ASTS Options Are Pricing an ±$8 Move by August 7 — Our Read Sees a Narrower Path Higher

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The options market implies a $50.66–$67.27 range into the August 7 expiration; here's what's driving it, the levels that decide it, and three defined-risk ways to trade the next six days.

Published Saturday, August 1, 2026 · Data as of the 2026-07-31 close

Explore the live ASTS options data in the Detailed Options Analyzer →

Quick answer

Item	Answer
Market bias	Neutral with a bullish tilt
Options-implied range (into Aug 7)	$50.66 – $67.27 (±14.1%)
Major support	$55 (whole-chain put wall; the Aug 7 expiration's own put wall sits above spot at $65)
Major resistance	$65 (whole-chain heaviest call strike; Aug 7's own call wall is $70)
Max pain (Aug 7)	$62
Dealer gamma regime (estimate)	Positive for the Aug 7 expiration — hedging tends to dampen moves; the whole-chain flip level is estimated far above spot near $125
Volatility condition	Firming — IV rank 71/100 · premium rich: options priced ~10 vol points above delivered movement (earnings-inflated)
Next earnings	Monday, August 10 (after close) — three days after the Aug 7 expiration
Technical check	Confirms direction (bullish, 3-day and 6-day), but with a far tighter range
Best-fitting strategy	Short put spread below the base, if you want to be paid to be patient
Analysis invalidated if	ASTS closes below $55

1 · What matters today

ASTS closed at $58.98 after a +4.9% five-session bounce off the late-July lows, and our read of options flow finished the week neutral with a mild upward tilt. Call activity is doing the heavy lifting: for every put contract traded there were roughly three calls, and open put positions have been shrinking, not building. The options market is pricing an $8.31 move either way through Friday, August 7 — a $50.66 to $67.27 range — which is enormous for six days and tells you how little this chain trusts any single direction. The level that changes the picture is $55: it's the strike with the largest pile of open put contracts across the whole chain and the floor of the recent base. Both technical models agree on direction but see a much narrower path. Note that the July employment report lands the morning of Friday, August 7 — the same day these contracts settle.

2 · What the options market is pricing

What changed this week

The tape turned. ASTS is up 4.9% over five sessions after being down 31% over the prior month, and the option flow flipped with it — our momentum read printed +19 on Friday against a −15 average over the past seven sessions, its first meaningfully positive day in weeks. The composition of that flow is the story: put/call volume came in at 0.32 (for every put contract traded there were about three calls), versus a 0.47 seven-day average and 0.60 over 14 days. Open interest tells the same tale — the ratio of open puts to open calls sits at 0.56 against 0.67 over the past week, down from 0.70 five days ago. Call open interest grew 23,233 contracts on the day against 7,745 for puts. The largest single non-expired build was 1,115 contracts added to the August 7 $65 puts, alongside 979 contracts piled onto the August 21 $50 puts — some hedging is being placed, but further out. Into Friday's expiration, flow was frankly speculative: the settled July 31 $65 calls added 7,079 contracts of open interest and 11,845 of the $60 calls changed hands, all of it now history.

The short- and long-term trend reads are pointing different ways, and that tension deserves naming: the past week's +4.9% pop runs against a market that is still down 31% over roughly a month and 33% over two and a half months. A momentum crossover on July 27 turned the near-term read bullish while both longer lookbacks stay firmly negative. That is a counter-trend bounce until proven otherwise, which argues for short-dated directional structures and quick profit-taking rather than anything you have to hold.

Expected move

Into August 7, the options market is pricing a move of about ±14.1%, or ±$8.31 around the $58.97 chain price — that's the move implied by what straddles cost, derived from at-the-money implied volatility (the market's estimate of how much ASTS will move, baked into option prices). Here is the ladder:

Expiration	Implied move	Range around $58.97
Fri, Aug 7 (7 DTE)	±14.1%	$50.66 – $67.27
Fri, Aug 14 (14 DTE)	±25.1%	$44.17 – $73.76
Fri, Aug 21 (21 DTE)	±27.8%	$42.58 – $75.35
Fri, Aug 28 (28 DTE)	±31.4%	$40.48 – $77.45

The jump from ±14.1% to ±25.1% between the first two rungs is far bigger than time alone explains — at-the-money implied volatility steps from 102% to 128% across those two dates — and that step-up is where the earnings paragraph below points.

