Stocks With the Highest Option Premiums: Implied Volatility for 17 Tickers

The stocks with the highest option premiums are the ones with the highest implied volatility (IV). In Days to Expiry's stored IV readings from 22-23 September 2026, METU (87.8% at-the-money IV), ARM (74.3%), MRVL (68.7%), GME (54.9%) and QCOM (52.1%) topped the 17 tickers in this sample, while SPY paid the least at 11.6%. For the same share price and expiration, a stock with 4x the IV pays roughly 4x the at-the-money premium.

That makes a "highest premium" list easy to build and easy to misuse. The table below shows the raw numbers. The sections after it show how to turn IV into a dollar premium, and why the biggest premium is often not the best trade for a covered call or cash-secured put seller.

Where the IV numbers come from

Every IV figure on this page comes from Days to Expiry's iv_daily table, as of 2026-09-23:

• What it measures: the at-the-money implied volatility of the nearest standard monthly expiration at least 7 days out, backed out of real option prices with Black-Scholes. It is an observed-price IV, not a modelled price.
• Window: the latest 252 stored readings per ticker. Gaps in the data stretch that window to more than a calendar year for most tickers, so the ranges below run from mid-2025 to September 2026.
• IV rank = (current IV − window low) / (window high − window low) × 100.
• IV percentile = share of readings at or below current IV × 100.

The 17 tickers are a sample (10 widely traded names plus the 8 tickers with the largest IV rank vs percentile gaps in a 183-symbol universe, with COST in both groups). This is not a scan of every optionable stock, and IV moves daily. Treat it as a snapshot that shows how far premiums differ between names, not as a live ranking.

Stocks ranked by implied volatility (September 2026)

Three things stand out:

1. The spread is huge. The top ticker's IV (87.8%) is more than 7x SPY's (11.6%). Premium income from the same strategy can differ by that much depending only on what you sell it on.
2. Highest IV is not the same as "expensive right now." TSLA ranked 8th by raw IV but had an IV percentile of 5: its premium was near the bottom of its own range. NVDA was similar (IV percentile 8).
3. Some mid-table names were rich for themselves. BAC paid only 28.2% IV, but that was in the 96th percentile of its own readings. META's 43.0% was in the 89th percentile.

How to turn IV into a dollar premium

A widely used shortcut for an at-the-money option is:

premium ≈ 0.4 × stock price × IV × √(days to expiry / 365)

It ignores rates and dividends and only holds near the money, but it shows the scale. Take a $100 stock and a 30-day option, so √(30/365) ≈ 0.287:

These are illustrations on a hypothetical $100 stock, not quotes. Real premiums depend on the actual price, strike, expiration and skew. The point is the ratio: the premium scales with IV, so a list of the highest-IV stocks is a list of the highest-premium stocks.

If you want to run the same numbers on a real position, the covered call calculator formulas and the cash secured put calculator walk through the full return math, and annualized ROI on options shows how to compare a 30-day premium with a 45-day one.

Why the highest premium is rarely the best trade

Implied volatility is the market's estimate of how far the stock will move. A large premium is payment for absorbing a large move. For a premium seller, that cuts three ways:

• Assignment and call-away risk rise with IV. A 74% IV stock is priced to move through a nearby strike far more often than an 11% IV ETF. On a covered call, that means more shares called away in rallies. On a cash-secured put, it means more assignments in sell-offs.
• The window high shows the tail. ARM's IV ranged from 40.0% to 134.5% in the window, GME's from 25.1% to 126.1%. When IV jumps like that, the stock usually moved hard first, and a short option against it took the loss.
• Capital per contract still matters. The premium as a percentage is what the table compares. A high-IV stock with a high share price can still tie up more cash per contract than your account can carry across several positions.

Use IV rank to find premiums that are rich for the stock

Raw IV tells you which stocks pay the most. IV rank and IV percentile tell you which stocks are paying more than usual for themselves. Premium sellers generally prefer the second, because it means you are selling when options are expensive relative to that stock's history.

In this sample, the names where both measures sat at 45 or above were METU (rank 47, percentile 95), QCOM (45, 86), META (60, 89) and BAC (71, 96). Across the wider 183-symbol universe, only 23 symbols had an IV rank of 50 or more, against 72 with an IV percentile of 50 or more, so the two measures can tell very different stories. The median IV rank was 27 and the median IV percentile 40.

A practical filter for premium sellers:

1. Start with stocks you would be willing to own (for puts) or hold (for calls).
2. Rank them by IV to see where the dollars are.
3. Keep the ones where IV percentile is above roughly 50, so you are not selling at the bottom of the stock's own range.
4. Size each position for the move the premium implies, not for the premium itself.

Where to go next

• For curated lists that already apply an "own it" filter, see best stocks for cash-secured puts and best wheel strategy stocks.
• To screen for premium daily instead of from a snapshot, the options screener guide covers what to filter on.
• To see how high-premium tickers actually performed when wheeled for two years, read the wheel backtest vs buy-and-hold results.

FAQ

Which stocks have the highest option premiums?

The stocks with the highest implied volatility. In Days to Expiry's stored IV data as of 2026-09-22/23, METU (87.8%), ARM (74.3%), MRVL (68.7%), GME (54.9%) and QCOM (52.1%) had the highest at-the-money IV of the 17 tickers shown here, while SPY sat at 11.6%. For the same price and expiration, a higher IV means a larger premium.

What drives the size of an option premium?

For a given stock price, strike and expiration, implied volatility is the main driver. A common at-the-money shortcut is premium ≈ 0.4 × stock price × IV × √(days to expiry / 365). Doubling IV roughly doubles the at-the-money premium.

Is a high option premium a good trade?

Not by itself. A high premium is the market's price for a large expected move. It pays more because the stock is more likely to move through your strike. Compare current IV with the stock's own range (IV rank and IV percentile) and size the position for the move you are being paid to absorb.

What is the difference between high IV and high IV rank?

High IV means the premium is large in absolute terms. High IV rank means the premium is large for that particular stock compared with its own recent range. TSLA at 40.2% IV had an IV rank of 15 on 2026-09-22, so its premium was high in dollars but cheap for TSLA.