MARA Options Are Pricing a $1.72 Move Through August 7 — Both Technical Reads Say Lower

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The options market implies a $9.58–$13.02 range into the August 7 expiration; here's what's driving it, why the earnings calendar complicates every structure, and three defined-risk ways to trade it.

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

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Quick answer

Item	Answer
Market bias	Slightly bearish
Options-implied range (into Aug 7)	$9.58 – $13.02 (±15.2%)
Major support	$10.50 (Aug 7 put wall)
Major resistance	$12.00 (Aug 7 call wall)
Max pain (Aug 7)	$12.00
Dealer gamma regime (estimate)	Positive — hedging tends to dampen moves; one rough estimate puts the flip level far below spot, near $2
Volatility condition	Rising — IV rank 61/100 · premium thin: options priced about 5 vol points below delivered movement (earnings-distorted)
Next earnings	Wednesday, August 6 (after close) — before the Aug 7 expiration
Technical check	Confirms (bearish, 3-day and 6-day)
Best-fitting strategy	Long put spread (debit), sized small for earnings-gap risk
Analysis invalidated if	MARA closes above $12.00

1 · What matters today

Our read of MARA's options flow leans slightly bearish into the August 7 expiration. The stock closed at $11.32 after falling 7% in five sessions, and the options market is pricing a move of roughly $1.72 either way through that Friday — a $9.58 to $13.02 range, derived from what straddles cost. The level that decides the story is $12: it is both the strike with the heaviest call open interest for that expiration and the price where the most option value would expire worthless. A close above it kills this read. Below, $10.50 is the biggest pile of open put contracts and the first real shelf. One complication colors everything: MARA reports earnings after the close on Wednesday, August 6, and there is no tradeable expiration ahead of it. Both technical reports we ran also lean lower.

2 · What the options market is pricing

What changed this week

The past six sessions were violent. MARA fell 7.0% over five trading days and 8.7% over twenty, but not in a straight line — it gapped 4.1% lower on July 28, collapsed to $10.07 on July 29, then gapped 6.1% higher on July 30 before settling at $11.32. That whipsaw is what drove the volatility story: at-the-money implied volatility jumped 7.7% in a single day to 103.6%, up 6.9% over five days and 26.6% over thirty, and now sits well above its own 30-day average of 94.7% and 90-day average of 91.0%. IV rank at 61/100 is meaningfully above its 3-, 7- and 14-day trailing averages, all of which sat near 54.

New money went to the call side of the front week. The single largest change in contracts held open on a still-live expiration was the August 7 $12 calls, which added 25,399 contracts to 39,332 on 12,656 traded and about $544,000 of premium — that build is precisely what created this week's call wall. The August 7 $13 calls added another 20,638. Into Friday's settled expiry, the reverse happened as positions ran off: the July 31 $13 calls shed 12,900 contracts and the $14 calls 10,429, historical bookkeeping rather than fresh positioning.

Put activity was heavier than this stock's own recent norm: put volume ran at 0.45 per call versus a 14-day average of 0.38, meaning for every put traded there were about 2.2 calls — still call-dominated, but less so than usual. Open interest tells a calmer story: 0.58 puts per call, essentially unchanged from five days ago and in line with the 0.59 fourteen-day average. And the short-, medium- and long-term trend reads all point the same way — price down 7.0% over the past week, 8.7% over the past month and 9.2% over roughly two and a half months — with a fresh momentum crossover turning back to the bearish side on July 31.

Expected move

Through the August 7 expiration, the options market is pricing about ±15.2%, or roughly $1.72 on a $11.30 chain-snapshot price — that's the one-standard-deviation move implied by what the at-the-money straddle costs. The ladder:

Expiration	Implied move	Range around $11.30
Aug 7 (7 days)	±15.2%	$9.58 – $13.02
Aug 14 (14 days)	±20.7%	$8.96 – $13.64
Aug 21 (21 days)	±24.9%	$8.49 – $14.11
Aug 28 (28 days)	±30.3%	$7.88 – $14.72

The rungs widen roughly with the square root of time, as they should — but the interesting detail is the implied volatility behind them: 109.8% at Aug 7, then 105.8% at Aug 14 and 103.8% at Aug 21. The nearest expiration is the most expensive per unit of time, which is what a chain looks like when a scheduled event sits inside the front window.

