With the VIX around 18, are iron condor strikes adjusted to be more in-the-money or kept near at-the-money to maximize theta?

At VixShield, we approach the question of strike placement with the VIX at 18 through the disciplined lens of Russell Clark's SPX Mastery methodology, which centers exclusively on 1DTE SPX Iron Condors. Our signals fire daily at 3:10 PM CST after the SPX close via the 3:09 PM cascade, using three defined risk tiers: Conservative targeting a $0.70 credit with an approximate 90 percent win rate, Balanced at $1.15, and Aggressive at $1.60. When the VIX sits near 18, which falls in the 15-20 range according to our VIX Risk Scaling rules, we restrict ourselves to Conservative and Balanced tiers only while keeping the ALVH fully active. We do not push strikes more in-the-money. Instead, we rely on the EDR (Expected Daily Range) and RSAi (Rapid Skew AI) to select wings that deliver the precise credit target without sacrificing the probability edge. Staying closer to at-the-money maximizes theta decay in our short 1DTE positions, which is the engine of our Set and Forget approach. There are no stop losses; we depend on the Theta Time Shift mechanism to roll threatened positions forward to 1-7 DTE when EDR exceeds 0.94 percent or VIX moves above 16, then roll back on a VWAP pullback to harvest additional premium and recover losses without adding capital. This temporal martingale has shown an 88 percent recovery rate in backtests from 2015 to 2025. With current VIX at 17.95 and SPX at 7138.80, our RSAi engine analyzes real-time skew and VIX momentum to recommend strikes that match the tier credit exactly, typically keeping short strikes outside the Expected Daily Range of approximately 1.16 percent. This avoids the common error of tightening strikes too far in-the-money, which reduces theta and increases gamma exposure unnecessarily in a contango regime. Position sizing remains at a maximum of 10 percent of account balance per trade, and the Conservative tier integrates seamlessly with PickMyTrade for auto-execution. The ALVH (Adaptive Layered VIX Hedge) provides the true protection layer with its 4/4/2 contract ratio across short, medium, and long VIX calls, cutting drawdowns by 35-40 percent at an annual cost of only 1-2 percent of account value. All trading involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. For deeper implementation details on the Unlimited Cash System, EDR indicator, and live signal process, we invite you to explore the SPX Mastery resources and VixShield membership at vixshield.com.