How do I find high IV stocks that pay good premium?

Finding high IV stocks that pay good premium comes down to two things: IV Rank above 50 and enough liquidity to get a fair fill. Without both, you're either selling cheap options or fighting wide bid-ask spreads that eat your profit before the trade even starts.

Start With IV Rank, Not IV Itself

Raw implied volatility numbers are almost meaningless without context. A stock trading at 40% IV sounds expensive until you realize it spent the last year between 60% and 80%. That's actually cheap. IV Rank (IVR) fixes this by telling you where current IV sits relative to its 52-week range. An IVR of 70 means IV is in the top 30% of where it's been over the past year — that's when you want to be selling.

Most platforms give you this for free. On Thinkorswim, pull up the "Today's Options Statistics" section on any stock. Tastytrade has it built right into their watchlist columns. Set your filter to IVR above 50 as a starting point. That's not a magic number, but it's a reasonable threshold for finding situations where you're getting paid above-average premium.

Where to Actually Screen

Barchart.com has a free options screener that lets you filter by implied volatility percentile, which is essentially the same concept as IVR. Set it to show stocks with IV percentile above 50%, volume above 500,000 shares daily (you need liquidity), and a price between $20 and $150 if you want to run the wheel without tying up massive capital.

Tastytrade's platform has a "Watchlist" feature where you can sort by IVR in real time. Every morning I scan through their predefined watchlists — "High IV Rank Stocks" and "Earnings" — and cross-reference anything interesting with the underlying's chart. You want elevated IV from ongoing volatility, not just a one-day spike from weird news.

The Stocks Worth Paying Attention To

Certain sectors consistently produce elevated IV because the underlying business is inherently volatile. Biotech is the obvious one — MRNA, SAVA, ACMR — but the risk is binary events like FDA decisions that can gap a stock 40% overnight. For the wheel, that's dangerous. You could get assigned at a strike that's now way underwater with no good recovery path.

Better hunting grounds are tech stocks with high beta and ongoing volatility. NVDA is a good example. Through most of 2023 and 2024, NVDA had IVR consistently above 40%, and the 30-day at-the-money IV was frequently in the 50-60% range. Selling a cash-secured put 10-15% out of the money on NVDA with 30-45 days to expiration was generating $300-500 per contract in premium at times when the stock was trading around $400-500. That's real money.

AMD, SMCI, and MARA are other names that consistently show up on high-IV screens. MARA especially — it's a Bitcoin miner, so it moves with crypto sentiment and keeps IV elevated almost constantly. Just know what you're owning if you get assigned. Would you want to hold MARA through a crypto winter? If not, skip it regardless of the premium.

The Liquidity Test You Can't Skip

High IV means nothing if you can't get filled near the mid-price. Before you sell any put or call, look at the bid-ask spread on the specific strike you're targeting. A spread of $0.05-0.10 on a $2.00 option is fine. A spread of $0.40 on a $1.50 option is a problem — you're giving up a huge percentage of your premium just to get into the trade.

Open interest matters too. You want to see at least 500 open contracts on the strike you're targeting, preferably more. Anything below that and you're in illiquid territory where market makers will make you pay. AAPL, SPY, and NVDA almost never have this problem. Some random small-cap that showed up on a screener? Check before you trade.

Earnings Are a Special Case

Stocks spike in IV right before earnings because nobody knows what's coming. That elevated IV collapses immediately after the announcement — this is called IV crush. Some traders specifically sell options right before earnings to capture that crush. It works sometimes, but you're also taking on gap risk. A stock can beat earnings and still drop 8% if guidance disappoints.

For the wheel strategy specifically, I'd avoid selling puts right into earnings on stocks you don't already own. The premium looks great, but so does a lottery ticket. If you do want to play earnings, wait until the day after the announcement when IV has crushed and the stock has shown you where it wants to go. You'll get less premium, but you'll know more.

Your Practical Starting Point

This week, open Barchart or Tastytrade and build a watchlist of 8-10 stocks with IVR above 50, daily volume above 500k shares, and a price range you can actually afford to get assigned on. Look at each chart — you want stocks in a general uptrend or at least a defined range, not something in freefall. Then check the bid-ask spreads on the 30-45 DTE puts at your target delta (usually 0.20-0.30 for the wheel).

That process, done consistently, is how you find good premium. It's not complicated, but it does require you to actually do it every week rather than waiting for a tip.