CRWV Options Are Pricing a ±$10.85 Move Into Friday — the Chart Says $102.75

Listen to this analysis — prefer audio? This CRWV outlook is also available as a podcast episode:

---

The options market implies a $94.17–$115.87 range into the August 21 expiration; here's what's driving it and three defined-risk ways to trade it.

Published Sunday, August 16, 2026 · Data as of the August 14 close

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

Quick answer

Item	Answer
Market bias	Neutral
Options-implied range (into Aug 21)	$94.17 – $115.87 (±10.3%)
Major support	$100 (whole-chain put wall; also the Aug 21 expiration's heaviest call strike)
Major resistance	$110 (whole-chain call wall, 95,189 contracts)
Max pain (Aug 21)	$95
Dealer gamma regime (estimate)	Positive — one rough estimate suggests market-maker hedging tends to dampen moves; flip level ≈ $95
Volatility condition	Falling — IV rank 12/100 · premium thin: options are priced roughly 63 vol points below what the stock has actually delivered (distorted by the recent earnings gap — see below)
Technical check	Diverges (bearish, 4-day and 6-day horizons)
Best-fitting strategy	Defined-risk debit spreads — with implied volatility near the bottom of its yearly range, owning premium beats selling it
Analysis invalidated if	CRWV closes below $100

1 · What matters today

CoreWeave has gone vertical — up 15% in five sessions and 44% in a month — and the options market has responded by getting cheaper, not more expensive. Implied volatility (the market's estimate of how much CRWV will move, baked into option prices) has fallen 25% in five sessions to 75.2%, while the stock itself has been moving at more than 130% annualized. That is the single most important fact this week: options are pricing far less movement than the stock has recently delivered.

The map into Friday, August 21 is a $94.17–$115.87 implied range, with the chain's heaviest call strike at $110 overhead and a $100 shelf beneath. The wrinkle: the Aug 21 expiration's own max pain sits at $95, nearly 10% below spot, and both technical reads point lower. A close below $100 breaks the neutral case.

2 · What the options market is pricing

What changed this week

The price story dominates everything else. CRWV gapped 20.4% higher on August 12 (opening at $108.70 against a $90.32 prior close) after the August 11 earnings report, then chopped sideways to close at $105.26 on August 14. Over five sessions that's +15.2%; over twenty, +43.8%.

Option prices did the opposite. At-the-money implied volatility sits at 75.2%, down 2.5% on the day, down 25.1% over five sessions, and 26.8% below its own 30-day average. IV rank — where today's IV sits versus the past year — is 12/100, against a trailing 14-day average of 59. In two weeks, CRWV options have gone from the upper half of their yearly volatility range to the bottom decile.

Positioning has quietly drifted call-side. Put open interest relative to call open interest ("contracts currently held open") is 0.53, versus a 14-day average of 0.69 — for every call held open there are now 0.53 puts, down from roughly 0.69 two weeks ago. Total option volume ran 1.62× its 20-day average. The single biggest open-interest change among still-live contracts was the September 18 $90 calls shedding 10,885 contracts — a large in-the-money position being closed out rather than fresh conviction.

The short- and long-term trend reads agree, mostly: bullish over the past week and the past month, but flat over the past two and a half months, where price is still down about 5%. The parabolic leg is young, and it sits inside a bigger picture that has gone nowhere.

Expected move

Into Friday, August 21, the options market is pricing a ±10.3% move — about ±$10.85 around the $105.02 chain-snapshot price, or a $94.17–$115.87 range. That figure is the move the options market is pricing in, derived from what straddles cost.

Expiration	Implied move	Range around $105.02
Fri, Aug 21 (7 days)	±10.3%	$94.17 – $115.87
Fri, Aug 28 (14 days)	±14.8%	$89.46 – $120.58
Fri, Sep 4 (21 days)	±18.3%	$85.76 – $124.28
Fri, Sep 18 (35 days)	±23.5%	$80.36 – $129.68

The ladder scales almost perfectly with the square root of time — there is no bump or kink at any rung, which tells you the chain is not bracing for a specific dated event in the next five weeks. It's just volatility, priced flat across the curve.

Volatility

At-the-money IV of 75.2% puts IV rank at 12/100 and the percentile at 5 — option prices are cheaper than roughly 88% of the past year's readings. The 30-day average of ATM IV is 102.8% and the 90-day average is 95.3%, so today's print is a long way under both. The front-month read is unavailable today (the snapshot lands on an expiry date, so the nearest-expiration IV can't be interpolated); the ~60-day tenor prints 77.1%, essentially in line with the front of the curve.