Volatility

At-the-money implied volatility sits at 112.8% with an IV rank of 71/100 — meaning today's IV is higher than roughly 71% of the past year's readings, and the 52-week percentile agrees at 75. It's firming rather than spiking: up 1.7% on the day, flat over five sessions, but up 7.8% over 30 days, and now above both its 30-day average (107.0%) and 90-day average (109.2%). The front-month read is unavailable today because Friday was an expiration day, so the term-structure comparison across dates has to wait for the next session.

One "vs its own norm" observation — meaning compared against this stock's own recent history, not the broader market: realized volatility over the past 20 days is 103% annualized, which sounds enormous but is actually running well below this name's recent norm, and the five-day pace has settled right in line with the 20-day. In ASTS terms, the last week has been calm.

Premium rich or cheap. The gap between how much movement options are priced for and how much ASTS has actually delivered — the volatility risk premium — is about +10 vol points, and that gap is richer than roughly 86% of this stock's own recent readings. When it's positive, option sellers have been collecting more than realized movement cost them. Two caveats keep this from being a green light. First, the report on Monday, August 10 is nine days out, which mechanically inflates implied volatility for a real scheduled reason — some of that richness is the market pre-pricing the report, not free premium. Second, the gap only flipped positive on July 28 after weeks in negative territory, and that flip is largely mechanical: July's violent gap days are rolling out of the 20-day realized-volatility window while the pre-earnings bid firms up implied volatility. Look specifically at the August 7 rung and the picture is sober — its own at-the-money IV of 101.8% sits essentially level with 20-day realized vol of 103%. At the expiration this article trades, you are not being handed rich premium; the richness lives further out the curve.

Earnings on the calendar

ASTS reports Monday, August 10, after the close — nine days out, with consensus looking for a loss of $0.28 per share. That date lands after the August 7 expiration but before August 14, which is exactly why the expected move jumps from ±14.1% to ±25.1% between those two rungs: options expiring after a scheduled report price in the extra jump risk of that report. The last four reports all came in below expectations, most recently a $0.66 loss against an expected $0.20 loss in May. Every structure below expires three days before the report.

Skew and sentiment

Skew measures how differently puts and calls the same distance from the stock price are priced. ASTS is structurally a call-skewed name: over the past 60 days, 25-delta calls have carried about 8.9 vol points more implied volatility than equidistant puts. Today that gap is only 3.5 points — puts have caught up. Traders are paying relatively more for downside protection than they normally do in this name, and that reading is stretched versus its own recent history. It is the single clearest bearish signal in the file, and it is why the composite lands neutral rather than outright bullish.

Everything else in the sentiment stack leans the other way. Put/call volume at 0.32 is unusually call-tilted for ASTS; the pace of call-side sweeps clearing the unusual-volume bar (11 call contracts against 5 puts) is well above its own norm; and open put positioning has been thinning for five straight days. Sentiment in short-dated options is split by date: the 0–7 day bucket reads strongly bullish at +82, driven entirely by call open interest building (+15,280 calls against +344 puts), while the 7–30 day bucket sits slightly negative at −7 and the 30–60 day bucket at −16. The one-phrase summary from our read is mixed — front-week enthusiasm, mild caution behind it.

