Highest IV Rank stocks today
Live ranking of popular US stocks and ETFs by IV Rank — where each name's current implied volatility sits within its trailing 52-week range. High IVR = premium is rich versus this ticker's own recent history — a common signal to lean into premium-selling strategies like covered calls, cash-secured puts, and credit spreads.
Loading latest… · Delayed data (~15 min) · What is IV Rank? →
| # | Symbol | IV Rank | IV Percentile | Current IV | 52wk range | Play |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Loading leaderboard… Rankings hydrate from the /api/iv-rank/leaderboard endpoint. If this is your first visit, IV history for individual tickers is still populating — the table will fill as data accretes. | ||||||
How to read the leaderboard
Each row shows one ticker's current implied-volatility posture relative to its own trailing 52-week history. High IV Rank means implied volatility is elevated versus this ticker's own recent norm — not necessarily elevated in absolute terms. A boring low-vol utility with 22% IV might have a higher IV Rank than a hot semiconductor at 55% IV, if the utility is trading near its 52-week IV ceiling and the semi is trading near its floor.
This is the reason IV Rank exists as a metric: it normalizes across tickers so you can compare vol regime between names that have wildly different absolute IV scales. A 40 IV Rank on SPY means something different from a 40 IV Rank on AMC — but a 90 IV Rank on either signals "vol is elevated by this ticker's own standard."
Color coding
- Green (IVR ≥ 70): High. Rich premium relative to this ticker's 52-week norm. Favorable for premium-selling strategies (CC, CSP, credit spreads, condors).
- Lime (IVR 50-69): Elevated. Above-average premium. Still workable for income strategies.
- Yellow (IVR 30-49): Moderate. Neutral vol regime. Premium selling still functional but yield may be thin.
- Orange (IVR 15-29): Low. Vol is subdued versus this ticker's norm. Consider long-vol or defer selling.
- Red (IVR < 15): Very low. Vol crushed. Premium too thin to justify capital-at-risk unless the strategy is directional (long calls/puts, calendars, diagonals).
What IV Rank tells you (and what it doesn't)
IV Rank answers one question well: "Is implied volatility rich or cheap versus this ticker's own recent history?" It's a normalization technique, not a directional forecast. IVR does not tell you:
- Whether the underlying will move up or down.
- Whether IV will expand further or crush from here.
- Whether the elevated IV is being driven by earnings, an FDA event, a takeover rumor, or general market stress.
For those questions you need context. High IV Rank going into an earnings announcement is a very different setup from high IV Rank during a broad market VIX regime. This is why professional traders pair IVR with additional context signals like the earnings calendar, the term structure of implied vol, and the vol skew between calls and puts.
How it's calculated
Standard institutional convention (tastytrade, ORATS, Bloomberg all use variants of this):
Where:
- IV_today = the constant-maturity ~30-DTE ATM implied volatility from today's option chain. On this site: averaged call+put IV at the strike closest to spot, expiration nearest to 30 days out.
- IV_52wk_high = the maximum of that same measurement over the trailing 252 trading days.
- IV_52wk_low = the minimum over the same window.
The related metric IV Percentile uses the same input series but a different formula:
IVR uses only the two extreme anchor values; IVP uses the full distribution. Both range 0-100. IVR reacts more sharply to fresh range expansion; IVP is more robust when the range has outlier spikes.
How to use IV Rank in your strategy
For covered-call sellers
High IVR names offer richer call premium at any given delta — a 0.25-delta call might collect meaningfully more premium on an IVR-80 ticker than the same delta on an IVR-20 ticker. The tradeoff is that high IVR often (but not always) coincides with elevated realized volatility, so the ticker itself is jumpier. Consider tighter position sizing on high-IVR CCs to buffer larger price moves.
For cash-secured put sellers
Same logic as CCs: rich premium at any given put delta. On CSPs specifically, high IVR at low prices can produce the "stock replacement" setup where premium collected + strike = a materially better effective cost basis than the current spot. Just confirm you're comfortable owning the underlying at the effective basis if assigned.
For wheel-strategy operators
The whole wheel cycle benefits from high IVR: you collect richer put premium on the CSP leg, then if assigned, you collect richer call premium on the CC leg. The risk is that if IV was elevated for a fundamental reason (deteriorating earnings, dilution risk), you're now long a name that keeps grinding lower and your CCs can't recoup cost basis.
