30 Delta Iron Condor

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30 Delta Iron Condor Scanner - Target Any Delta

This article is a practical guide to using our scanner to locate iron condor setups with a target delta. If you’re an iron condor fan, you may have found online many traders mentioning how they often look for strikes around 30 delta to balance probability and reward. In this walkthrough, you’ll see how to configure deltas in Option Samurai, how to interpret the metrics that matter, and why probability and expected value should guide your choice.

What is the Iron Condor strategy?

An iron condor is a four-leg options spread built on 100 shares. You:

Buy a put at a lower strike
Sell a higher put
Sell a call above the current price
Buy a higher call for protection

Your P&L profile will normally have this shape:

As you can see from the chart above, the two short options create a profit zone where you earn from time decay if the stock remains within a band. Losses and profits are capped. This is a credit strategy, meaning you receive premium upfront. Your best outcome is when the stock finishes between the two sold strikes at expiration.

Why traders use delta as a guide

You’ll often hear traders say that selling 30 delta options gives you about a 70% chance of profit. The logic is that a 30 delta option has roughly a 30% chance of expiring in the money, so the opposite side must carry a 70% chance of expiring worthless.

That thinking is correct when you look at a single short option. But an iron condor has two short legs, one on each side of the underlying. When you combine them, the math changes. Both short strikes cannot simultaneously expire worthless unless the stock finishes between them. This means your true probability of max profit is not 70%, but closer to 50% (depending on how wide the condor is).

This is why many new traders misjudge iron condors. They assume the high probability of a single leg carries over to the whole strategy, when in reality the combined payoff band lowers that probability.

In Option Samurai, you don’t have to guess. The Prob. of Max Profit column shows the exact theoretical probability that your condor expires at full profit, calculated from option prices under the Black-Scholes model. This lets you cut through the confusion and see the actual odds for your specific setup.

What 30 delta does give you is a reasonable premium-to-risk ratio, which can be attractive in sideways markets. When volatility bands (Bollinger) and momentum indicators (ADX) suggest choppiness, 30 delta condors often line up with good conditions (speaking of which, we’re leaving a link to our backtest on using the ADX indicator to find great iron condor trades at the bottom of this text).

If you want higher probability, you can target 10 delta strikes instead. But as the probability rises, the credit shrinks. This is the fundamental trade-off: higher chance of profit usually comes with a worse payoff ratio.

Key Trade-offs with Iron Condor Deltas

30 delta: balanced premium vs. probability; good for sideways markets.
10 delta: higher probability, smaller credit, weaker payoff ratio.
Higher deltas (>30): lower probability, more directional, larger payoff if right.

How to scan for delta-specific iron condors in Option Samurai

Option Samurai gives you full control of each leg’s delta. Start by creating your own scan (click “New Scan”) and choose the right strategy:

Also, a good tip here could be to opt for a “Conservative” setting on the bid/ask level. Let us explain the point: because most brokers will normally use the bid and ask prices “against” you, you may want to filter the trades on our screener in the same way, which will improve your chances of having an order filled (alternatively, the “25% Improvement” setting is also a good one, for the same reason).

Back to the delta filters: click “Add Filters” and type “Delta” in the search bar, and select these four data points:

To build a 30-delta iron condor, set Short Put Delta and Short Call Delta to Closest to 30. The long legs can be left as protective wings at lower or higher deltas depending on your risk tolerance.

Once you run the scan, make sure to add these two fields to your results:

Prob. of Max Profit: this shows the theoretical probability that your condor expires with maximum profit. It is derived from Black-Scholes, just like most brokers do. Keep in mind that it does not include events like dividends, earnings announcements, or gaps.
Expected Value: Option Samurai uses Monte Carlo simulations to calculate the expected value of the strategy at expiration. This gives you another layer of insight, since it weighs outcomes instead of only looking at the best case.

With these two metrics side by side, you can judge whether your 30-delta condor gives you enough edge. If not, adjust to different deltas and compare how probability, premium, and expected value shift. For instance, setting delta = 10 will give you a better profit probability, but your risk/reward ratio will be significantly lower. In general, a fundamental rule of thumb in finance is that, the higher the risk of a trade, the higher its potential reward (and vice versa).

Example workflow

Let’s see a short example on how to screen for a delta-specific iron condor. Let’s start with a Delta 30 scan.

Like we said earlier, this is what you need to do:

At least at first, you may not want to set a limit on the probability of max profit for the strategy. This will help you see what type of probabilities you can get, realistically, for an iron condor with delta equal to 30. Let’s say you get these results:

Notice the “Prob. of Max. Profit” column: we’re talking about trades with unimpressive probabilities of max profit (generally close to 50%), according to the Black-Scholes model. In other words, taking up these trades blindly will not be a winning strategy unless you have a very good risk-reward ratio. This is why, when we trade iron condors, we add an evaluation of the expected value of the trade and other indicators (like we mentioned above, the Bollinger Bands and the ADX indicator are two good examples).

Opening an iron condor trade with 50% theoretical probability of max profit is not a losing strategy if you do everything you can to get an edge, like the one we give you. But if you want to increase the odds even more, perhaps playing with the delta filter will be your best move. Let’s try with delta = 10:

In this case, here is a look at the type of trades you may get:

Notice that, now your profit probability will be much higher. Keep in mind that it may be wiser to avoid opening an iron condor on companies having earnings events before your options expire (you can filter these out in the screener). But in general, you now know how to play around with deltas when scanning for an iron condor, and the effect that deltas have on your theoretical probability of profit.

Extra Tip

We have more fields you can use to build your ideal iron condor scan. For instance, check these out:

Spread width: This filter lets you control the strike width of your spreads. Width is defined in dollar increments between strikes. For example, setting the width to 5 will only show spreads where each strike is $5 apart. Keep in mind that this condition can limit results. If you don’t see enough trades, consider relaxing other filters to allow more setups through.
Profit range percent: This metric shows how wide the strategy’s profit zone is at expiration. It is calculated by taking the distance between the two breakeven points and dividing it by the stock’s last price.
Expected move: This filter estimates the expected price range of the underlying by expiration, using current straddle and strangle prices. The result is shown as a percent move, with upper and lower bounds marking the projected range. It helps you gauge potential profit or risk over the selected period.

Notice that you will need to play around with these filters to find the right balance. For instance, setting delta = 30 and a profit range percent above 30% may lead to no results (remember that the options market is very efficient, which means it is normally consistent with the basic risk-reward principle we mentioned earlier). But if you found, for instance, an iron condor with an expected move contained within your profit range with no upcoming earnings or other major events, then you may be witnessing an edge.

Iron Condor Guide

How to find the optimal iron condor on Option Samurai

ADX backtest on iron condors

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