HOOD Options Are Pricing a ±$8 Move Into August 7 — Positioning and the Chart Disagree

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The options market implies a $78.25–$94.63 range into the August 7 expiration; here's what is driving it, where the walls sit, and three defined-risk ways to trade the next six days.

Published Saturday, August 1, 2026 · Data as of the July 31 close · Export generated August 1, 2026 17:59 UTC

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

Quick answer

Item	Answer
Market bias	Neutral with a slight bullish tilt
Options-implied range (into Aug 7)	$78.25 – $94.63 (±9.5%)
Major support	$79 (Aug 7 heaviest put strike); $84.55 and $81.93 first in the way
Major resistance	$93 (Aug 7 heaviest call strike); $89–$90 cluster comes first
Max pain (Aug 7)	$89
Dealer gamma regime (estimate)	Positive for the Aug 7 expiration — on this rough estimate hedging tends to dampen moves; flip level ≈ $100, which sits above spot, so read it loosely
Volatility condition	Falling — IV rank 39/100 · premium modestly rich: options priced about 6 vol points above delivered movement (post-report distorted)
Technical check	Diverges (bearish, 3-day and 6-day models)
Best-fitting strategy	Small iron condor: Aug 7 $81/$78 puts + $93/$96 calls
Analysis invalidated if	HOOD closes below $84.50

1 · What matters today

HOOD closed Friday at $86.56, down 8.9% over five sessions and 22.9% over two months. Our read of the options data lands neutral with a slight upward tilt: the leading positioning flow turned call-heavy on Friday, options expiring in the next one-to-four weeks are leaning bullish, and downside protection has gone from very expensive to almost flat against calls — while price momentum itself is still clearly negative. Options into Friday's August 7 expiration price a ±9.5% move, roughly $78.25 to $94.63 — that's the move the options market is pricing in, derived from what straddles cost. The expiration's biggest put pile sits at $79, its biggest call pile at $93, and max pain — the strike where the most option value would expire worthless — sits at $89, just above spot. Both technical reports disagree and target $84.60–$85.10. One level settles it: a close below $84.50. Note that the July employment report lands Friday, August 7 at 8:30 a.m. — the same morning these contracts expire.

2 · What the options market is pricing

What changed this week

The dominant change is volatility deflation, not direction. At-the-money implied volatility — the market's estimate of how much HOOD will move, baked into option prices — is 66.5%, down 14.9% over five sessions from the low 80s and now sitting below both its 30-day average (74.4%) and its 90-day average (69.2%). IV rank has fallen to 39/100 against a 7-day average of 61 and a 14-day average of 64: option prices have cooled off faster than this stock usually manages.

Positioning rotated with it. The put/call open-interest ratio — puts held open relative to calls — has slid from 1.00 to 0.88 over five days, and today's 0.88 sits close to its 7-day average of 0.89: for every call contract held open there are now 0.88 puts, where a week ago the two sides were level. Puts have been thinning, not building. Day over day, call open interest grew by 34,848 contracts against 10,344 for puts, and the single biggest change was in the August 7 $93 calls, which went from 348 contracts open to 7,629 — a 7,281-contract build that made that strike the expiration's heaviest call line overnight. The $89 and $92 calls added roughly 7,200 and 6,400. On the put side, the August 7 $79 puts added 3,997 contracts to 4,062 — real but a fraction of the call-side build. (Into Friday's expiration, by contrast, flow was liquidation: the settled July 31 $101 calls shed 4,363 contracts of open interest and the $102s another 3,743 — history, not a live level.)

One tension is worth naming. The short- and long-term trend reads point different ways: over the past week and the past month, both price and flow readings have been firmly negative — down 8.9% and 22.9% respectively — while over roughly the past 50 sessions HOOD is still up 16.6%. The near-term move is running counter to the bigger trend, which is exactly the configuration that argues for short-dated structures and early profit-taking rather than positioning for a multi-week swing. Our flow composite reinforces the point: it averaged around −34 over the past seven sessions and only snapped back to roughly flat in Friday's snapshot. That is a one-day shift, not an established turn.

Expected move

Into the August 7 expiration, the options market prices a ±9.5% move — about ±$8.19 on a $86.44 chain-snapshot spot, or $78.25 to $94.63.

