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Research Findings

18 · Research Findings

Section family: evidence & house canon · The "receipts" behind the rest of the guide.
This is the database of individual, sourced findings — each one a single claim, its origin, and how much weight it deserves.

Most of this guide tells you what the method does (sell premium at ~45 DTE, manage winners at 50%, defend the untested side). This section is where we keep the why we believe it: one file per finding, each tracing a rule back to a specific options-education study, concept page, or — where no study exists — to standard option theory or house opinion. Think of it as the citation layer for 05_trade_management, 09_strangles, 07_short_premium, and the strategy sections that lean on these numbers.

The findings here are deliberately atomic. A strategy page like the short strangle weaves a dozen claims into one narrative; a finding file isolates a single claim so its evidence can be judged on its own — and so a weak claim can't hide behind a strong neighbor.

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How to read these

Every substantive or quantitative claim in this guide carries an inline evidence tag. It looks like this:

Three independent dimensions, plus a source. Read them together, not as a single score.

*1. Evidence Grade — where the claim comes from.* This is about provenance, not whether the claim is true.

A third-party explainer (Investopedia, a blog, a broker other than the originating source) is at most Grade C — it can confirm standard theory, but it can never make a claim Grade A. Grade A requires an options-education study.

*2. Confidence — how sure we are of the specific figure. Independent of grade. A Grade A study can still be Conf Med if the episode page renders client-side and the exact number was read from a search summary rather than verified verbatim (a recurring limitation noted below). High = verified on a directly fetched page or universally agreed; Med = reported second-hand or somewhat dispersed across sources; Low* = inferred or contested.

*3. Research-backed vs. Heuristic — is there data, or is it judgment?** "Research-backed" means an actual study or dataset underlies it (usually Grade A or B). "Heuristic" means it's a sensible rule of thumb (usually Grade C or D). A claim can be Grade B and Heuristic (repeated house advice with no backtest), or Grade A and* Research-backed (a study result). The two axes are not redundant.

A note on sourcing and a recurring limitation. Findings were built by domain-restricted search of the source sites and by directly fetching primary pages where possible. The evergreen concept pages (`/concepts-strategies/…`) and `/learn/` pages fetch cleanly and are verified verbatim. The dated show-episode pages are real, indexed URLs, but most render client-side and return 404 to automated fetching — so their quantitative results are reported from third-party search summaries and cross-referenced across episodes. Those figures are tagged Conf Med and flagged in each file. No URL in this database is fabricated. Where a number is contested or has drifted over time (e.g., the time-stop migrating from "15 DTE" to "21 DTE"), the finding says so explicitly.

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The findings

How the findings interlock. Profit targets vs. holding is the general principle; managing winners at 50% and straddle management at 25% are its two calibrated instances. 45-DTE entry and 21-DTE management bracket the trade's life — entry duration and exit timing — and the latter is glued to the 50% target because ~21 DTE is roughly where a 45-DTE strangle reaches 50%. IV Rank entry timing and delta/strike selection govern when and where to place the trade; number of occurrences governs how big. Strangle vs. iron condor and covered call ≈ short put are structural-equivalence findings — they tell you which expression of a view to choose given your account and risk appetite. Read together, the ten files reconstruct the full trade decision: what to sell, when, where, how big, and when to get out.

Conflicts and limitations flagged in the files:

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Sources

Primary concept / learn pages (directly fetched, verified verbatim):

Research segments & show episodes (real indexed URLs; episode pages render client-side, so quantitative results are reported via search summaries and cross-referenced — Conf Med unless verified):

Sourcing note: concept and `/learn/` pages above were fetched and verified verbatim. The IV-Rank-specific Implied Volatility Rank: High Levels (2014) episode surfaced in search but returned 404 to direct fetching, so the IV-Rank entry finding is anchored to the verified IV Rank & Percentile concept page plus the Credit-to-BPR and IVR and IVR/IVP episodes rather than to an unverifiable URL. Show-episode results are reported via the site's own search summaries and cross-referenced across 05_trade_management and 09_strangles; none is fabricated.

Related sections: 05_trade_management · 09_strangles · 07_short_premium · 10_iron_condors · 03_implied_volatility · 02_probability · 20_position_sizing · 29_source_index

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_Evidence-labeled per the Project Charter. Education only, not financial advice._