Volatility

At-the-money implied volatility of 103.6% puts IV rank at 61/100 — option prices are higher than about 61% of the past year's readings — while the percentile measure is a stretched 95, meaning today's level has been exceeded on only a handful of days in the past year even though the annual range was wide. Direction is up on every window: +7.7% on the day, +6.9% over five sessions, +26.6% over thirty. The front-month term-structure read is unavailable today, an artifact of the snapshot landing on a weekly expiration day, not missing data.

Realized movement is the reason. Twenty-day realized volatility of 108.3% is running far above this stock's own recent norm, and the 5-day-versus-20-day ratio of 1.55 says movement has been accelerating rather than settling — MARA has been delivering more, not less, than its own recent month.

Premium rich or cheap. The gap between how much movement options are priced for and how much MARA has actually delivered — positive when option sellers have been collecting more than realized movement cost them — is currently negative by about 5 vol points: 103.6% implied against 108.3% delivered. At the 2nd percentile, that gap is thinner than roughly 98% of this stock's own recent readings, and the same reading shows up as unusually depressed versus its norm on our snapshot measures too. A week ago the gap was a fat +18 vol points; it flipped negative on July 30. That flip is mechanical, not a trader signal — the 11.7% down day and 17.4% up day of July 29–30 landed inside the 20-day realized-volatility window and lifted the realized leg past implied. Two caveats before anyone reads "cheap options" into this: some of the implied side is the market pre-pricing the August 6 report rather than free premium, and the realized side is inflated by two gap days that may not repeat. Net verdict for this window: owning defined premium beats selling it, but the edge is thin enough that sizing matters more than structure.

Earnings on the calendar

MARA reports after the close on Wednesday, August 6, with a consensus estimate of a $0.56 loss per share. That date sits inside the August 7 expiration and, critically, there is no tradeable expiration before it — the only earlier expiry has already settled. That is the mundane explanation for why the front week carries the highest implied volatility on the board (109.8% versus 103.8% three weeks out) and why the $12 and $13 August 7 calls attracted 46,000 contracts of fresh open interest in a single session. History, in dollars only: the last four reports have been mixed — a $0.63 loss against an expected $0.85 loss in May, a $0.46 loss against an expected $0.23 loss in February.

Skew and sentiment

Puts are running about 3.7 vol points over equidistant calls (103.2% versus 99.6% at the 25-delta strikes), against a 60-day norm of just 0.7 vol points for this name — traders are paying up for downside protection to a degree that is unusual for MARA, and that steepening has built over the past week rather than appearing in a single session. That skew reading is one of the more stretched observations in the file relative to the stock's own history.

Sentiment in short-dated options is the messiest part of the picture. Our read of the 0–7 day bucket prints deeply negative, but that bucket covered only the expiring Friday contracts on the snapshot date, so much of the swing is call open interest settling out rather than fresh bearish conviction — worth discounting. The 8–30 day bucket, which actually contains the August 7 expiration, leans positive on the back of call open interest building (+78,120 calls versus +4,922 puts) and call-tilted delta-weighted flow. Further out, the 30–60 day bucket leans negative on much richer puts than usual. The one-phrase summary from the file — "bearish capitulation" in the front end — should be read as a front-end put-demand observation, not a forecast.

One counterweight deserves naming: our leading positioning read is flagging the price-down-while-flow-improves divergence that has historically preceded turns for this name. It is an early, unconfirmed condition by construction, not a confirmed turn — but it is the main reason this article's bias is slightly bearish rather than firmly so.

The key levels map

Level	Price	Why it matters
50-day moving average	$13.13	13.8% overhead — the long-term overhang the July rally never reached
Whole-chain heaviest call strike	$13.00	80,426 calls open across all expirations; also a swing-resistance cluster near $12.95
Top of Aug 7 implied range	$13.02	One standard deviation up from the chain-snapshot price
Swing resistance	$12.50	Second-largest total gamma strike in the chain
Swing resistance	$12.22	Late-July pivot cluster
Aug 7 call wall + max pain	$12.00	39,332 calls open at this expiration, largest total gamma strike in the chain, and the price where the most Aug 7 option value expires worthless — the pin/ceiling candidate
20-day moving average	$11.96	5.3% above the close
200-day / 100-day moving averages	$11.80 / $11.79	Stacked just overhead; both technical reports cite this zone as the reclaim level
Swing resistance cluster	$11.78 / $11.56	Immediate overhead; the 6-day technical model caps its range at $11.60
Last close	$11.32	Official daily close (chain snapshot $11.30)
Aug 7 put wall	$10.50	29,976 puts open at this expiration — the first structural floor for the week
Swing support	$10.54 / $10.27	Recent pivot lows bracketing the put wall
Whole-chain heaviest put strike	$10.00	53,632 puts open across all expirations — the deeper magnet if $10.50 fails
Bottom of Aug 7 implied range	$9.58	One standard deviation down; July 29 intraday low sat near $9.83
Gamma flip level (estimate)	≈ $2	One rough estimate places it far below spot, i.e. the fragile regime is not in play at these prices
52-week range	$6.66 – $23.45	Price sits at about 28% of the annual range, 51.7% below the high

Note the disagreement worth flagging: the whole chain's heaviest call strike is $13.00 and its heaviest put strike is $10.00, but the August 7 expiration's own walls are $12.00 and $10.50. For this week's map, use the tighter pair.