The key levels map

Level	Price	Why it matters
Options-implied high (Aug 7)	$67.27	Top of the 1σ range the chain is pricing
Call wall, Aug 7 expiration	$70	Heaviest open call interest for the week (2,588 contracts) — piles like this often slow rallies
Whole-chain heaviest call strike	$65	29,497 open calls across all dates, and 2,313 for Aug 7 alone with 2,842 traded Friday — the first real overhead barrier
Swing resistance cluster	$63.58 – $64.63	Heuristic swing-pivot levels from recent price structure
20-day moving average	$63.79	Price sits 7.6% below it
Max pain (Aug 7)	$62	The price where the most option value would expire worthless — expirations sometimes gravitate toward it
Spot / close	$58.98	Friday's close; the chain snapshot used $58.97
Aug 7 "put wall"	$65	Technically the week's largest put strike, but with only 1,503 contracts — front-week put positioning is genuinely thin, so treat this label lightly
Whole-chain put wall	$55	28,004 open puts — the real downside shelf, and the article's kill switch
Swing support	$53.33	Only heuristic support level in recent price structure
Options-implied low (Aug 7)	$50.66	Bottom of the 1σ range; $50 also carries 22,990 open puts chain-wide
Gamma flip level (estimate)	≈$125	One rough estimate only — spot sits unusually far below it for this name
52-week range	$36.08 – $133.86	Price sits at the 23rd percentile of the past year

Note the disagreement worth flagging: the six-day expiration's own walls ($70 call, $65 put) both sit above the stock, while the whole chain's walls ($65 call, $55 put) bracket it. The front-week corridor is a thin, high-perched structure; the levels with real weight behind them come from the aggregate.

Positioning and unusual flow

Market makers hedge the options they've sold. For the August 7 expiration specifically, one rough estimate puts that hedging in a positive regime — the kind that tends to dampen moves rather than amplify them. The same estimate for the whole chain places the flip level near $125, far above spot, a reading unusually stretched versus this name's history; treat both as estimates, not observed dealer inventory.

Three non-expired flow items stood out Friday. The August 7 $58 calls traded 1,858 contracts against 264 held open — seven times turnover, and $706,000 of premium, the day's largest. The August 7 $68 calls traded 2,332 against 529 open, another $196,000 reaching for a 15% move in six days. And on the other side, the August 7 $49.50 puts traded 729 contracts against just 6 held open — a small dollar amount but a genuine outlier in turnover, someone buying cheap disaster insurance right at the bottom of the implied range.

3 · Technical check (the 20%)

Both technical reports are bullish and both confirm the options read's direction while disagreeing sharply on magnitude. The 3-day model targets $60.20 with a $57.00–$61.00 range by August 4; the 6-day model targets $60.75 with a $56.75–$61.75 range by August 7. Their reasoning is the same: a fresh short-term moving-average crossover, a MACD crossover on July 31 with an expanding histogram, and an ADX reading of 25.7 rising with +DI at 33.3 against −DI at 12.6 — a strengthening directional trend. Both flag the same caution: money-flow readings stayed mildly negative through the entire bounce, so volume is not confirming the rally.

Both also make the same point our multi-horizon read makes independently — with price roughly 28% below the 50- and 200-day moving averages, this is a counter-trend bounce inside a larger downtrend, tactical rather than durable. The dominant technical scenario invalidates on a close back below $57.50 (the 6-day report uses $56.60), which is tighter than our $55 kill switch and sits right where the options data goes thin.

Model vs. Market: The options market implies $50.66–$67.27 into August 7; the 6-day technical model targets $60.75 inside a $56.75–$61.75 band. The technical range is roughly a quarter the width of the options-implied one — the chain is charging for a violent week while the trend model expects a grind. If the calmer path wins, short-premium structures with strikes outside the technical band get paid; if the chain is right, they don't.

Full technical write-ups: 3-day report → · 6-day report →

That gap is why the structures below use strikes shaded well outside the technical band rather than shaded toward the $60.75 target.

4 · Three ways the next six days can go

If ASTS pushes above $65: that strike carries the heaviest call open interest on the chain, and piles like it tend to slow advances as hedging flows meet them. A clean break through leaves relatively thin positioning until the week's own call wall at $70 — which is also the top edge of what the chain is pricing. Getting there requires roughly +10% in six days, well inside the implied range but against both longer-term trend reads.

