If forced to pick one
The data points to a clear winner — but only after correcting for the DST artefact and weighing risk-adjusted return alongside total profit.
The pick: Iron Fly V1 at +30m after open
Why this one
Among the strategies that are actually profitable in the dataset, Iron Fly V1 +30m has the best combination of:
- Largest absolute profit pool in the book at +$44.48 (after outlier removal).
- Largest sample size (72 trades) of any "best in class" candidate.
- Highest win rate of the Iron Fly family at this slot — 72.2% vs 57.1% (V2), 62.7% (V3), 53.8% (V4).
- Smallest worst-trade of any profitable bucket at −$4.25. This is the killer feature. There is no fat-tail loss anywhere in the dataset, unlike Dynamic 0DTE (worst −$15.92), Iron Fly V3 (−$18.80) or V4 (−$19.65).
- Profit factor 3.17 and Calmar ratio 7.6 — both indicate strong risk-adjusted performance.
- $0.62 avg P/L per trade — modest, but with the tightest loss control of any profitable strategy.
The runner-up: Dynamic 0DTE at +30m
Dynamic 0DTE +30m has the highest win rate in the dataset (80.5%). But:
- Sample size is barely half of Iron Fly V1 (41 vs 72 trades).
- Worst trade is almost 4x larger than V1's worst (−$15.92 vs −$4.25).
- Active period is only 9 weeks — has not been tested across as many conditions.
- Total P/L is less than half of V1's (+$19.88 vs +$44.48).
The strategy is interesting and worth running, but on a "single best" criterion V1 wins on every dimension that matters except win rate.
Side-by-side comparison
| Metric | Iron Fly V1 +30m | Dynamic 0DTE +30m | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trades | 72 | 41 | V1 (more data) |
| Win rate | 72.2% | 80.5% | Dynamic |
| Total P/L | +$44.48 | +$19.88 | V1 |
| Avg P/L per trade | +$0.62 | +$0.49 | V1 |
| Worst single trade | −$4.25 | −$15.92 | V1 (much smaller tail) |
| Best single trade | +$5.37 | +$6.20 | ~ tied |
| Months traded | 5 | 3 | V1 (longer history) |
| Profit factor | 3.17 | 3.31 | ~ tied |
| Avg loser | −$1.06 | −$4.78 | V1 (much smaller losses) |
The honest caveats
The original headline was inflated by an outlier. Pre-cleanup, V1 looked like +$98.47 across 73 trades. One single trade on 2026-03-20 had a logged credit of $64.95 (vs the typical $9) and contributed +$54.95 of P/L. Removing that anomalous trade compresses V1's total to +$44.48 and the avg P/L from +$1.41 to +$0.62. The conclusion that V1 is the best risk-adjusted strategy still holds, but the magnitude of the edge is much smaller than the original headline suggested.
Sample size is small in absolute terms. 72 trades over 4 months is a decent sample for assessing per-trade economics, but nowhere near enough to characterise tail risk. Iron Flies in particular can have rare blow-up days that 4 months may not have caught — note that V3 (same family, different slot) has a worst trade nearly 5x bigger than V1's. The "no fat-tail" finding is a feature of this sample, not a guarantee.
The buying power figure is suspiciously small. V1's average buying power requirement is reported at around $36 in the data. If accurate, that gives an extraordinary return per trade. More likely, the BP figure does not capture the full margin requirement. Verify against your broker's actual margin call before sizing decisions.
These are paper trades. Iron Flies are particularly sensitive to fills because both shorts are at-the-money and bid/ask spreads can be wide. Real-money slippage is likely to compress the avg P/L — possibly by $0.20–$0.50 per trade. With the cleaned avg of +$0.62, a $0.30 slippage haircut would leave a real-world expected value of roughly +$0.30 per trade. Still positive, but a thin edge.
An alternative: combine, don't choose
If "single best" is a strict requirement, Iron Fly V1 +30m is the answer. But the dataset suggests an alternative worth considering.
Iron Fly V1 +30m and Dynamic 0DTE +30m fire at the same time slot. They will be highly correlated — if SPX gaps through your shorts, both lose. Iron Fly V3 +60m, by contrast, fires at a different slot and provides time diversification. Combining V1 +30m with V3 +60m would have produced approximately +$65 across the research period (after outlier removal) — about 1.5× the P/L of V1 alone — at the cost of a higher worst-trade exposure (V3's −$18.80).
Whether that combination is worth the additional tail risk is a portfolio construction question, not a "best single strategy" one.
What to do before sizing up
- Verify the buying power figure matches your broker's actual margin requirement for the V1 structure.
- Look at V1's exit behaviour on its worst trades to understand why the tail is so well controlled. Is it the strategy logic, or just luck in this sample?
- Paper trade for at least one more month before deploying real capital, ideally including a week of higher-volatility conditions.
- Set a stop-loss policy at the strategy level (e.g. drawdown limit) that would have triggered before the worst observed loss.
- Decide in advance how you'd respond to an unexpectedly large drawdown — the strategies most likely to surprise on the downside are the ones with the cleanest historical record.