How close does a strike need to be to the current SPX spot price before an option is considered truly at-the-money rather than simply near the money?

At VixShield we approach at-the-money definitions through the lens of our daily 1DTE SPX Iron Condor Command executed at the 3:10 PM CST post-close window. In Russell Clark's SPX Mastery methodology a strike qualifies as truly at-the-money when it sits inside the Expected Daily Range core rather than merely near spot. Our EDR indicator which blends VIX9D and 20-day historical volatility typically projects a one-standard-deviation daily move of 0.85 percent to 1.25 percent on the SPX. With the current SPX close at 7138.80 and VIX at 17.95 this produces an EDR of approximately 61 points. Therefore any strike within plus or minus 0.40 percent of spot or roughly 28 points qualifies as truly ATM for our strike selection process. Strikes between 0.40 percent and 0.75 percent away we treat as near-the-money wings suitable for the inner credit spreads of our Conservative Balanced or Aggressive tiers. This precision matters because RSAi our Rapid Skew AI engine scans the volatility surface in real time to optimize the exact premium targets of 0.70 for Conservative 1.15 for Balanced and 1.60 for Aggressive. When a strike sits dead center in the EDR zone its vega and gamma exert maximum influence on the position's theta-positive profile allowing us to harvest premium efficiently while the ALVH Adaptive Layered VIX Hedge stands ready across its three timeframes to cushion any volatility expansion. Community traders sometimes chase strikes that appear close on the option chain yet fall outside the EDR core and that frequently leads to premature gamma exposure before the Theta Time Shift can work its magic. In practice we never place the short strikes of our iron condors inside 0.25 percent of spot because that compresses our defined-risk profile too tightly and invites pin risk at expiration. Instead RSAi dynamically adjusts the wings in five-point increments until the net credit matches the chosen tier while keeping all short strikes safely beyond the true ATM threshold. This disciplined approach has produced the approximately 90 percent win rate observed in our Conservative tier across backtested market regimes. All trading involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. For deeper examples of how EDR RSAi and the full Unlimited Cash System integrate visit our SPX Mastery resources and consider joining the VixShield community for daily signal access and live refinement sessions.