If ASTS drifts between the walls: this is the base case the positioning supports. Max pain for the August 7 expiration sits at $62, just above spot and just below the 20-day moving average at $63.79, and the estimated hedging regime for that expiration is the dampening kind. A grind from $58 toward the low $60s with expiring open interest doing the pulling is the path of least resistance, and it is also exactly what both technical models describe.

If ASTS breaks below $55: the whole-chain put wall at $55 and the 22,990 open puts at $50 are where downside positioning actually lives, and the swing-support shelf at $53.33 sits between them. Front-week put open interest is thin, so there is less local cushion than the aggregate suggests. Note that spot sits unusually far below the estimated gamma flip level for this name — an estimate that says nothing reliable at these prices, but a reminder that this stock has already produced a −10.7% opening gap this month.

5 · Three defined-risk structures

Prices are end-of-day midpoints as of 2026-07-31. All structures are hypothetical. Verify live prices before trading — these will be stale by the open. Bid-ask spreads on ASTS options are wide relative to their marks; work every one of these as a package and be willing to walk away from a bad fill.

If you lean bullish: short put spread

• Trade: Sell the Aug 7 $55 put, buy the Aug 7 $50 put
• Credit: $1.20 · Max profit: $120 · Max loss: $380 · Break-even: $53.80
• Why it fits: You collect a credit and keep it as long as ASTS holds above $55 — the whole chain's heaviest put strike and the floor of the late-July base. The short strike sits below both technical models' downside bands and above the options-implied low of $50.66, and it is backed by five straight sessions of thinning put open interest.
• Makes sense only if: you accept that the premium here is directional, not rich — the Aug 7 rung's own IV of 101.8% is essentially level with the stock's 103% delivered movement, so you are being paid for taking a side, not for volatility richness.
• Invalidated if: ASTS closes below $55.
• Earnings exposure: Expires three days before the August 10 report — no earnings-gap risk.
• Managing it: Close at roughly 50% of max credit; exit regardless by Thursday, August 6 rather than sitting through Friday's payroll release and expiration together. Because the near-term bounce is fighting a negative two-month trend, take profits early rather than pressing.
• Liquidity note: The $55 puts traded 33¢ wide on a $1.65 mark and the $50 puts 11¢ wide — the short leg is the slippage; a fill materially below $1.00 changes the risk/reward enough to skip it.
• Analyze this position →

If you expect the range to hold: iron condor

• Trade: Sell the Aug 7 $52 put / buy the $48 put, and sell the Aug 7 $66 call / buy the $70 call
• Credit: $1.12 · Max profit: $112 · Max loss: $288 · Break-evens: $50.88 and $67.12
• Why it fits: The break-evens land almost exactly on the options-implied rails ($50.66 and $67.27), and both technical models expect a band roughly a quarter as wide. The short call at $66 sits above the whole chain's heaviest call strike; the short put at $52 sits below the $55 shelf. If the technical read of a grind toward $60–61 is right, this is the structure that gets paid for it.
• Makes sense only if: you genuinely believe the chain is overcharging for the week. The premium is rich at the chain level — about 10 vol points above delivered movement, richer than 86% of this stock's own recent readings — but much of that richness sits in the post-earnings expirations, not in this one.
• Invalidated if: ASTS closes above $65 or below $55 — either break puts a short strike in play with days left.
• Earnings exposure: Expires three days before the August 10 report — no earnings-gap risk.
• Managing it: Take it off at roughly 50% of max credit, or close the threatened side if either short strike trades through. Four short-dated legs on a 100%-vol stock is a lot of gamma into a Friday that also carries the payroll release — do not hold this into the final session.
• Liquidity note: All four legs are wide — the $52 puts 29¢ on an $0.87 mark, the $70 calls 14¢ on $0.57. That is the biggest practical objection to this trade; submit as a package with a limit and do not chase.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bearish: short call spread