Positioning and unusual flow

The dealer-gamma read for the August 7 expiration is an estimate, and it estimates a positive regime — market makers hedge the options they've sold, and in this regime their hedging tends to dampen moves rather than amplify them. Spot is also sitting unusually far above the estimated flip level for this name, which is the calm side of that ledger. Treat all of it as a rough estimate built on an assumed dealer sign convention, not observed inventory.

Three live flow items stood out:

• September 18 $11 puts — 10,190 contracts traded against 3,671 held open (2.8× turnover), about $1.46 million of premium, the single largest dollar-premium line on the board. Someone put real money behind downside protection or a bearish position beyond this week's noise.
• August 7 $12 calls — 12,656 traded, open interest up 25,399 to 39,332, roughly $544,000 of premium. This is the wall itself being constructed, mostly in the two sessions around the gap higher.
• September 4 $13 calls — 3,341 traded against 504 open (6.6× turnover), about $271,000. Small in dollars, large in turnover: fresh upside positioning at a strike 15% above spot.

The tension is honest and worth stating plainly: the call side is where new open interest is being built for this week, while the biggest single premium print of the day was a put.

3 · Technical check

Both technical reports we ran lean bearish, and both confirm the options read — their targets sit comfortably inside the options-implied range. The 3-day model (target date August 4) projects $11.05 with a $10.70–$11.55 band. The 6-day model, which lands exactly on our expiration, projects $10.95 with a $10.65–$11.60 band. Both reference $11.30, matching the chain snapshot, so there's no data-date mismatch to correct for.

The two most decisive indicator reads: the directional movement lines have crossed with the negative side leading (-DI 27.6 versus +DI 21.6) while ADX at 20.6 is only beginning to build — an early-stage, not-yet-strong bearish trend — and Chaikin Money Flow at -0.102 has been negative in four of the last five sessions, which is the sustained-distribution side of that gauge. Both reports name the same reclaim level: a close back above $11.55–$11.60 invalidates the bearish scenario, and both name $10.85 as the structural support that must hold.

Model vs. Market: The options market implies $9.58–$13.02 into August 7; the 6-day technical model targets $10.95 inside a $10.65–$11.60 band. Direction agrees, magnitude does not — the chart model expects roughly a fifth of the movement the options market is paying for. If MARA does what the technicians expect, option buyers overpaid; if it does what the straddle implies, the technical range is far too narrow, and the August 6 earnings report is the obvious mechanism for resolving that gap.

Practically, the technical reads shaded our strike selection down rather than out: the bearish structure below targets the $10.50 put wall rather than the $9.58 tail of the implied range, and the range-hold structure's short strikes stay outside both technical bands.

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

4 · Three ways the next six days can go

The macro calendar is busy and the last item lands on expiration morning. Per our editor's list: Monday, August 3 — ISM Manufacturing PMI and construction spending, 10:00 a.m.; Federal Reserve Senior Loan Officer Survey, 2:00 p.m.; Treasury financing estimates, 3:00 p.m. Tuesday, August 4 — U.S. international trade balance, 8:30 a.m.; JOLTS job openings and factory orders, 10:00 a.m. Wednesday, August 5 — ADP private-employment report, 8:15 a.m.; Treasury quarterly refunding announcement, 8:30 a.m.; ISM Services PMI, 10:00 a.m.; EIA crude-oil inventories, 10:30 a.m. Thursday, August 6 — initial jobless claims and second-quarter productivity/unit labor costs, 8:30 a.m.; wholesale inventories and sales, 10:00 a.m. Friday, August 7 — July employment report (nonfarm payrolls, unemployment rate and wage growth), 8:30 a.m. The chain shows no distinct footprint of any of them; the front-week volatility premium is explained by the company's own report. Payrolls printing four hours before an expiration is a timing risk for anything held to the close, not a directional input.