Meanwhile realized movement is extreme. Twenty-day realized volatility is 138.7% — unusually high even by CRWV's own turbulent standards, one of the most stretched readings in this dataset relative to the stock's recent history. Ten-day realized is 131.1%, thirty-day 121.5%, so the acceleration is recent and broad.

Premium rich or cheap? The volatility risk premium — the gap between how much movement options are priced for and how much CRWV has actually delivered — is about negative 63 vol points. That is the thinnest reading in essentially this stock's entire recent history (1st percentile: cheaper than 99% of its own recent readings), and it is the most extreme "versus its own norm" figure anywhere in today's data. But read it carefully: the August 11 report and the 20% gap that followed sit inside the 20-day realized-volatility window, which mechanically inflates the realized leg. The premium flipped from +21 vol points on July 29 to negative on July 30 and plunged through August — that path is the gap entering the window, not traders suddenly underpricing risk. What survives the caveat is the IV-rank reading: at 12/100, option premium is genuinely cheap versus the past year, and that alone tilts the week toward owning premium rather than collecting it.

Skew and sentiment

Skew — the fact that puts and calls the same distance from the stock price don't cost the same — has flipped hard. The 25-delta put prints 73.2% IV against the 25-delta call at 78.2%: calls are running 5.0 vol points richer than puts, against a 60-day median of puts being 1.3 points richer. That's a 6.3-point swing toward call demand and an unusually flat, call-tilted skew for this name. Translated: nobody is paying up for crash protection right now; if anything they're paying up for upside.

Volume flow is more balanced than the skew suggests. Put volume ran 0.65 per call — right on its 7-day average of 0.65 and its 14-day average of 0.65. And on the sweep side, 11 put contracts versus 8 call contracts cleared the unusual-volume bar, a put-tilt that is heavier than typical for this stock. So: option prices lean complacent, option flow is quietly two-sided.

Sentiment in short-dated options is split by tenor. The 0–7 day bucket reads −20 (mildly defensive), while the 7–30 day and 60–120 day buckets read +30 each and the 30–60 day bucket +26. The summary phrase for that shape is "positioning building further out" — the front week is where the hedging is, and the constructive positioning sits beyond it.

The key levels map

One caution before the table: the Aug 21 expiration's own heaviest call strike is $100 — below spot — while the whole chain's heaviest call strike is $110. Those disagree, and both matter for different reasons.

Level	Price	Why it matters
Upper implied-move rail (Aug 21)	$115.87	Top of the range options are pricing through Friday
Swing resistance	$110.60	Nearest structural resistance from recent price pivots
Call wall — whole chain	$110	Biggest pile of open call contracts anywhere in the chain (95,189); these often act as magnets or barriers
Technical pivot	$108.50	The level both technical reports name as the reclaim that would kill their bearish case
Spot / close	$105.02 / $105.26	Also a top-five gamma strike, so hedging flow clusters here
Swing support	$103.05	Consolidation floor since the gap; the near-term chart's line in the sand
Put wall — whole chain / Aug 21 call wall	$100	Heaviest put OI across the chain (25,380) and the Aug 21 expiration's heaviest call strike (37,848); the largest gamma strike in the file
100-day moving average	$98.32	Price sits 7.1% above it — the nearest trend line that isn't far below
Max pain (Aug 21) / gamma flip (estimate)	$95	Where the most option value would expire worthless this Friday; one rough estimate also puts the hedging flip level here
Lower implied-move rail (Aug 21)	$94.17	Bottom of the range options are pricing through Friday
200-day / 50-day moving averages	$92.94 / $90.66	Price is 13.3% and 16.1% above them respectively
Put wall (Aug 21 expiration)	$65	Deep tail hedges, not a real support shelf — the expiration's near-money put OI is spread thinly across $95, $100 and $105

Positioning and unusual flow

Both the whole chain and the Aug 21 expiration carry a positive dealer-gamma estimate — market makers hedge the options they've sold, and in this estimated regime their hedging tends to dampen moves rather than amplify them. Treat that as an estimate built on an assumed convention, not observed dealer inventory. The estimated flip level sits near $95; spot is about 9.5% above it, which is a fairly ordinary distance for this name.

Three flow items stand out among still-tradeable contracts:

• Aug 21 $100 calls traded 7,423 contracts against 37,848 open — $5.5 million of premium, the single busiest line in the chain. Open interest there actually fell 2,238, so a meaningful slice of that was closing an in-the-money position after the gap.
• Aug 21 $110 calls traded 10,799 contracts on 11,447 open interest ($2.8 million of premium) and added 1,190 contracts of open interest — fresh money betting on a push into the call wall.
• Aug 21 $112 calls traded 1,750 contracts against just 218 open — an 8× turnover that cleared the peer-relative unusual bar. Small dollars, but it's new positioning above the wall, not recycled.