Expiration	Implied move	Range around $86.44
Aug 7 (7 days)	±9.5%	$78.25 – $94.63
Aug 14 (14 days)	±13.2%	$75.03 – $97.85
Aug 21 (21 days)	±16.3%	$72.35 – $100.53
Aug 28 (28 days)	±18.1%	$70.83 – $102.05

The rungs scale smoothly with time — ATM IV is 68.5% at seven days, 67.4% at fourteen, 68.0% at twenty-one and 65.2% at twenty-eight. There is no step-up, no hump, no single date the chain is bracing for. Whatever traders are worried about, they are spreading it evenly across August rather than pinning it to one session.

Volatility

ATM IV of 66.5% with an IV rank of 39/100 means option prices are cheaper than about 61% of the past year's readings, and the 52-week percentile of 50 says roughly half of the last year saw lower IV — the middle of its own range, after a week of steep decline. The front-month term-structure read (comparing option prices across expiration dates) is unavailable in Friday's snapshot, because the nearest expiration was that same day; the ~60-day tenor prints 67.3%, essentially in line with the at-the-money read.

Two "vs its own norm" observations are worth having, both compared against HOOD's own recent history rather than the broader market. First, 20-day realized volatility of 60.2% — how much the stock has actually been moving — is unusually low for this name, despite the size of the slide. Second, five-day realized movement is running at only 0.54× the 20-day pace: the selling has decelerated, not accelerated. That is a stock that fell hard and then went quiet.

Premium rich or cheap. The volatility risk premium — the gap between how much movement options are priced for and how much HOOD has actually delivered — is +6.2 vol points, which is richer than about two-thirds of this stock's own recent readings (69th percentile). When that gap is positive, option sellers have been collecting more than realized movement cost them. The caveat matters more than the number here: HOOD's most recent report landed on July 29 (reported EPS of $0.62 against a $0.44 estimate, per the earnings feed), so the outsized post-report sessions now sit inside the 20-day realized-volatility window that this comparison uses — some of the richness is mechanical, not free premium, and the swing in the reading from about 12 points on July 28 to under 4 on July 30 and back to 6 on Friday is that same distortion working through the window, not a trader signal. Combined with a mid-range IV rank of 39, the honest verdict is that premium is modestly rich but not richly enough — and not cleanly enough — to build a thesis around selling it. Size accordingly.

Skew and sentiment

Skew is the story of the week. Puts and calls the same distance from the stock price don't cost the same — when puts are pricier, traders are paying up for crash protection. Today, 25-delta puts (67.2% IV) trade just 0.2 vol points over 25-delta calls (67.1%), against a 60-day median of 1.0 vol point for this name and a three-day average of 9.5 points. Put protection that was extraordinarily expensive around the report has bled off to flatter-than-normal in a handful of sessions. That is complacency by this stock's own standards — nobody is currently paying up for downside insurance.

Flow tilts the same way. Put/call volume of 0.46 (more than two calls traded for every put) sits slightly below its 7-day average of 0.50 and near its 14-day average of 0.48. On the curve, sentiment in options expiring inside a week is mildly put-tilted (a −11 reading, driven by puts holding up better than calls in the front expiration), while the 7-to-30-day bucket reads a strong +52 on the back of that call-side open-interest build and call-dominated delta-weighted volume. The overall regime label is Mixed, and it deserves the name: the front week is defensive, the month behind it is not.

The key levels map

Level	Price	Why it matters
Gamma flip estimate (estimate)	$100	One rough estimate puts the pivot here; spot sits unusually far below it for this name
200-day moving average	$99.29	Price is 12.8% below it — the long-term trend line is far overhead
50-day MA / swing resistance	$96.64 / $96.59	Two overhead markers stacked within pennies of each other
Top of the 6-day implied range	$94.63	The upper rail of what options price for August 7
Swing resistance	$94.40 / $93.06	Recent pivot cluster, right on top of the call wall
Call wall (Aug 7)	$93	The expiration's biggest call pile (7,629 contracts) after Friday's 7,281-contract build
Whole-chain heaviest call strike	$90	29,451 calls open across all expirations; also the single largest total-gamma strike
Max pain (Aug 7)	$89	Where the most option value expires worthless — expirations sometimes gravitate here
Near-term technical resistance	$87.43	Short-term moving average both technical reports flag as the immediate cap
Friday's close / 100-day MA	$86.56 / $86.50	Price is sitting almost exactly on its 100-day average
Technical support (lower band)	$84.55	The level both technical models say defines the basing attempt — our invalidation sits just under it
Swing support	$81.93	First real price-structure shelf below the market
Put wall (Aug 7)	$79	The expiration's biggest put pile (4,062) — the corridor's floor for this week
Bottom of the 6-day implied range / swing support	$78.25 / $78.40	Lower rail of the implied range, with a pivot cluster on top of it
Whole-chain heaviest put strike	$75	35,464 puts open across all expirations — the chain's structural floor
52-week low	$63.51	Context: HOOD is 43.7% off its 52-week high of $153.86