• Trade: Sell the Aug 7 $64 call, buy the Aug 7 $68 call
• Credit: $0.70 · Max profit: $70 · Max loss: $330 · Break-even: $64.70
• Why it fits: The short strike sits at the top of the $63.58–$64.63 swing-resistance cluster, just above the 20-day moving average at $63.79, and just below the chain's heaviest call strike at $65. It is also above both technical models' upper bands ($61.00 and $61.75). The strongest genuinely bearish reading in the data supports it: puts have closed 5.4 vol points of their usual discount to calls, meaning traders are paying up for downside protection more than they normally do here.
• Makes sense only if: you read the past week as a counter-trend bounce — which the two longer trend horizons, down 31% and 33%, support.
• Invalidated if: ASTS closes above $65.
• Earnings exposure: Expires three days before the August 10 report — no earnings-gap risk.
• Managing it: The risk/reward here is thin (about 21% of capital at risk), so treat it as a fade of a specific level, not a position. Close at 50% of credit or on any close above $63.79.
• Liquidity note: The $64 calls traded 16¢ wide on a $1.54 mark and the $68 calls 20¢ on $0.84 — with only $0.70 of credit, slippage eats a meaningful share of the edge. This is the least forgiving of the three on fills.
• Analyze this position →

If none of these: no trade

There is a real case for standing aside, and it is not the usual "IV is too low" case — IV rank is 71 and the chain-level premium is rich. The case is that the richness is in the wrong place. At the August 7 expiration itself, implied volatility of 101.8% sits level with 20-day realized volatility of 103%, so the six-day seller collects roughly what the stock has actually been delivering. The genuinely fat premium lives in the August 14 and later expirations — and that premium is fat because the August 10 report is inside them, which is not free money, it's compensation for gap risk you may not want. Add bid-ask spreads running 8% to 33% of mark on the legs above, four-figure minimum risk on a stock that gapped −10.7% this month, and a payroll release on expiration morning, and "wait for a cleaner setup after the report" is a defensible answer. Selling premium is only an edge when you're paid above what movement costs; this week, at this tenor, you're roughly paid par.

6 · Quick FAQ

What is ASTS's expected move this week? About ±$8.31, or ±14.1%, into the August 7 expiration — a $50.66 to $67.27 range, per the options market's straddle pricing as of the July 31 close.

Is ASTS expected to go up or down over the next six days? Options positioning as of July 31 leans neutral with a mild bullish tilt — call volume running three to one over puts and open put interest thinning, offset by 25-delta puts closing their usual discount to calls — but that's a read of what traders have done, not a forecast. The actionable map is the $50.66–$67.27 range, the $55 support and $65 resistance, and the $62 max-pain strike in between.

Are ASTS options expensive right now? Two lenses. IV rank of 71/100 says option prices are higher than about 71% of the past year's readings; on top of that, they're running roughly 10 vol points above the movement ASTS has actually delivered, richer than about 86% of this stock's own recent readings. But part of that richness is the market pre-pricing the August 10 report, and the August 7 expiration specifically is priced almost exactly in line with delivered movement — rich at the chain level, fair at the tenor that matters this week.

When is ASTS's next earnings report? Monday, August 10, after the close — after the August 7 expiration but before August 14, which is why the expected move steps from ±14.1% to ±25.1% between those two dates.

Where is ASTS's biggest options support and resistance? Chain-wide, the put wall is $55 (28,004 open contracts) and the heaviest call strike is $65 (29,497). For the August 7 expiration alone, both walls sit above spot — $70 calls and $65 puts — which mostly tells you front-week positioning is thin.

What invalidates this read? A close below $55.

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Methodology & disclosures. Data: end-of-day options-chain snapshot for ASTS, 2026-07-31, generated 2026-08-01T16:42:53.127Z. Prices shown are midpoints and will differ from live markets. Momentum/positioning scores and volatility-premium comparisons are descriptive measurements of past option flow and past price movement — not investment advice, signals, forecasts, or guarantees. Earnings dates and reported results are from the data provider's earnings feed as of 2026-08-01T16:42:53.127Z; report dates can change. All trade structures are hypothetical. Every structure shown has a defined maximum loss; you can lose the entire max-loss amount. Options involve substantial risk and are not suitable for all investors.