HOOD Options Are Pricing a ±$11 Move Into Friday — Our Model Sees Half That

The options market implies a $97.33–$119.11 range into the August 28 expiration; here's what's driving it and three defined-risk ways to trade it.

Published Saturday, August 22, 2026 · Data as of the 2026-08-21 close

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Quick answer

Item	Answer
Market bias	Slightly bullish
Options-implied range (into Aug 28)	$97.33 – $119.11 (±10.1%)
Major support	$105 (gamma flip estimate — the primary line) · $98 (Aug 28 put wall)
Major resistance	$110 (heaviest overhead call open interest at the Aug 28 expiration)
Max pain (Aug 28)	$97
Dealer gamma regime (estimate)	Positive — hedging tends to dampen moves; flip level ≈ $105
Volatility condition	Rising — IV rank 36/100 · premium fair: options priced ~0.1 vol points below delivered movement
Technical check	Confirms (bullish, 3-day and 5-day horizons)
Best-fitting strategy	Short put spread (Aug 28 $103/$98), conditional on $105 holding
Analysis invalidated if	HOOD closes below $105

1 · What matters today

HOOD gapped up 6.3% on Friday and closed at $108.13, capping a 13.3% run over five sessions on 2.6× its normal share volume. The options market responded by paying up: option volume ran 4.5× its 20-day average, and the flow was overwhelmingly call-side — for every put contract traded there were nearly three calls. Our read of that positioning lands slightly bullish.

The catch is that the open-interest structure hasn't caught up with the price. Every wall at Friday's expiration — the call wall at $100, the put wall at $98, max pain at $97 — now sits below the stock. That means there's very little accumulated positioning acting as a brake until $110, and nothing meaningful acting as a floor until $105. Options price a ±$10.89 move into August 28, a $97.33–$119.11 range. Both technical reads agree on direction but see a far narrower path. A close below $105 breaks the read.

2 · What the options market is pricing

What changed this week

The whole story is Friday. HOOD opened at $101.10 against a $95.10 prior close — a 6.3% up-gap — and closed at $108.13 on 50.2 million shares, 2.56× the 20-day average. Options followed: total contract volume hit 4.5× its own 20-day average, and puts made up just 0.35 contracts per call, against a 7-day average of 0.44 and a 14-day average of 0.46. That's a call-heavy chase, not hedging.

Open interest moved the same way. The put/call open-interest ratio — how many put contracts are held open for every call — fell from 0.84 to 0.68 over five sessions, versus a 14-day average of 0.85. In one day, call open interest grew by 82,641 contracts while put open interest shed 55,508. The largest genuinely forward-looking builds were all at the August 28 expiration: the $97 calls added 1,803 contracts of open interest, the $120 calls went from zero to 2,312, and the $115 calls from zero to 1,798. Into Friday's now-settled expiration, the $110 calls traded 48,739 contracts and built 12,521 of open interest from nothing — a reminder of how much of this was same-week lottery-ticket buying rather than positioning that survives the weekend.

The short- and long-term trend reads agree here for once: price is up 13.3% over the past week, 14.0% over the past month and 25.7% over the past two-and-a-half months, so the near-term pop and the bigger trend point the same way.

Expected move

Into the August 28 expiration, the options market is pricing a move of about ±10.1%, or ±$10.89 — that's the move implied by what at-the-money straddles cost, one standard deviation either side of Friday's $108.22 chain-snapshot price.

Expiration	Implied move	Range around $108.22
Fri, August 28 (7 days)	±10.1%	$97.33 – $119.11
Fri, September 4 (14 days)	±13.7%	$93.44 – $123.00
Fri, September 18 (28 days)	±18.1%	$88.67 – $127.77

Note that the ranges widen far more slowly than the calendar does — a month out prices only 1.8× the one-week move, because the front week itself carries the richest implied volatility of the whole curve (72.6% for August 28 versus 64.1% three weeks out). The market is treating the next five sessions as the jumpy part and expecting things to settle after that.

Volatility

At-the-money implied volatility — the market's estimate of how much HOOD will move, baked into option prices — sits at 64.9%. IV rank is 36/100, meaning today's reading is cheaper than 64% of the past year's. It rose 5.2% in a single session and 16.2% over five, yet still sits 6.8% below its own 30-day average (69.7%) and below the 90-day average (67.8%). So volatility is rising off a low base rather than spiking. The front-month term-structure read is unavailable today (Friday was an expiry day and the nearest contract had zero days left), but the per-expiration curve fills the gap: the next week is priced richer than everything behind it.

