How BOSS classifies strategies

The six dimensions

• Proficiency: Novice, Intermediate, Advanced or Expert. How much a trader needs to understand to run it safely, not how profitable it is. A long call is Novice; ratio spreads and calendars are Advanced or Expert.
• Direction: Bullish, Bearish or Neutral. The move in the underlying the strategy is built to profit from. Neutral includes both "stay in a range" (iron condors) and "move a lot, either way" (long straddles).
• Volatility: High, Low or N/A. The volatility view the strategy is meant for: the implied-volatility environment in which it is meant to be opened. For most single-expiry strategies that matches the sign of their vega: High for net long options, which gain if implied volatility rises, and Low for net short options, which gain if it falls. N/A marks strategies like a vertical spread, whose two legs largely offset each other's vega. Calendars and diagonals are the exception: they are classified by when to enter, not by the sign of their vega, so a long calendar, which is net long vega, is labeled Low (opened while implied volatility is low), and a short calendar is labeled High.
• Risk: Capped or Uncapped. Whether the maximum loss is bounded (see payoff and breakeven).
• Reward: Capped or Uncapped. Whether the maximum profit is bounded.
• Type: Income or Capital Gain. Income strategies are built to earn from time decay, usually by selling options, and do best when little happens; capital-gain strategies need the underlying to move.

Every dimension is a property of the strategy's definition, not of today's prices: a short iron condor is Neutral, Low volatility, capped risk, capped reward and Income on every venue, every day. The live numbers on each strategy page then say how much it costs and pays right now.

A worked example: one leg changes three labels

With a 30-day forward of $100,000 and 50% implied volatility, a short call at $105,000 collects $3,690. BOSS classifies it as Advanced, Bearish, Low volatility, uncapped risk, capped reward and Income. The reward is the $3,690; the risk has no ceiling: at $130,000 it loses $25,000 − $3,690 = $21,310, and more above.

Buy the $115,000 call for $1,340 and it becomes a bear call spread. The credit falls to $3,690 − $1,340 = $2,350, but the loss now stops at the $10,000 width minus the credit, $7,650, wherever BTC goes. Direction, reward and type stay the same. Three labels move: risk becomes Capped; volatility becomes N/A, because the long call's vega offsets most of the short call's; and proficiency drops to Intermediate, because a defined loss is easier to run.

The same reasoning reads the other way: a long call has uncapped reward; selling a call above it, as in a bull call spread, caps both sides.

Using it to find a strategy

The Find By pages list the strategies under each value of each dimension, so you can start from a view instead of a name: open Direction and then Neutral, or Risk and then Capped, and every strategy that fits is listed. From there, each strategy page builds it live, and the Scanner searches its strikes and widths across venues.

The classification describes intent, not quality. Two strategies with identical labels can have very different payoffs and costs on a given day, and an "Income" label says nothing about how often it wins or how large its rare losses are.