If MARA pushes above the call wall ($12.00): that's the heaviest call open interest for this expiration and the strike where the most option value expires worthless, so it functions as both magnet and ceiling — rallies into it have historically slowed. A clean break through leaves thinner positioning until the $12.50 gamma cluster and then the whole-chain $13.00 call pile, with the 50-day average at $13.13 above that. A close above $12.00 also breaks this article's read.

If MARA drifts between the walls ($10.50–$12.00): this is the pin case, and it is the scenario that argues against the bearish lean. Max pain for August 7 sits at $12.00, above spot, and the estimated dealer-gamma regime is the dampening kind. In that world expiring open interest and hedging flows exert a mild upward pull into Friday, and price grinds in a $1.50-wide box. The August 6 report is the obvious thing that breaks a pin.

If MARA breaks below the put wall ($10.50): the shelf thins quickly. Swing support at $10.54 and $10.27 sits right at the wall, and the next real concentration is the whole-chain $10.00 put strike — 53,632 contracts — with the lower edge of the implied range at $9.58 and the July 29 low near $9.83 just beneath it. The estimated gamma flip level is far below current prices, so this is not the reflexive-selling regime; the acceleration mechanism here would be a bad print, not dealer hedging.

5 · Three defined-risk structures

Prices are end-of-day midpoints as of July 31, 2026. All structures are hypothetical. Verify live prices before trading — these will be stale by the open. Every structure below spans the August 6 earnings report, because no tradeable expiration exists before it.

If you lean bearish (the structure that fits this week's premium): Aug 7 $11.50/$10.50 put debit spread

• Trade: Buy the Aug 7 $11.50 put, sell the Aug 7 $10.50 put
• Debit: $0.45 ($0.79 − $0.34) · Max profit: $0.55 · Max loss: $0.45 · Break-even: $11.05
• Why it fits: It's the directional expression of the bias, and it's a debit — with the premium-versus-delivered-movement gap at its 2nd percentile, owning defined premium is the side of the trade the volatility data supports. The short strike sits exactly on the August 7 put wall, so the structure gets paid for the move to the wall and stops asking for more. Both technical models target $10.95–$11.05, which is the break-even to a dollar.
• Makes sense only if: you accept that Wednesday night's report can move this either direction overnight, and you size it as an earnings-risk position, not a trend trade.
• Invalidated if: MARA closes above $11.80 (the 200-day average and the technical reclaim zone).
• Earnings exposure: Spans the August 6 report. Premium is partly inflated for that reason, and the position can gap through both strikes overnight — max loss is the entire $0.45 debit.
• Managing it: Take profit at roughly 60–70% of the $1.00 spread width rather than holding for the last few cents; the short-term direction is fighting nothing here, but the whole thesis is a six-day one, so exit into strength on Thursday if you'd rather not carry the report. If MARA reclaims $11.80 before the print, close it — the reason to be in it is gone.
• Liquidity note: The $11.50 puts traded 4¢ wide ($0.77/$0.81, about 5% of mid) and the $10.50 puts 2¢ wide ($0.33/$0.35) — two of the tightest put lines at this expiration. Fills should be easy on a package limit.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bullish: Aug 7 $10.50/$9.50 put credit spread

• Trade: Sell the Aug 7 $10.50 put, buy the Aug 7 $9.50 put (you collect the credit up front and keep it if MARA stays above $10.50)
• Credit: $0.24 ($0.34 − $0.105) · Max profit: $0.24 · Max loss: $0.76 · Break-even: $10.27
• Why it fits: The short strike is the August 7 put wall, the break-even sits on swing support at $10.27, and the estimated dealer-gamma regime is the dampening kind — the mechanical case for the floor holding. Puts are also running 3 vol points richer than their own norm versus calls, so the put side is where the inflated premium sits.
• Health warning: you're selling premium that hasn't been rich lately — the implied-versus-delivered gap is negative and in its 2nd percentile, so the usual "collect the overpricing" edge is absent. Risking $0.76 to make $0.24 across an earnings report is a demanding trade; half-size or skip.
• Makes sense only if: you believe the $10.50 wall holds through the print and are content with a 1:3 reward-to-risk ratio.
• Invalidated if: MARA closes below $10.50.
• Earnings exposure: Spans the August 6 report and can gap straight through both strikes; assume the full $0.76 is at risk overnight.
• Managing it: Close at roughly 50% of max credit; if MARA trades through $10.50 at any point, close rather than hope. Do not hold this one into Wednesday's close unless you specifically want the report exposure.
• Liquidity note: The $10.50 puts quoted $0.33/$0.35 (2¢, about 6% of mid) and the $9.50 puts $0.09/$0.12 (3¢ — narrow in cents, wide in percentage terms as all penny options are). Work the spread as one order.
• Analyze this position →