On the other side, the Aug 21 $100 and $95 puts each added roughly 1,000–1,100 contracts of open interest on heavy volume. The chain is being used in both directions this week.

3 · Technical check

Both technical reads come back bearish, and both target the same number. The 4-day model (through August 19) targets $102.75 inside a $100.50–$108.75 range; the 6-day model (through August 21, our outlook date) also targets $102.75, inside $100.00–$108.50. The cited drivers are consistent: a fresh MACD bearish crossover as momentum rolled over from its post-gap peak, a Chaikin Money Flow reading of −0.279 that has stayed negative through the entire rally (a distribution signature — selling into strength), and an ADX of 56.4 that signals an extremely strong but stretched trend, with +DI still dominant.

Against our neutral options read, that's a divergence on direction — but note where it lands. Both technical target ranges sit entirely inside the options-implied range, so the chart is arguing for a smaller, downward-drifting move than the chain is pricing. Interestingly, the chart's downside target zone ($100–$101) is exactly where the options structure gets interesting: the $100 put wall, then max pain at $95.

Model vs. Market: The options market implies $94.17–$115.87 into August 21; the 6-day technical model targets $102.75 with a $100.00–$108.50 range. The chart is pricing a controlled pullback where the chain is pricing a 10% two-way move — if realized volatility stays anywhere near 130%, one of those two is badly wrong, and history over the last month favors the chain.

The TA didn't flip our bias, but it did shape strikes: the downside structure below is anchored at $105 and targets the $95 max-pain magnet rather than a shallower stop, and the condor's short call sits above the $110 call wall rather than under the chart's $108.50 pivot.

Full technical write-ups: Near-term report → · 5-day report →

4 · Three ways the next five days can go

If CRWV pushes above the whole-chain call wall ($110): that's the heaviest overhead open interest anywhere in the chain — 95,189 call contracts — and strikes like that tend to slow rallies as hedging flow leans against the move. A clean break leaves relatively thinner positioning until $115, which is both another large gamma strike and the top edge of the implied move. The fresh $110–$112 call buying suggests some traders are positioning for exactly that.

If CRWV drifts between $100 and $110: this is the shape the positioning estimate favors. With the dealer-gamma estimate positive for both the whole chain and the Aug 21 expiration, hedging flow tends to compress moves rather than extend them, and the $100 and $105 strikes carry the largest gamma concentrations in the file. Max pain for Friday sits at $95, nearly 10% below spot — expirations sometimes gravitate toward it, but a 10% pull in five sessions is a big ask, and the more realistic version of that gravity is a slow bleed toward the $100–$103 shelf.

If CRWV breaks below the $100 shelf: that level is doing triple duty — whole-chain put wall, the Aug 21 expiration's heaviest call strike, and the single largest gamma strike. Losing it removes the pin and opens the $95 zone, where one rough estimate also places the hedging flip level; below that, the same estimate suggests market-maker hedging starts amplifying selling rather than cushioning it. The lower implied rail at $94.17 and swing support at $94.75 sit right on top of that pocket.

5 · Three defined-risk structures

Prices are end-of-day midpoints as of August 14. All structures are hypothetical. Verify live prices before trading — these will be stale by the open.

If you lean bullish: Aug 21 $105/$115 call debit spread

• Trade: Buy the Aug 21 $105 call, sell the Aug 21 $115 call
• Debit: $3.11 · Max profit: $689 · Max loss: $311 · Break-even: $108.11
• Why it fits: With IV rank at 12/100 you are buying the cheapest option premium of the past year on a stock that has been moving 130%+ annualized. The short strike sits at $115 — above the $110 call wall and just inside the upper implied rail at $115.87 — so you're selling the part of the distribution the chain says is a stretch. A debit spread means you pay up front and your loss is capped at what you paid.
• Makes sense only if: you think the post-gap consolidation resolves upward and the $110 wall gets absorbed rather than defended.
• Invalidated if: CRWV closes below $103.
• Managing it: the short-term trend is running well ahead of a 50-day picture that's still flat, which argues for short-dated expressions and early profit-taking — take 50–60% of max value if it comes quickly rather than holding for the full $689, and cut it at $103 rather than waiting for expiration math.
• Liquidity note: the $105 calls quote 20¢ wide (4.4% of mark) and the $115 calls just 4¢ wide on 5,986 contracts of volume; fills are easy.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bearish: Aug 21 $105/$95 put debit spread