Note the split between the two lenses: for the August 7 expiration specifically, the walls are $79 and $93, while the whole chain's heaviest strikes sit at $75 and $90. For this week's map, use the $79/$93 pair — but the $89–$90 cluster (max pain plus the chain's biggest call and gamma line) is the magnet nearest spot.

Positioning and unusual flow

The dealer-gamma read is an estimate, and this week it is an awkward one. Scoped to the August 7 expiration, the estimate reads positive — market makers hedge the options they've sold, and in that regime their hedging tends to dampen moves rather than amplify them. But the same estimate places its flip level near $100, well above spot, and by that convention price below the flip is the fragile side. The two don't line up neatly, which is a good reminder that this figure is a modeled approximation and not observed dealer inventory. What is not modeled: spot sits unusually far below that flip estimate versus this stock's own recent history.

Three non-expired flow items stand out. The August 7 $75 calls traded 1,966 contracts against 63 open — about $2.4 million of premium, the largest single dollar-print in Friday's chain. Those are deep in-the-money weeklies with a delta near 0.89; that behaves much like owning the stock into Friday, with a defined cost. The August 7 $90 calls traded 7,174 contracts ($1.36 million) and added 3,198 to open interest, and the $88 calls traded 2,536 with 395 of fresh open interest. Against that, the August 7 $78 and $77 puts traded 1,114 and 687 contracts with modest new open interest — real hedging, but nothing like the call-side commitment. The week's fresh money went upside and short-dated.

On the macro calendar supplied for the window: ISM Manufacturing PMI and construction spending Monday at 10:00 a.m., the Fed Senior Loan Officer Survey at 2:00 p.m.; the trade balance Tuesday 8:30 a.m. and JOLTS plus factory orders at 10:00; ADP Wednesday 8:15 a.m., the Treasury quarterly refunding announcement 8:30, ISM Services 10:00; jobless claims and Q2 productivity Thursday 8:30; and the July employment report Friday, August 7 at 8:30 a.m. The chain shows no distinct footprint for any of them — the expected-move ladder scales smoothly with time, with no bump at the August 7 rung — so treat the payrolls print as a timing risk for anything held into Friday's close rather than as something the options are already paying for.

3 · Technical check (the 20%)

Both technical reports are bearish, and both use a reference price of $86.57 — within pennies of the options snapshot, so the two data sets are talking about the same market. The 3-day model (target date August 4) targets $85.10 with a $83.30–$88.30 range; the 6-day model (target date August 7) targets $84.60 with a $82.50–$89.50 range. Both name support at $84.55 and resistance at $87.43–$87.45, and both give their bearish continuation scenario 45% weight, invalidated on a sustained close above $88.50.

Against our options read, that is a divergence. The chart's case is structural: price trades below every major moving average, the trend-strength indicator sits above 30 with the negative directional line dominant, and money-flow readings remain deep in distribution and have not confirmed the bounce. The chart's own caveat is momentum — the relative-strength index has recovered off an oversold 28.7 and the MACD histogram is contracting, which the 6-day report reads as an early stabilization inside a larger downtrend. That is the same soft turn our positioning data is picking up from the other direction.

Model vs. Market: The options market implies $78.25–$94.63 into August 7; the 6-day technical model targets $84.60 within a tighter $82.50–$89.50 band. The chart expects less movement than options are priced for, and expects it to the downside — the whole technical range fits inside the options range with room to spare, which is a quiet argument for selling the rails rather than buying direction.

