You've already been corrected by others on the specific point, but as a general suggestion -- don't flame people who understand the markets better than you do...
What's the meaning of "an accuracy of better than 50%?"...I am developing a process for "approximating" the IV for each contract ... to an accuracy of BETTER than 50% of the "true Implied Volatility" by taking into account the VIX value for SPX ...
What your saying makes sense...The idea of analyzing surfaces is to look for distortions which may present one with a trading opportunity (possibly edge?) I did some investigating of surface distortions perhaps 10 years ago and quickly came to the conclusion that any distortion is going to quickly get arbed away, particularly in the broad based indexes. This is not a game that retail guys should even try play in.
I can applaud the academic challenge of the surface analysis you are attempting, but don't expect any monetary reward for the effort.
I still don't understand. The actual IV is known at any instant if your bid is lifted. It might not turn out to be the realized IV, but it most certainly is the actual IV at the moment under consideration. How is your range of error around the point estimate helpful?Sonoma:
"What's the meaning of "an accuracy of better than 50%?" <-- The predicted value of the IV for the specified contract is to be within +/-50% of the actual IV. Example: If the true IV for a -80 Delta PUT strike with N Days to expiration is really 18%, my prediction should produce a value between 9% to 27% worst case (.18*.5 to .18*1.5). {btw: the accuracy seems to be +/-12% currently, with about +/-1% around PUT Deltas in the -.3 to -.4 range; but much more testing is needed to insure this accuracy holds}
panzerman:
The approach I am taking filters out the "distortions" you mention. This "filtering" is a goal, and a primary reason for the exercise. An anomaly in a "true Implied Volatility Surface" at a point in time (a bump at a DTE point, for example), will not exist in my derived IV values, which is a prerequisite. This information is to be used in a system of back-testing strategies that do not attempt to capitalize on future binary events.