Author questions Fidelity's option strategy detail view showing varying max gain for short iron condors.
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Fidelity updated their option strategy detail view on mobile and I’ve noticed that since then the Max Gain stat for short iron condors has been changing over time, which I would not expect max gain to do. Attached are two screenshots of the max gain for the same short iron condors taken a couple days apart and you can see the variation in max gain. The third screenshot is the max gain I see on the transaction ticket for the same short iron condor.
I posted this to r/fidelityinvestments (I will link this in the comments) and they’re saying the max gain in the strategy detail view is based off of current market conditions and that’s why it varies. They said that the transaction ticket view is based off of cost basis which is why it’s a different value.
I don’t buy this explanation but I’d like to ask you all if I’m misunderstanding this before wasting their time. Here are my issues:
1. What does “max gain” based of current market conditions mean? Is that just the best case scenario of the bid/ask spread? Is there a formula for this? That doesn’t seem very different than the current profit/loss stat displayed above.
2. If max gain is “based off of current market conditions”, why does the UI say “Based off of cost basis”? In my understanding these are the opposite.
3. Is it intentional to have “max gain” on the trade ticket and the strategy detail view mean different things? I only see this variation in short iron condors so I’m not sure what this stat means.
Unless I’m misunderstanding this stat I’m going to give them a call this week to talk this through. Has anyone else had a similar experience on Fidelity with this stat?