Practically, the divergence pulled our short call strike down from the $93 wall to $90 in the bearish structure below, and it is the reason the bullish structure's short strike sits at $82 rather than nearer the money.

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

4 · Three ways the next six days can go

If HOOD pushes above the call wall ($93): that strike now carries the expiration's heaviest call open interest after Friday's build, and heavy call positioning overhead tends to slow rallies as it is hedged. A clean move through it runs into the $94.40 swing pivot and the top of the implied range at $94.63 almost immediately, with thinner positioning until the $96.59–$96.64 zone where the 50-day average sits. Getting there needs roughly 7.6% in six days — inside the implied range, but it would also invalidate both technical scenarios.

If HOOD drifts between the walls: this is the base case the positioning data describes. Max pain for August 7 is $89, the chain's heaviest call line and largest gamma strike is $90, and price is sitting almost exactly on its 100-day average at $86.50. On the per-expiration estimate, hedging into Friday leans toward damping moves rather than amplifying them, and the $89–$90 cluster is the nearest magnet above. A grinding week between roughly $84.50 and $90 that lets the front-week premium bleed out is the outcome the most option value is currently arranged around.

If HOOD breaks below the put wall ($79): the $84.55 technical shelf and the $81.93 swing support come first, and both technical models make a close under $84.50 their trigger for the next leg (their targets land at $81.50–$83.50). Below $79 — the bottom quartile of the implied range — the next structural pile is the chain's $75 put wall. One rough estimate places the dealer-gamma flip near $100, and spot is already unusually far below it for this name; on that convention, hedging in this zone amplifies selling rather than cushioning it. Treat that as the estimate it is, but it is the reason the downside branch is the fast one.

5 · Three defined-risk structures

Prices are end-of-day midpoints as of July 31. All structures are hypothetical. Verify live prices before trading — these will be stale by the open.

If you expect the corridor to hold: iron condor

• Trade: Sell the Aug 7 $81/$78 put spread and the Aug 7 $93/$96 call spread (four legs, one condor)
• Credit: $1.01 ($101) · Max profit: $101 · Max loss: $199 · Break-evens: $79.99 and $94.01
• Why it fits: the short strikes sit outside the expiration's own walls' inner edges — $81 just above the $79 put pile, $93 exactly at the heaviest call line — and both break-evens sit within pennies of the implied ±9.5% rails. You collect a credit and win if HOOD does what the max-pain/$89–$90 magnet story suggests: nothing dramatic. You are being paid roughly a third of the spread width to bet against a full 1σ move.
• Makes sense only if you accept that the break-evens sit inside the implied range, so a one-sigma move breaches a side; size this small, one condor at a time.
• Invalidated if: HOOD closes below $84.50 (or above $90, the chain's heaviest call strike) — either close puts a side in play well before expiration.
• Managing it: take profit at roughly 50% of the credit; with the short-term trend fighting the 50-day trend, don't hold for the last few cents. Flatten or reduce before Friday's 8:30 a.m. payrolls print rather than carrying a pinned condor through it.
• Liquidity note: the $81 puts traded 10¢ wide, the $78 puts 6¢, the $93 calls 8¢ — all workable. The $96 calls are the weak leg at 13¢ wide on a $0.67 mark (about 20%); use a limit on the package and expect to give up a few cents.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bullish: short put spread

• Trade: Sell the Aug 7 $82 put, buy the Aug 7 $79 put (you collect a credit today and keep it if HOOD stays above $82; your loss is capped by the long put)
• Credit: $0.66 ($66) · Max profit: $66 · Max loss: $234 · Break-even: $81.34
• Why it fits: the short strike sits just above the $81.93 swing shelf and the long strike sits exactly at the expiration's $79 put wall, so the structure's risk is bracketed by two levels the data actually names. It also expresses the week's positioning shift directly — puts thinning (put/call OI 1.00 → 0.88), 34,848 contracts of new call open interest against 10,344 of puts, and a 7-to-30-day sentiment read at +52.
• Makes sense only if you are comfortable selling puts while skew is unusually flat — at 0.2 vol points over calls against a 1.0-point norm, you are not being paid a fear premium for taking downside risk. That is the honest weakness of this trade this week.
• Invalidated if: HOOD closes below $84.50 — that is the technical trigger both chart models use, and it comes well before your break-even.
• Managing it: close at ~50% of max credit; exit no later than Thursday's close if HOOD is below $85, and don't hold a challenged short put through Friday's employment report on hope.
• Liquidity note: the $82 puts traded 11¢ wide ($1.34/$1.45) and the $79 puts 6¢ ($0.70/$0.76) — about 8% of mark each, so work the spread as a package with a limit rather than legging in.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bearish: short call spread

