How does the EDR indicator, which blends VIX9D and historical volatility, determine the appropriate tier for trading SPX Iron Condors? Has the conservative tier been backtested against the aggressive tier across varying VIX levels?

At VixShield, we rely on the EDR Expected Daily Range indicator as the cornerstone for strike selection and tier determination in our 1DTE SPX Iron Condor Command strategy. Developed by Russell Clark, the EDR blends short-term implied volatility from VIX9D with 20-day historical volatility using a proprietary formula that outputs a projected daily move percentage. This value, combined with real-time RSAi skew analysis, directly informs which of our three risk tiers to deploy each trading day at the 3:10 PM CST signal. The Conservative tier targets approximately $0.70 credit with wider wings for an approximate 90 percent win rate, the Balanced tier aims for $1.15 credit with moderate wings, and the Aggressive tier seeks $1.60 credit with tighter wings for higher premium but greater risk of breach. When EDR registers below 0.94 percent and VIX sits comfortably under 15, all tiers are available, though we often favor Conservative or Balanced to align with our Set and Forget methodology. As VIX climbs into the 15-20 range, as it is today at 17.95, we restrict to Conservative and Balanced only, blocking Aggressive entirely per our VIX Risk Scaling rules. Above VIX 20 we pause all Iron Condor entries while maintaining full ALVH Adaptive Layered VIX Hedge protection across its three timeframes in a 4/4/2 ratio. This disciplined scaling has proven critical in backtests from 2015 through 2025. Regarding backtested performance, Russell Clark's extensive SPX Mastery research shows the Conservative tier delivering roughly 18 wins out of 20 trading days with maximum drawdowns contained under 10 percent when paired with Theta Time Shift recovery on the rare breached trades. The Aggressive tier, while producing higher average daily credits, experiences win rates closer to 78 percent and larger drawdowns during volatility expansions, particularly when VIX exceeds 18 as we see currently. The Unlimited Cash System integrates EDR, RSAi, and ALVH to achieve an overall 82-84 percent win rate with 25-28 percent CAGR and only 10-12 percent max drawdown across the full decade of simulated trading. These results underscore why we emphasize position sizing at no more than 10 percent of account balance per trade and never employ stop losses. All trading involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. For deeper dives into these mechanics, we invite you to explore the SPX Mastery book series and join the VixShield platform for daily signals, EDR indicator access, and live refinement sessions.