risknav sucks quite a bit, but they're improved the analytics as it seems they now mark to the mid. It's not terribly straightforward to add underlying, but I guess it's easier to simply add/subtract 100D from the what-if.
omg the desktop options stratigy calculator is so freaking annoying! i can't get it to work right for me.. trying website
I am with OptionHouse and thinking of a move to IB My concern has always been their platform.... Don't care about pretty graphics and neat stuff... just a no-nonesense option platform with all the greeks laid out nicely, Anything requiring programming is beyond me. But you guys are scaring me,,,, Thanks
I use Etrade, whose options stuff sucks. But then I built all my own risk models using excel. It's nice because I can change things instantly when I want to see something differently or if I want to reorganize the data. So I created different portfolios within the same account and can watch the trades that way. It requires some VBA, but it isn't crazy. I think if you want to trade vol, you have to do the analysis tools yourself. Everyone looks at 30day realized vol. You need to look at it slightly differently and there aren't really good option tools to do that. Even bloomberg is pretty pedestrian in terms of its option analysis tools.
I would recommend that you build your own volatility analysis tools in something like excel. However, if you want some cool stuff that is already built; check out Hoadley. Or you can always open a TOS account, fund it with $3500, and just use it for analysis. Then use IB for trading.
30 day is fine, when used with other durations as well. As mentioned above, a big outlier one-day move will show up as elevated vol. Run 10, 30, 60, 90, 120, etc. numbers and place them in the context of a vol cone.