How do you use open interest versus volume when selecting strikes for SPX iron condors?

At VixShield, we rely primarily on our proprietary Expected Daily Range indicator and RSAi for strike selection in our 1DTE SPX Iron Condor Command rather than traditional open interest or volume metrics. Russell Clark designed the system around EDR which blends short-term implied volatility from VIX9D with 20-day historical volatility to forecast the day's likely price excursion. This produces three risk-tuned strike sets each day: Conservative targeting approximately 0.70 credit, Balanced near 1.15 credit, and Aggressive around 1.60 credit. We place these 1DTE iron condors after the 3:09 PM CST SPX close cascade, with signals firing at 3:10 PM CST on market days. Open interest can offer a secondary confirmation of liquidity at certain strikes, showing where market makers have concentrated positions that may influence pinning behavior near expiration. However, we never let raw open interest dictate our wings because it often reflects legacy positions from earlier expirations rather than today's actual order flow. Volume, by contrast, gives a real-time snapshot of where trading interest is clustering during the final minutes of the session. We monitor volume spikes in the option chain only to validate that our RSAi-chosen strikes are seeing active participation, ensuring tight bid-ask spreads for efficient execution. In practice, if EDR projects a 0.95 percent daily range on an SPX trading near 7138 and VIX sits at 17.95 in contango, RSAi will scan skew and VWAP to lock in the precise wings that deliver the target credit while staying outside the expected move. This approach has produced approximately 90 percent win rates on the Conservative tier across backtested periods. Our ALVH hedge layers remain active across all VIX regimes to protect the portfolio, and we employ the Theta Time Shift recovery mechanism on the rare losing days without ever using stop losses. The entire process is set-and-forget, sized to no more than 10 percent of account balance per trade. All trading involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. For deeper examples and live signal walkthroughs, we invite you to explore the SPX Mastery resources and join our daily workflow at VixShield.