One "vs its own norm" reading is worth flagging: the ratio of five-day to 20-day realized volatility is 1.64 — movement over the past week has been running well above this stock's own recent pace, more extreme than almost any reading in its recent history. Twenty-day realized volatility itself, at 65.1%, is actually a touch below its own norm; it's the last week that's the outlier.

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 essentially zero, about 0.1 vol points below delivered movement, and sits at the 53rd percentile of this stock's own recent readings. In plain terms: option sellers have not been collecting more than realized movement cost them. A week ago that gap was about 9 vol points in sellers' favour; it collapsed in one session, and that collapse is mechanical — Friday's 13% five-day surge (and the still-in-window late-July earnings reaction) pushed realized volatility up to meet implied, not the other way round. With IV rank at 36 and premium merely fair, this is not a week where selling volatility for its own sake pays; any credit structure here needs a directional or level-based reason to exist.

Skew and sentiment

Skew is the fact that puts and calls the same distance from the stock price don't cost the same. Here, they're inverted: 25-delta calls are priced at 67.1% implied volatility against 64.9% for the equivalent puts, so calls run about 2.2 vol points over puts, against a 60-day norm of roughly flat (+0.1). Traders are paying up for upside, not crash protection — a complacent, chase-the-move configuration that has held for two weeks (the 14-day average skew is −1.9 vol points).

Sentiment in short-dated options confirms it without being uniform. The 0–7 day bucket reads a mild +22 (bullish but modest, and its 7-day average is only +17), while the 7–30 day bucket is a much firmer +63 — the strongest reading in the file. Our read of the term structure labels this a "bullish recovery": positioning is building further out on the curve rather than in the expiring week. Two flow readings sit unusually high versus this stock's own history — the day's unusual-volume skew and the net new call-side open interest are both well above their norms, which is exactly what you'd expect after a gap of this size.

The key levels map

Level	Price	Why it matters
Swing resistance	$119.74	Nearest clustered swing high above the implied range
Implied-range high (Aug 28)	$119.11	Top of the ±10.1% move the options market is pricing
Call open-interest shelf	$115	1,798 contracts built from zero Friday on 20,168 traded — fresh, thin, and a magnet if price gets close
Swing resistance / technical range high	$112.50	Both technical models cap their expected range here
Heaviest overhead call OI (Aug 28)	$110	3,983 contracts held open, 28,625 traded Friday ($10.3M of premium) — the first real overhead pile
Swing resistance	$108.81	Immediate structural ceiling, roughly at spot
Spot / close	$108.22 / $108.13	Chain-snapshot price / official close
Gamma flip level (estimate)	$105	One rough estimate places the pivot here; below it, market-maker hedging tends to amplify selling rather than cushion it
Swing support / 50-day average	$100.35 / $100.31	Two structural levels stacked within four cents
Call wall (Aug 28 and whole chain)	$100	6,054 contracts at this expiration, 55,848 across the chain — now deep in the money and no longer a ceiling
Put wall (Aug 28)	$98	1,720 contracts — thin, and the only put pile of note at this expiration
Max pain (Aug 28)	$97	The price where the most option value expires worthless — 10% below spot, so any pin gravity would require unwinding the whole gap
200-day average	$96.08	Reclaimed on the gap; the longer-term structural line

The structural point: for the August 28 expiration specifically, the call wall ($100), put wall ($98) and max pain ($97) all sit below the stock. The whole-chain aggregate agrees on the call wall at $100 but places its put wall far lower at $70, a legacy of long-dated protection. Either way, the corridor that would normally frame the week has been left behind by the price.

Positioning and unusual flow

The dealer gamma estimate for the August 28 expiration is positive — under the model's assumed convention, market makers' hedging in this regime tends to dampen moves rather than amplify them, with the flip level estimated near $105. Spot sits about 3% above that estimate, which is close by this stock's standards but on the supportive side of it. Treat all of that as an estimate, not observed dealer inventory.

Three non-expired flow items stand out, all at August 28 and all call-side:

• $110 calls: 28,625 contracts traded against 3,983 open — roughly $10.3 million of premium changing hands in a single session, more than any other live contract in the chain. This is the strike the week is being fought over.
• $115 calls: 20,168 traded, and open interest went from zero to 1,798 — $4.3 million of premium into a strike that didn't exist as a position on Thursday.
• $120 calls: 7,461 traded, 2,312 contracts of brand-new open interest, 11% above spot with seven days to run.