• Trade: Buy the Aug 21 $105 put, sell the Aug 21 $95 put
• Debit: $3.28 · Max profit: $672 · Max loss: $328 · Break-even: $101.72
• Why it fits: this is the structure that expresses the technical divergence. Both technical models target $102.75, below the break-even; the short strike is pinned exactly at Friday's max pain ($95), which is also the estimated hedging flip level and the lower implied rail neighborhood. And with skew flat — 25-delta puts actually cheaper than calls by 5 vol points — downside protection is unusually inexpensive for this name right now.
• Makes sense only if: you think the parabolic move gives back part of the gap and the $103 shelf fails.
• Invalidated if: CRWV closes above $110 (the call wall) — at that point the pullback thesis is done.
• Managing it: take profits into the $100–$98 zone rather than holding for the full move to $95; the positive gamma estimate argues against a clean slide through the biggest gamma strike in the chain.
• Liquidity note: the $105 puts quote 20¢ wide (4.8%) on 2,399 contracts; the $95 puts are 8¢ wide, which is 9.2% of a $0.87 mark — cheap contracts always show a fat percentage spread, but the absolute slippage is small.
• Analyze this position →

If you expect the range to hold: Aug 21 $91/$95/$112/$117 iron condor

• Trade: Sell the $95 put / buy the $91 put, sell the $112 call / buy the $117 call (all Aug 21)
• Credit: $1.40 · Max profit: $140 · Max loss: $360 · Break-evens: $93.60 and $113.40
• Why it fits: a condor collects premium for the stock staying between the short strikes. Here those strikes bracket the whole map — $95 is Friday's max pain and the gamma flip estimate, $112 sits above the $110 call wall — and the positive dealer-gamma estimate is the mechanical argument for a pin.
• Health warning: you're selling premium that hasn't been rich lately. IV rank is 12/100 and implied volatility is running far below what this stock has actually delivered over the past month. This is the least attractive of the three structures on paper, and the $140 credit against $360 of risk is the market telling you so.
• Makes sense only if: you specifically believe the post-gap volatility burns off fast and this week is digestion, not continuation.
• Invalidated if: CRWV closes below $100 or above $110 — don't wait for the short strikes.
• Managing it: close at ~50% of max credit; exit regardless by Thursday's close rather than carrying expiration-day gamma on a name that just gapped 20%.
• Liquidity note: the $112 calls quote 12¢ wide, the $117 calls 10¢, the $95 puts 8¢ and the $91 puts 6¢ — four legs of slippage on a $1.40 credit, so work the mid.
• Analyze this position →

If none of these: no trade

There is a clean case for standing aside. The stock gapped 20% three sessions before this data was captured and has since chopped in a $103–$110 box; the options bias computes to neutral because genuinely bullish flow signals (flat skew, thinning put open interest, five-day price momentum) are being offset by a level structure that points the other way — the expiration's heaviest call strike is below spot and max pain is 10% lower. Meanwhile the technical read disagrees with the flow read outright. Buying premium at IV rank 12 is defensible, but paying $311 or $328 for a five-day directional bet in that fog is a coin flip with a fee attached. Selling premium is worse: the credit on offer doesn't compensate for realized movement this size. Waiting for a decisive close outside $100 or $110 costs you nothing but optionality.

6 · Quick FAQ

What is CRWV's expected move this week? ±$10.85, or ±10.3%, into the August 21 expiration — a $94.17–$115.87 range around the $105.02 chain price, per the options market's straddle pricing as of August 14.

Is CRWV expected to go up or down over the next five days? The honest answer is that options data describes positioning, not the future. As of August 14 that positioning reads neutral: flow and skew lean mildly constructive, but the Aug 21 expiration's max pain sits at $95 and both technical models target $102.75. The actionable map is the $94.17–$115.87 implied range and the $100/$110 levels.

Are CRWV options expensive right now? IV rank of 12/100 says option prices are lower than 88% of the past year's readings. On top of that, they're running roughly 63 vol points below the movement CRWV has actually delivered — the thinnest such reading in essentially all of this stock's recent history. Caveat: the August 11 earnings gap sits inside the 20-day realized-volatility window, which mechanically inflates that comparison. The IV-rank read stands on its own, and it favors owning premium over selling it.

Where is CRWV's biggest options support and resistance? The whole chain's heaviest call strike is $110 (95,189 contracts) and its heaviest put strike is $100 (25,380). For the August 21 expiration specifically, the biggest call pile is at $100 and near-money put open interest is spread thinly across $95, $100 and $105.

What invalidates this week's read? A close below $100. That level is simultaneously the whole-chain put wall, the Aug 21 expiration's heaviest call strike, and the largest gamma strike in the file — losing it opens the $95 max-pain and gamma-flip zone.

---

Methodology & disclosures. Data: end-of-day options-chain snapshot for CRWV, 2026-08-14, generated 2026-08-16T19:30:50Z. 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 2026-08-16T19:30:50Z; 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.