10x Patterns

1Data note (re-run 7/5/26 with the intrinsic cap): two cleanups now applied. First, broken zero-bid quotes were re-scored at last trade. Second, any contract that EXPIRED on the exit day is capped at its intrinsic value at that day's close — expiring OTM contracts sometimes kept a stale frozen quote (SNOW's 130P showed $2.13 while $22 OTM, a fake 71x). That cap re-priced 161,095 expiry-day exits and the universe now stands at 6,562 real 10x winners out of 1,375,088 contracts — a 0.48% base rate. Several takeaways from the dirty first run flipped; where they did, we say so.

2Time is still the #1 factor: 0-1 DTE contracts hit 10x at 1.56% — 3.1x the base rate and 6x the rate of 6-10 DTE (0.24%). Cheap near-expiry contracts are pure gamma: any real move multiplies them. This also keeps Thursday the best entry day (1.03%, 2.0x lift) — Thursday night positions ride into Friday, the expiry day for the entire weekly universe.

3FLIPPED: penny-price convexity was mostly fake. The dirty data said $0.01-$0.05 tickets were the best; cleaned, the cheapest bucket is the WORST (0.46% for $0.01-0.02) and within 0-1 DTE the hit rate RISES with entry price: $0.01-0.02 at 0.58% vs $0.11-0.50 at 1.98%. The old 7-14% penny cells were quote artifacts — a $0.02 'mark' jumping to a garbage mid, not a sellable move.

4FLIPPED: calls now out-hit puts (0.56% vs 0.45%). The old put edge was concentrated in broken quotes on crash-day deep-OTM puts. Event clustering is even stronger than first reported, though: the top 10 days produce 41.6% of ALL real 10x winners, led by June 5 converting 9.13% of every cheap contract. The lotto pages still deliberately carry both sides — you can't know which side the shock lands on.

5FLIPPED: high IV at entry does NOT help. Cleaned, IV under 30 is actually the best bucket (0.65%, 1.29x) and IV 200+ is merely base rate (1.03x). The earlier 'expensive vol underprices the tail' story was garbage quotes on high-IV junk. The real edge lives in calm names that CAN shock: EM under 2% lifts ~1.2x while EM 8%+ names run 0.72x — when a huge move is already priced, a 10x needs a miracle. Cleanest per-ticker hit rates (2,000+ contracts): SMCI 1.81%, INTC 1.58%, AAOI 1.58%, ANET 1.47%, UAL 1.42%.

6The strike sweet spot is 1-2x the expected move (0.74%, 1.46x lift), and the edge fades the further out you go: 2-3x EM runs 1.16x, and beyond 5x EM drops to 0.84x. The screener's ≥2x-EM floor sits just past the statistical peak — it trades a little hit rate for much bigger payoffs when it does hit, since a 2x-EM strike only fills on true shock days.

7Fresh positioning survives the cleanup: volume ≥ 2x open interest at entry lifts 1.57x, and every one of the best combo cells pairs it with 0-1 DTE (3.1-3.9% hit rates, 6-8x lift, e.g. $0.11-0.25 entry + tight spread + 0DTE + surging volume). When a cheap contract trades multiples of its OI the day before, someone is opening new positions ahead of something.

8Honest benchmark: the exact Lotto setup (≤$0.05 ask, tight spread, ≥2x EM, next-day expiry) hits 10x at 0.52% — essentially base rate (the earlier 3.29% claim was inflated by fake marks); the wider V2 envelope (≤$0.10, spread ≤$0.05) does modestly better at 0.65% (1.3x). The unavoidable truth of the confirmation table: a 10x almost requires the stock to move ≥2x its expected move the next day (3.61% hit, 7.2x lift, vs 0.08% when it stays inside EM). These are lottery tickets on shock days — the setup selects cheap, liquid exposure to them; it does not predict them.