Skewed Iron Condor

A skewed iron condor is an options trade built from four option contracts that combines a call spread and a put spread around the current stock price, but with the two spreads made deliberately unequal in width or distance from the price, so the trade leans bullish or bearish instead of being neutral.

A standard iron condor sells one call spread above the stock price and one put spread below it, both spreads the same width, betting that the stock stays inside a range until the options expire. Selling a spread means selling one option and buying another further away to cap the risk, which also caps the potential profit. A skewed version changes that symmetry: a trader might make the put side wider than the call side, or move one side closer to the current price than the other, so the trade makes more money if the stock moves in a particular direction while still profiting if it just sits still.

The nuance that trips people up is that a skewed iron condor is still, at its core, a bet that the underlying stock stays within some range by expiration — it is not the same as simply buying a call or a put to bet on direction. The skew just tilts the profit zone and the risk. It usually also changes the maximum loss and the credit received on each side, so the trade's breakeven points move unevenly, and a trader has to recompute where the position actually starts losing money on each end rather than assuming both sides are mirror images of each other.

People also confuse "skewed" here with "volatility skew," a separate concept describing how implied volatility differs across strike prices. A skewed iron condor refers to the shape of the position itself, not to market-implied volatility, though traders sometimes build the skew specifically because they've noticed volatility skew making one side cheaper or more expensive to trade.