• Trade: Sell the Aug 7 $90 call, buy the Aug 7 $93 call (you collect a credit and keep it if HOOD stays below $90)
• Credit: $0.79 ($79) · Max profit: $79 · Max loss: $221 · Break-even: $90.79
• Why it fits: this is the structure that respects the technical divergence. The short strike sits at the whole chain's heaviest call line and largest gamma strike ($90, 29,451 contracts) and just above the expiration's $89 max pain; the long strike sits at the expiration's own call wall. Both technical models cap the bounce at $87.43 and only concede a rally scenario above $88.00–$88.50, so the break-even at $90.79 sits above every level either report is willing to target.
• Makes sense only if you accept the risk of selling calls into a week where fresh open interest went overwhelmingly to the call side at $89–$94 — that build is a real crowd trading against this position.
• Invalidated if: HOOD closes above $88.50 — the technical reports' own invalidation level, and the point at which the $89–$90 cluster becomes a target rather than a ceiling.
• Managing it: take profit at ~50% of credit; because the short-term downtrend is running counter to a still-positive 50-day trend, harvest early rather than pressing for the full credit into Friday's payrolls print.
• Liquidity note: the $90 calls traded 10¢ wide on 7,174 contracts of volume (about 5% of mark — the best fill in this expiration) and the $93 calls 8¢ wide; this is the cleanest of the three structures to execute.
• Analyze this position →

If none of these: no trade

There is a strong case for standing aside this week, and it is not laziness. Premium looks modestly rich at about 6 vol points over delivered movement, but the July 29 report's gap sits inside the realized-volatility window that comparison uses, so the richness is partly an artifact rather than a clean edge — and an IV rank of 39 is not the kind of reading that justifies leaning hard on premium selling. Meanwhile the ±9.5% implied move over six days means every credit structure here has break-evens a single sigma away, and the two lenses genuinely disagree: options positioning tilts slightly up, the chart is firmly down. Add a payrolls report landing on the morning of expiration and you have a week where the honest position size may be zero. Waiting for either a close below $84.50 (which resolves the argument for the bears) or a reclaim of $88.50 (which resolves it for the bulls) costs nothing but a week.

6 · Quick FAQ

What is HOOD's expected move this week? About ±$8.19, or ±9.5%, into the August 7 expiration — a $78.25 to $94.63 range around the $86.44 chain-snapshot price, per straddle pricing as of the July 31 close.

Is HOOD expected to go up or down over the next six days? Options positioning as of July 31 leans neutral with a slight upward tilt — puts thinning, heavy new call open interest at $89–$94, and skew flatter than this stock's norm — but that is a read of what traders have already done, not a forecast, and both technical models point the other way with targets near $84.60. The actionable map is the $78.25–$94.63 range, the $79/$93 walls, and the $89 max-pain magnet in between.

Are HOOD options expensive right now? IV rank 39/100 says option prices are lower than about 61% of the past year's readings; on top of that, they're running roughly 6 vol points above the movement HOOD has actually delivered, richer than about two-thirds of this stock's own recent readings. The verdict is "modestly rich, not compellingly so" — and part of that richness is the July 29 report's gap distorting the realized-volatility side of the comparison, so don't treat it as free money.

Where is HOOD's biggest options support and resistance? For the August 7 expiration, the heaviest put strike is $79 and the heaviest call strike is $93. Across the whole chain, the biggest piles sit at $75 (puts) and $90 (calls) — and the $89–$90 area, which also contains this week's max pain, is the closest cluster to spot.

What invalidates this week's read? A close below $84.50. That breaks the basing attempt both technical models are watching, puts the $81.93 shelf and then the $79 put wall in play, and kills the drift-toward-$89 base case.

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Methodology & disclosures. Data: end-of-day options-chain snapshot for HOOD, 2026-07-31, generated 2026-08-01T17:59:13.259Z. 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 2026-08-01T17:59:13.259Z; 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.