Volatility History

One stock, one chart. It draws about sixteen years of that stock's own implied volatility, so today can be read against its own past. It follows whichever name the pane is linked to. Everything on it is market data we observed. Nothing on it comes from a model, unlike the signals panes that show our own model output. It is never delayed by plan either. Free and paid accounts see the same capture. See Reading The Options Suite for how to read it.

At a glance

• What this pane shows. One stock's implied volatility, drawn over about sixteen years. Implied volatility, or IV, is the amount of movement priced into that stock's options.
• The question it answers. Is this stock's option pricing above or below where it has sat in its own past? That is the whole job.
• The number on the chart. IV is printed as a percentage, quoted as a rate per year. A reading of 30% means the market is pricing movement of about 30% a year in that stock. The side axis is marked in the same percentages.
• What counts as a high or a low reading. There is no fixed line. A reading is only high or low against this stock's own record, which is what the rank is for.
• The rank. A caption along the bottom of the chart says where today sits. "Higher than 85% of weekly readings" means 85% of those readings were below today's. The other 15% were at it or above it. It describes the past only. The same figure, as a whole number, is a header chip on the History tab: "IV percentile 85", the trade standard name for this reading.
• Weekly record. A long series going back to roughly 2010, up to a freeze date. It samples the at-the-money IV once a week. At-the-money means the option whose agreed buy or sell price sits nearest the current share price.
• The gap. A real blank in the middle, where we hold no readings at all. We stopped collecting the older data for a period while we checked its quality. We draw that blank as hatched shading and never join the two lines across it.
• Daily reading. A short, recent series from our nightly capture of the option chain. The option chain is the full list of options listed on that stock. The daily reading carries one reading per trading day.
• Implied vs realized. A second tab compares today's option pricing with what the shares actually did, over the same recent trading days.
• Moved more than priced. One line counts the past weeks in which the shares moved more than that week's option prices carried. It is a record, not a forecast.
• The faint band. A faint horizontal band behind the lines. It marks the highest and lowest readings in the weekly record.
• What it cannot tell you. It compares this stock with itself only. It names no other stock. It shows no other metric. Key difference: the weekly record is the long history. The daily reading is the short recent series. They are two separate records, never one line.

The two views

A tab bar at the top chooses which comparison the chart draws. Both tabs read the same nightly capture.

History

The tab this pane opens on. It sets today's implied volatility against this stock's own weekly record, the whole chart described below in What it draws.

Implied vs realized

This tab sets the pane's own daily implied readings against what the shares actually did. It measures that as realized volatility, computed from the daily bars. A line above the chart states both figures in one sentence. For example: "Implied 43.1% against realized 35.0% over 20 trading days and 41.2% over 60: option prices carry more movement than the shares have shown lately". That line also names the date and the number of daily bars behind the realized figure. The chart itself draws two lines on the same dates: implied at the money, and realized over 20 trading days. When we hold no daily bars for a stock, the tab says so instead of drawing a chart.

What it draws

Both records are drawn on one chart. The pane keeps them visibly apart, as two separate lines.

The two lines never touch. Where the gap is too narrow for its caption, the caption is rotated to fit. The latest reading is marked with a dot. Its exact implied volatility level is printed beside the dot. The rank is a separate caption, centred along the bottom of the chart. It reads like this: "higher than 85% of weekly readings since 2010." The percentage and the year are filled in from the record. That same caption states the date the weekly record ends. Where there is a daily reading too, it also states the date the gap runs to. Hover any point on either line. You get its exact date, its implied volatility, and which record it came from, named as weekly record or daily reading.

The numbers under the picture. Added 2026-09-16. Today's implied volatility and its rank against the weekly record. The two realized figures too, on the Implied vs realized tab. All of it printed under the chart as plain lines, so a reader has them without hovering. They restate the same sentence already stated above the chart.

Moved more than the options priced in. One more line, added the same day. For each weekly reading, the one week move option prices carried is the implied volatility scaled to a week, times the share price. The realized move is how far the shares closed five trading days later. The line counts the weeks where the realized move was the larger, over the last 52 weeks and since the first week both records cover. For example: "Moved more than the options priced in 19 of the last 52 weeks, 34 percent since 2021". It counts past weeks and says nothing about the next one.

Reading it well

1. Never join the gap in your head. The chart refuses to draw a line across it, because we hold no readings there. Reading it as a smooth handover invents data we do not have.
2. The rank is a historical percentile, not a probability. "Higher than 85% of weekly readings" says where today sits against this stock's own record. It is always printed alongside the stretch of time it was measured over. It says nothing about what happens next.
3. The caption tells you which record the rank used. The rank on this chart is measured against the weekly record, the long history. Comparing today only against the daily reading asks a different question, about the last few months. The caption always names the record and the stretch of time behind the number.
4. The faint band is the whole weekly range. It is a quick way to see whether today sits near the top or the bottom of that range. Read it before you read the exact percentile.
5. Pair it with Volatility Weather. That pane shows how today's level breaks out across the listed expiry dates, instead of one at-the-money number over time. Two common misreadings.
6. "Higher than 85%" is a rank, not odds. The percentile names where today sits against history. It is always printed with the time stretch behind it.
7. Treating the line as continuous. The line is broken on purpose. The gap is real missing data, not a drawing fault. Everything on this pane is market data captured from the previous trading day's option chain. These are prices we recorded after the last full trading day closed, not prices from right now. It is what the market showed, not our models' output. The published books do not include single-name options. The portfolio we publish never holds options on one company. This pane is background reading only.

Frequently asked questions

Does "higher than 85% of weekly readings" mean an 85% chance of something? No. It is a historical percentile. Today's reading sits above 85% of this stock's own weekly readings, over the stretch of time the caption names. It describes the past only. Why is there a blank, hatched section in the middle? That is a real gap in the data. We stopped collecting the weekly record for a period while we checked its quality, and daily readings began again later. The caption names the date the record ends and the date the gap runs to. We draw the gap honestly instead of joining the two records with an invented line. Can I compare this stock's history with another stock's? Not on this pane. It is built to compare one name with its own past only. Is a reading near the top of the range a signal to buy or sell? No. It describes where today's pricing sits against this stock's own past. Nothing here is a forecast. Is the option expensive? Open the Implied vs realized tab. It sets today's option pricing against what the shares actually did. That tells you whether prices are charging for more or less movement than the stock has shown lately. What is the difference between the weekly record and the daily reading? The weekly record is the long history, about sixteen years, sampled once a week. The daily reading is the short recent series from our nightly capture, sampled every trading day. They come from two different data sources, so they are drawn as two lines.

Related panes

• Reading The Options Suite. The shared primer: the vocabulary, what we cover, and the compliance rules every options pane follows.
• Volatility Weather. The same name's current implied volatility, broken out across every listed expiry date.
• Volatility Surface. The current pricing spread across strikes as well as expiry dates.