On the put side the activity is much smaller and clustered right at the money ($106–$108 puts traded a few thousand contracts each against near-zero open interest) — short-dated hedging of the gap, not conviction positioning for a reversal.

3 · Technical check

Both technical models are bullish and both land inside the options-implied range, so the technical read confirms the positioning lean. The 3-day model targets $110.25 by August 26 with a $104.20–$112.50 range; the 5-day model targets $110.75 by August 28 with a $104.00–$112.50 range. Both flag the same tension: the trend strength reading (ADX at 41.1 with buyers firmly dominant) and sustained accumulation in the money-flow indicator argue for continuation, while an RSI at 74.4 and price pressing the upper Bollinger Band argue for a pause or shallow pullback first.

The interesting divergence isn't direction — it's magnitude. The options market is pricing a range roughly 2.5× as wide as the technical models', which is what you'd expect when implied volatility jumps 16% in a week after a gap. The models are effectively saying the gap consolidates; the options market is saying it might not.

Model vs. Market: The options market implies $97.33–$119.11 into August 28; the 5-day technical model targets $110.75 within a $104.00–$112.50 band. The market is paying for a tail the charts don't see — which argues for structures that collect that premium at the rails rather than buying it in the middle.

The technical reads shaped strike selection in one concrete way: both name $105–$106 as the line that matters on the downside (VWAP at $106.24, with invalidation on a close below $105), which is where the gamma flip estimate also sits. That confluence is why the bullish structure below is built to survive a pullback to $103 rather than $106.

Full technical write-ups: 3-day report → · 5-day report →

4 · Three ways the next five days can go

If HOOD pushes above $110: that's the first real pile of overhead call contracts at this expiration (3,983 open), and the strike that absorbed $10.3 million of premium on Friday. Heavy call open interest overhead tends to slow rallies as the contracts that were sold get hedged into strength. Above it, positioning thins fast — the $115 and $120 shelves were built from nothing on Friday and are small, so a clean break leaves relatively little structure until the implied-range top near $119.

If HOOD drifts sideways between $105 and $110: this is the quiet case, and the positioning supports it. The estimated dealer gamma regime is positive, meaning hedging flows tend to damp movement rather than feed it, and there is no meaningful open-interest cluster between $105 and $110 to pull price either way. Note that the usual max-pain magnet doesn't apply this week: at $97 it sits 10% below spot, so gravitating toward it would require surrendering essentially the whole gap in five sessions — a much bigger claim than "expirations sometimes drift toward max pain."

If HOOD breaks below $105: that's the estimated gamma flip, and spot is only about 3% above it. Below that line, one rough estimate suggests market-maker hedging starts amplifying selling rather than cushioning it. There's no positioning floor between there and the $100/$100.31 shelf where the call wall and the 50-day average sit almost on top of each other. Given how vertical the move up was, an air pocket back into the pre-gap $95–$101 base is the honest downside case — and it's the case that kills this article's read.

5 · Three defined-risk structures

Prices are end-of-day midpoints as of 2026-08-21. All structures are hypothetical. Verify live prices before trading — these will be stale by the open.

If you lean bullish: Aug 28 $103/$98 put credit spread

• Trade: Sell the August 28 $103 put, buy the August 28 $98 put
• Credit: $1.23 · Max profit: $123 · Max loss: $377 · Break-even: $101.77
• Why it fits: You collect a credit for the stock staying above $103 — 4.8% below spot and above the pre-gap base. The break-even at $101.77 sits below the gamma flip estimate ($105), below the 50-day average ($100.31 is just under it) and above the $98 put wall, so it takes a real breakdown, not a shakeout, to lose. The bullish lean comes from the flow (call open interest up 82,641 in a day, put open interest down 55,508) and from both technical models targeting ~$110.
• Makes sense only if: you believe the gap holds and $105 acts as support rather than a trapdoor.
• Invalidated if: HOOD closes below $105.
• Managing it: Close at roughly 50% of max credit; exit regardless by Wednesday's close if the stock is drifting toward the short strike. With the short-term move this far ahead of the longer trend, take profits early rather than holding to expiry for the last few cents.
• Liquidity note: the $103 puts quoted 6¢ wide (about 3% of mid) and the $98 puts 8¢ — comfortable fills for a five-wide spread.
• Analyze this position →

