MSTR Options Are Pricing a ±$9.57 Move by August 7 — Our Read Says Range, Not Rally

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The options market implies an $82.97–$102.11 range into the August 7 expiration; here's what's driving it and three defined-risk ways to trade it.

Published Sunday, August 2, 2026 · Data as of the July 31 close · Export generated August 2, 2026

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

Quick answer

Item	Answer
Market bias	Neutral
Options-implied range (into August 7)	$82.97 – $102.11 (±10.3%)
Major support	$90 (chain-wide put wall; the August 7 expiration's own put wall sits much lower at $82)
Major resistance	$100 (call wall for August 7 and for the whole chain)
Max pain (August 7)	$99
Dealer gamma regime (estimate)	Positive for the August 7 expiration — hedging tends to dampen moves; chain-wide flip level ≈ $120 (estimate)
Volatility condition	Falling — IV rank 36/100 · premium rich: options priced ~17 vol points above delivered movement (earnings-distorted)
Technical check	Diverges (bearish, 3-day and 5-day)
Best-fitting strategy	August 7 $85/$80 + $100/$105 iron condor
Analysis invalidated if	MSTR closes below $89.95

1 · What matters today

MicroStrategy closed Friday at $93.28 and the options market is pricing roughly a $9.57 move either way over the next five days — an $82.97 to $102.11 range into the August 7 expiration. That's the move implied by what straddles cost, not a forecast. Our read of the flow is neutral: last week's option volume ran three times its normal pace and heavily call-tilted, but this stock's bullish flow readings have historically been a poor guide to where it went next, so we treat the call chase as complacency inside a still-broken chart rather than conviction. The levels that matter are simple. $100 is the strike with the most call contracts held open for Friday, and $90 is the chain's heaviest put strike, sitting right on swing support at $89.95. A close below $89.95 kills the range thesis. Both technical models we ran lean bearish and target roughly $91.

2 · What the options market is pricing

What changed this week

Positioning flipped call-side fast. Put/call volume — how much put activity there is relative to calls, where above 1 means puts dominate — printed 0.37 on Friday against a 7-day average of 0.56 and a 14-day average of 0.53. For every 100 calls traded, only 37 puts changed hands, and total option volume ran at 3.0× its 20-day average. Contracts currently held open (open interest) tell the same story: the put/call open-interest ratio slid from 1.10 five sessions ago to 0.87, and the two largest non-expired open-interest builds on the board were both August 7 calls — the $105 strike added 7,579 contracts to 8,793, and the $100 strike added 7,273 to 12,077. Into Friday's expiry, the settled $99 and $94 calls shed 3,668 and 3,578 contracts of open interest respectively as those positions ran off the board.

Volatility went the other way. At-the-money implied volatility — the market's estimate of how much MSTR will move, baked into option prices — sits at 76.5%, down 3.2% on the day, down 5.7% over five sessions and 13% below its own 30-day average of 87.9%. Our flow composite reads +29 today against a 7-day average of −10, so the call-heavy tone is two sessions old, not a trend; the trend engine actually flagged a fresh bullish-to-bearish turn on July 28. The multi-horizon picture is coherent and unflattering: price is essentially flat over the past week (+0.9%), down 8.7% over the past month and down 43.8% over roughly the past two and a half months. Near-term flow is chasing calls inside a chart that is still firmly broken.

Expected move

Into the August 7 expiration, the options market is pricing ±10.34%, or about ±$9.57 around the $92.54 chain-snapshot price — a range of $82.97 to $102.11. Here is how that scales out:

Expiration	Implied move	Range around $92.54
Friday, August 7	±10.3%	$82.97 – $102.11
Friday, August 14	±14.8%	$78.89 – $106.19
Friday, August 21	±18.2%	$75.68 – $109.40

The rungs scale almost exactly with the square root of time — ±10.3%, ±14.8%, ±18.2% — with no bulge at any single date. There is no dedicated event hump anywhere in the ladder, which also means the chain is not separately pricing Friday's 8:30 a.m. July employment report, even though it lands the same morning the August 7 contracts expire.

Volatility

IV rank is 36/100 — today's implied volatility is cheaper than 64% of the past year's readings — while the 52-week percentile sits at 69, meaning most individual days over the past year printed a lower IV than today. Both can be true at once: the yearly high was extreme, so today is well below it, but still above most ordinary days. Direction is down: −3.2% on the day, −5.7% over five sessions, and 13% under the 30-day average, with the current 76.5% sitting essentially on the 90-day average of 77.2%. The front-month read is unavailable today — the chain's nearest expiration was a same-day expiry, which is a routine artifact, not missing data — so there is no clean read on term structure (how option prices compare across different expiration dates) this session. One "vs its own norm" observation worth having: 20-day realized volatility is 59.6%, unusually low for this stock compared against its own recent history, while the last five sessions have been running about 40% hotter than that month-long baseline — also well above its norm. Movement is picking back up from a genuinely quiet base.