If you expect the range to hold: Aug 7 $9/$10 – $12.50/$13.50 iron condor

• Trade: Sell the $10.00 put / buy the $9.00 put, and sell the $12.50 call / buy the $13.50 call, all Aug 7
• Credit: $0.28 · Max profit: $0.28 · Max loss: $0.72 · Break-evens: $9.73 and $12.78
• Why it fits: Both short strikes sit outside the walls and outside both technical bands, and the max-pain-plus-positive-gamma combination is the argument for a quiet drift into Friday. IV rank at 61 means you are collecting above-median premium in absolute terms.
• Health warning: you're selling premium that hasn't been rich lately, and both break-evens sit inside the options-implied one-standard-deviation range ($9.58–$13.02). In plain terms: this trade only works if MARA delivers materially less movement than the market is pricing, in a week that contains its own earnings report and a payrolls print. That is not a small ask.
• Makes sense only if: you want short-volatility exposure at a quarter size and are treating the $0.72 as fully at risk.
• Invalidated if: MARA closes outside $10.00–$12.50 — at that point one side is in the money and the structure is managing losses, not collecting.
• Earnings exposure: Spans the August 6 report. A gap through either short strike overnight can put you near max loss with no chance to adjust; the elevated credit exists because of that risk, not in spite of it.
• Managing it: Close at 40–50% of max credit — do not grind for the last dime with a binary event inside. Realistically, take it off Wednesday afternoon before the print unless the whole point was to sell the report.
• Liquidity note: $12.50 calls 4¢ wide ($0.27/$0.31), $13.50 calls 2¢ ($0.12/$0.14), $10.00 puts 5¢ ($0.18/$0.23), and the $9.00 put 10¢ on a 9¢ mid ($0.04/$0.14) — that last wing is the problem leg and will leak edge. Enter as a single four-leg limit; never leg into it.
• Analyze this position →

If none of these: no trade

Standing aside is genuinely defensible here, and for an unusual reason. Normally an IV rank of 61 with a steep put skew is a premium-seller's setup. This week it isn't: options are priced below what MARA has actually delivered over the past twenty days, which strips the usual edge out of every credit structure — and the part of the implied volatility that is elevated is elevated because a binary event sits inside the window, not because the market is overpaying for randomness. On the other side, the debit structure is defensible but pays for a six-day directional view straight through an earnings gap, in a name that has already moved 11.7% down and 17.4% up on consecutive sessions this week. If you don't have a view on the August 6 report, the honest answer is that there is no expiration available that lets you avoid it. Waiting for the August 14 chain to reprice after the report costs you nothing but a week.

6 · Quick FAQ

What is MARA's expected move this week? About ±$1.72, or ±15.2%, into the August 7 expiration — a $9.58 to $13.02 range, per the options market's straddle pricing as of the July 31 close.

Is MARA expected to go up or down over the next six days? Options positioning as of July 31 leans slightly bearish — price down 7% in five sessions, puts 3 vol points richer than their own norm versus calls, and a fresh momentum turn lower — but that's a read of what traders have done, not a forecast. The actionable map is the $9.58–$13.02 range and the $10.50 / $12.00 levels, with a close above $12.00 breaking the read.

Are MARA options expensive right now? Two lenses, and they disagree. IV rank of 61/100 says option prices are higher than 61% of the past year's readings. But they're running about 5 vol points below the movement MARA has actually delivered — thinner than roughly 98% of this stock's own recent readings. Verdict: owning defined premium beats selling it this week, with the caveat that part of the elevated implied volatility is the market pre-pricing the August 6 report, not free premium in either direction.

When is MARA's next earnings report? Wednesday, August 6, after the close, with a consensus estimate of a $0.56 loss per share — after every tradeable expiration has already settled except August 7, which is exactly why the front week carries the highest implied volatility on the board.

Where is MARA's biggest options support and resistance? For the August 7 expiration: put wall $10.50 (29,976 contracts open), call wall $12.00 (39,332). Across the whole chain the heaviest strikes are $10.00 on the put side and $13.00 on the call side.

What invalidates this week's read? A close above $12.00.

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Methodology & disclosures. Data: end-of-day options-chain snapshot for MARA, 2026-07-31, generated 2026-08-01T20:27:17.625Z. 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 2026-08-01T20:27:17.625Z; 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.