If you expect the range to hold: Aug 28 $96/$100/$116/$120 iron condor

• Trade: Sell the $100 put and buy the $96 put; sell the $116 call and buy the $120 call, all August 28
• Credit: $1.43 · Max profit: $143 · Max loss: $257 · Break-evens: $98.57 and $117.43
• Why it fits: A credit spread on each side means you keep the premium as long as HOOD finishes between the short strikes. The short put sits at the Aug 28 call wall ($100), which after the gap acts as a floor from above; the short call sits just above the fresh $115 call build. It's the structure that expresses the Model-vs-Market gap directly — the charts see $104–$112.50, the options market is charging for $97.33–$119.11.
• Makes sense only if: you think the gap consolidates rather than extends. Be honest about the odds: both break-evens sit inside the implied move, so the market is pricing a decent chance of touching one of them. And with the volatility premium at fair value rather than rich, you're selling premium that hasn't been generous lately — this is a range bet, not a volatility-harvesting bet.
• Invalidated if: HOOD closes below $105 or above $112.50 — either break makes one wing live well before expiry.
• Managing it: Take it off at ~50% of max credit, or roll the untested side only if the tested side is still comfortably out of the money. Do not hold a tested wing into Friday morning.
• Liquidity note: the $100 puts traded 7¢ wide and the $120 calls 3¢, but the $116 calls were 19¢ wide (about 10% of mid) and the $96 puts 11¢ — work the mid on those two legs or accept meaningful slippage.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bearish: Aug 28 $115/$120 call credit spread

• Trade: Sell the August 28 $115 call, buy the August 28 $120 call
• Credit: $0.99 · Max profit: $99 · Max loss: $401 · Break-even: $115.99
• Why it fits: This fades the most speculative part of Friday's flow. The $115 and $120 calls both went from zero open interest to fresh positions in a single session on enormous volume — that's chase money, and it needs another 6.3% in five days to pay. Calls are running 2.2 vol points richer than puts against a flat 60-day norm, so the upside is where the premium is.
• Makes sense only if: you think an RSI at 74.4 and a stock 15% above its 20-day average caps the advance short of $115. This trades against the article's overall lean — size it accordingly.
• Invalidated if: HOOD closes above $112.50.
• Managing it: Close at ~50% of max credit or on any close above $112.50; the risk-to-reward here (risking $401 to make $99) means a single un-managed loss erases four winners.
• Liquidity note: the $115 calls quoted 16¢ wide (7.5% of mid) on 20,168 contracts of volume and the $120 calls 3¢ — fills are workable.
• Analyze this position →

If none of these: no trade

There's a legitimate case for standing aside. The premium here isn't rich — options are priced essentially in line with what HOOD has actually delivered, at the 53rd percentile of its own recent readings — so the usual reason to sell a seven-day structure (getting paid for inflated fear) simply isn't present. Meanwhile the stock has moved 13% in five sessions, realized volatility over the past week is running well above its own monthly pace, and every wall that would normally frame the week sits below the price. That combination — fair premium, an unanchored level structure and a stock moving faster than its own recent norm — is a fine week to have no position. The setups above all depend on $105 holding; if you don't have a view on that, you don't have a trade.

6 · Quick FAQ

What is HOOD's expected move this week? About ±$10.89, or ±10.1%, into the August 28 expiration — a $97.33–$119.11 range, per the options market's straddle pricing as of the August 21 close.

Is HOOD expected to go up or down over the next five days? Options positioning as of August 21 leans slightly bullish — call open interest grew by 82,641 contracts in a day while put open interest fell by 55,508, and calls are priced richer than puts — but that's a read of what traders have done, not a forecast. The actionable map is the $97.33–$119.11 range with $105 as the pivot and $110 as the first overhead shelf.

Are HOOD options expensive right now? IV rank of 36/100 says option prices are lower than 64% of the past year's readings; on top of that, they're running about 0.1 vol points below the movement HOOD has actually delivered, right around the middle of this stock's own recent readings. Verdict: fair, not rich — which is a reason to be picky about selling premium this week rather than eager.

Where is HOOD's biggest options support and resistance? For the August 28 expiration, the put wall is $98 and the call wall is $100 — but both now sit below the stock, so the practical resistance is the $110 strike (3,983 contracts of overhead call open interest) and the practical support is the $105 gamma flip estimate.

What invalidates this read? A close below $105.

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Methodology & disclosures. Data: end-of-day options-chain snapshot for HOOD, 2026-08-21, generated 2026-08-23T02:28:19Z. 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 2026-08-23T02:28:19Z; 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.