For iron condors and butterflies
High IVR is essentially the entry signal for standard premium-selling condors and butterflies. Vega-negative strategies profit from IV crush, so entering when IVR is high maximizes the potential IV contraction contribution to P&L. Condor sweepers on this site (see Iron Condor Sweeper) rank candidates by expected IV rank at entry.
For calendar and diagonal spreads
Counterintuitively, calendar spreads (short front-month + long back-month at the same strike) often prefer LOW IVR conditions at entry — you want IV to expand, not contract. If you're building a calendar with the expectation of IV mean-reversion higher, low IVR is the setup signal. See the Forward-Factor Calendar Spread engine for the site's implementation.
Frequently asked questions
What is IV Rank?
IV Rank (IVR) measures where a stock's current implied volatility sits within its trailing 52-week high-low range, expressed as a percentage from 0 to 100. An IVR of 80 means current IV is 80% of the way between the 52-week low and 52-week high for this ticker. It's a normalization metric that lets you compare vol regime across tickers with very different absolute IV scales. See the full IV Rank glossary entry for a worked example.
What's a good IV Rank for selling premium?
Retail options-income convention treats IVR above 50 as favorable for premium-selling strategies (covered calls, cash-secured puts, credit spreads, iron condors), because implied volatility is elevated versus the underlying's own recent history — meaning premiums are richer than typical. IVR above 70 is often considered strongly favorable. IVR below 30 is typically avoided for short-vol strategies because there's not enough premium to compensate for the risk of an adverse IV expansion.
What's the difference between IV Rank and IV Percentile?
Both range 0-100. IV Rank uses just the 52-week high and low as anchor points (2 data points). IV Percentile uses all 252 daily observations and calculates what percentage of days had IV at or below today's IV. IVP is more robust when IV history has outlier spikes (a single earnings-day IV blowout can artificially raise the 52-week high and depress IVR); IVR is more responsive to fresh range expansion. Both are shown on this site so you can cross-check.
How often does the leaderboard update?
Server-side caching refreshes every 5 minutes. Underlying IV data points come from Polygon.io options chains delayed 15 minutes during market hours. Each ticker captures one IV data point per trading day; the full 252-day rolling window updates daily as time passes.
Why do some tickers say "populating" instead of an IV Rank?
The leaderboard needs at least 5 days of IV history per ticker before it can compute IVR meaningfully. Tickers newly added or with sparse recent data show "populating" and appear once history accretes. Full-canonical IVR requires 252 trading days (~12 months) of history; before then the metric is marked "provisional" but is still directionally useful.
Which tickers are included in the leaderboard?
The leaderboard currently ranks across a curated universe of ~30 highly liquid US stocks and ETFs across mega-caps (SPY, QQQ, AAPL, MSFT, NVDA), semis (AMD, ARM), meme/high-beta (AMC, GME, RIVN), fintech (SOFI, PYPL, COIN), and select consumer/tech names. The universe is expanded as history builds for new tickers.
How do I interpret IV Rank around earnings announcements?
Elevated IVR before earnings is expected — the market is pricing in the announcement's expected move. Selling premium into that IV blip and collecting the post-announcement IV crush is a standard short-vol trade, but be aware the underlying can gap ±5-15% on the announcement itself and defeat any IV contraction gain. Historical realized moves for a given ticker's earnings prints are the best gauge of whether the elevated IVR is fair or over/undervalued. See the Earnings Volatility Screener for the site's IV crush ranker.
Is IV Rank a buy/sell signal?
No. IVR is a volatility regime indicator, not a directional signal. High IVR means premium is rich; it does not mean the underlying will fall or rise. Combining IVR with directional analysis (technical support/resistance, fundamental catalysts, sector trend) is the standard approach for turning "premium is rich" into an actual trade thesis.
Related tools
- Covered Call Calculator — enter a ticker and see the IV Rank badge in the calculator UI, along with strike selection by delta, if-called yield, and downside cushion.
- Cash-Secured Put Calculator — same treatment for CSPs.
- Iron Condor Sweeper — scans 100+ tickers for high-probability iron condor setups (naturally gravitates toward high-IVR names).
- Forward-Factor Calendar Spread — a long-vol counterpart that favors LOW IVR entry.
- Wheel Strategy Screener — ranks wheel candidates that combine yield, liquidity, delta quality, and IV regime.
- IV Rank glossary entry — canonical definition with worked example.
Data source: Polygon.io options chains (delayed ~15 min). Methodology documented on the methodology page. This is educational content, not investment advice — see the full disclaimer.