timeframes, especially during Thursday and Friday sessions, can create high-probability trading opportunities.

Wednesday serves as a crucial pivot point in our analysis. If the +/-1SD levels haven't been breached by Wednesday, it sets up potential confluence opportunities with Thursday and Friday's expected moves. This timing is key for the Simple Sheet analysis and often determines the week's trading character.

The Simple Sheet runs five weighted questions to produce both a direction and a conviction strength for Thursday/Friday: (1) Have we hit the +/-1 SD before Wednesday's close? (2) Have we hit the +/-1.5 SD before Wednesday's close? (3) Where are we on the volume profile? (4) Where is the daily MACD/RSI? (5) Where have we closed relative to last Friday's close? Question 5 sets the trend direction, while questions 1-4 establish how strong the conviction is. Trading above the prior Friday's point of control (PoC) leans bullish; below it leans bearish; hovering within a few handles is neutral.

Many traders plan on Sunday by reviewing the weekly stats (for example, consecutive closes at the same SD level can flag a contrarian lean), watch Wednesday as the pivot for Simple Sheet and confluence setups, then execute Thursday and Friday around the ±1.5 SD levels and "Confluence is King" alignments. It's worth remembering that roughly 70% of trend days end in reversals, and the platform is designed to help you tell trend days from range days. Your trading vehicle and your entries are your own choice. For a full walkthrough of one trader's weekly process — including seasonality notes and specific rules — see the "How To Use SPXMoves" page.

DAITA (data AInalysis trading assistant) is our earnings analysis tool. For a given ticker it pulls together the pre-earnings picture — the HOT/WARM/COLD badge, implied volatility rank (both seasonal and trailing), the historical rate at which the stock exceeds its expected move, the coverage ratio (actual move vs. expected move), and a plain-language risk assessment. It uses the same canonical HOT/WARM/COLD scoring as the Earnings Infographic, so the two surfaces stay consistent, and helps you gauge whether options are relatively expensive and whether a stock tends to be tight or chaotic through earnings.

The Earnings Infographic tracks how well individual stocks "deliver" on their options-implied Expected Move around earnings. Each ticker gets a HOT / WARM / COLD badge based on its historical performance over recent earnings events, and you can view delivery rates by badge, average move vs. expected move, and quarterly and full-year breakdowns to see which names historically break out of their expected ranges. Every result is graded publicly — wins and misses — so you can see the real track record, not cherry-picked examples.

The badge summarizes how a stock has historically behaved versus its expected move around earnings. HOT (🔥) means the stock tends to move MORE than its expected move — its average move runs above roughly 115% of EM, so it "delivers" when the actual move meets or beats the EM. WARM (🌡️) means it lands close to the expected move (roughly 85-115% of EM). COLD (❄️) means it tends to under-move — below about 85% of EM — so, with inverse logic, it "delivers" when the actual move comes in under the EM. The badges tell you at a glance whether a name is prone to explosive moves or quiet ones.

They share the same scoring engine but answer different questions. DAITA is a deep, single-ticker pre-earnings workup — badge, IV rank, outside-band rate, coverage ratio, and a written risk read for the name you're about to trade. The Earnings Infographic is the big-picture view across many tickers and quarters — delivery rates by badge and the full public scorecard. Use DAITA to prep a specific trade; use the Infographic to see the whole field and the historical hit rates.

The Earnings Pass is a standalone, seasonal way to get the earnings tools (DAITA + the Earnings Infographic) during a single earnings season without a full annual membership. It's priced dynamically — $40 early in the season, dropping to $16 after the megacap tech names (like AAPL and AMZN) have reported — and all passes for a season expire on the same date. It's ideal if you only trade earnings a few weeks a quarter.

The SPX Infographic is the SPX counterpart to the Earnings Infographic. Instead of individual stocks around earnings, it tracks how often SPX hits its weekly and daily expected moves, with quarterly and yearly aggregations. It's a quick, visual way to see how "efficient" the expected move has been over time — how frequently price stays inside the bands versus breaching them.

The FOMC Tracker records how SPX behaved around each Federal Reserve event — both the FOMC meeting/decision days and the later minutes-release days — and compares the actual move to the expected move for that day. It's organized by year so you can see which Fed events exceeded the expected move and how the market has historically reacted to policy days.

The CPI and PPI Trackers do for inflation prints what the FOMC Tracker does for Fed days: each release date is compared against the SPX expected move for that day, marking whether the actual move stayed inside the band or exceeded it. Each has a hub with the current year plus per-year archive pages, so you can study how the market has reacted to inflation data (CPI = Consumer Price Index, PPI = Producer Price Index) over time.

MEGA0DTE applies the same expected-move tracking we use for SPX to 17 megacap stocks that now have Monday/Wednesday/Friday options expirations. For each ticker it tracks the weekly expected move, the daily levels, and whether those edges were reached, along with a consecutive-close counter ("closes X above/below") — so you can hunt 0DTE opportunities across the megacaps, not just SPX. We add new tickers as more names get short-dated expirations.

MEGA0DTE currently covers: AAPL, NVDA, TSLA, MSFT, GOOGL, META, AMZN, AVGO, AMD, INTC, MU, XLF, SMH, GLD, XLE, DRAM, SPCX. Each name gets its own card with a compact chart showing the Friday baseline, the weekly ±1 SD bands, and the daily ±1 SD levels. The list keeps growing — we onboard new tickers as more megacaps gain Monday/Wednesday/Friday options expirations, so what you see on the MEGA0DTE page is always the current set.

MEGA0DTE alerts are delivered through the same @SPXMovesAlertBot as our SPX alerts. Connect the bot from your account, then choose the megacap tickers you want to follow. Alerts arrive in real time on any device — phone, desktop, even Apple Watch — with no app to install, and you can pause or resume them anytime.

This Week's Dashboard is your home base after logging in. Instead of dropping you straight onto the raw levels, it gives you a structured view of what matters this week — your game-plan navigation cards, a checklist to help you get the most out of the platform, and quick links to the tools you use most. It's the fastest way to orient yourself before the trading week.

Telegram Alerts send real-time notifications to your phone when a statistically meaningful SPX event happens — for example, the weekly -1.5σ level being reached, a "Confluence is King" daily/weekly alignment, a weekly ±1σ touch, rarer ±1.5σ/2σ breaches, or consecutive closes outside the expected move. You connect the @SPXMovesAlertBot from your account, pick which alert types you want, and can pause or resume anytime. It works on any device, including Apple Watch, with no app to install. (Megacap butterfly alerts have their own settings — see the MEGA0DTE section.)

The Thesis Feed is a running, chronological log of market opinions and how our broader thesis is evolving. Each entry has a headline with a status (confirmed, contested, monitoring, falsified, or new), a short hook, and an expandable view with three parts: The Signal (the raw source), the Thesis Connection (how we read it), and What to Watch (the catalysts or falsifiers that would confirm or break it). It pairs with the public Master Thesis page, which lays out the underlying framework the feed reports against.

Updates & Alerts is the central hub for every announcement, platform update, and newsletter, filterable by type. That includes the Wednesday newsletter, the Friday newsletter, and Confluence-is-King (CiK) notes, along with new-feature and important-alert posts. Logged-in members see everything immediately; the newsletters also become publicly readable after a short delay.

Yes. We sell two one-time indicator packages that plot our expected-move levels directly on your charts. The TradingView package includes a basic weekly/daily indicator plus an advanced multi-day version with historical tracking, delivered as Pine Script files. The ThinkorSwim package includes an ES futures indicator and an auto-adjusting SPX/SPY indicator, delivered as TOS sharing links. Both are standalone purchases and don't require an annual membership.