Premium rich or cheap. The volatility risk premium — the gap between how much movement options are priced for and how much MSTR has actually delivered — sits at about 17 vol points positive, richer than roughly 92% of this stock's own recent readings. When that gap is positive, option sellers have been collecting more than realized movement cost them. Normally that combination (IV rank 36 plus a 92nd-percentile premium over delivered movement) would argue firmly for collecting premium rather than owning it. Two things blunt it here. First, most of the past week's jump in that gap is mechanical: June's crash rolled out of the trailing 20-day realized-volatility window, so the realized leg collapsed without implied volatility moving much. Second, MicroStrategy reported June-quarter results on July 30 — a $24.45 per-share loss against a $52.04 consensus profit — so the last two sessions, including a −2.95% opening gap, sit inside that same realized window and distort the comparison in both directions. The snapshot reading on this gap is stretched well beyond its own norm, which is consistent with the mechanical story. Verdict: premium looks rich, but treat that as an observation about the arithmetic, not as free money.

Skew and sentiment

Skew is the cleanest anomaly in the file. Puts and calls the same distance from the stock price don't normally cost the same — in MSTR, puts usually cost more, because traders pay up for crash protection. Right now they don't: 25-delta puts price at 76.1% implied volatility against 78.2% for 25-delta calls, a −2.1 vol-point reading against a 60-day median of +1.6 vol points. Calls are the expensive side by roughly 3.7 vol points versus this name's own norm, and that flattening has happened fast — put skew has bled off about 2.7 vol points in five sessions. That is what complacency looks like in options prices, and it is the single biggest contributor to the mildly bullish tilt in our flow composite.

Sentiment across the curve is genuinely mixed. The 0–7d bucket reads slightly negative at −7 (thin, driven only by a small put-side open-interest build), while the 8–30d bucket reads strongly positive at +63 on call open interest building 22,868 contracts against 4,396 puts and delta-weighted volume tilted decisively call-side. The 30–60d bucket reads +27 and the 60–120d bucket is flat at −3. In plain terms: traders are positioning bullishly in the two-to-four-week part of the curve while doing nothing much in the expiring week. Against its own baseline, the call-tilted volume reading is unusually extreme for this stock — this is a chase, not steady accumulation.

The key levels map

Level	Price	Why it matters
Call strike, Aug 7	$110	5,388 contracts open; the next meaningful shelf if $105 gives way
Swing resistance	$104.69	Price-structure pivot from the July range
Aug 7 call build	$105	Friday's biggest open-interest add (+7,579 to 8,793); also a top-five gamma strike chain-wide
Swing resistance	$101.95	Late-July reaction high
Call wall (Aug 7 and chain-wide)	$100	12,077 contracts open for Friday, 78,013 across the chain — the strike with the biggest pile of open call contracts, and the single largest gamma strike; these often act like magnets or barriers
Max pain (Aug 7)	$99	The price where the most option value would expire worthless; expirations sometimes gravitate toward it
20-day moving average	$96.04	Price sits 2.9% below it
Second-largest gamma strike	$95	Also the August 21 call wall (46,991 contracts)
Last close	$93.28	Friday's official close (chain snapshot: $92.54)
Put wall (chain-wide)	$90	37,373 put contracts open — the largest downside cluster and the third-largest gamma strike
Swing support	$89.95	The shelf the whole range thesis rests on
Fresh put builds, Aug 7	$86 / $84	New open interest of 651 and 229 contracts on heavy same-day volume — cheap short-dated hedges
Put wall (Aug 7 only)	$82	4,016 contracts, all built Friday; the expiration's own downside anchor sits far below the chain-wide $90
52-week low	$81.81	The floor of the entire year's range

Note the disagreement worth naming: the whole chain's heaviest put strike is $90, but the August 7 expiration's own put wall is all the way down at $82. For this week specifically, there is a lot of empty space between $90 and $82 with very little open interest to slow a move.

Positioning and unusual flow

Market makers hedge the options they've sold, and for the August 7 expiration one rough estimate puts them in a positive-gamma regime — meaning that hedging tends to dampen moves rather than amplify them, which is the pinning case. That estimate flips negative at several later expirations (August 14, August 28, September 4), so the dampening read applies to this week, not to the month. The chain-wide gamma flip estimate — below which hedging is thought to accelerate selling rather than cushion it — is placed near $120, far above the current price; that is an estimate built on an assumed dealer convention, and spot currently sits unusually far below it versus this stock's recent history.

Three flow items stand out, all non-expired:

• The $93 calls expiring August 7 traded 25,511 contracts against just 200 open — $10.3 million of premium, the biggest single print on the board. Volume that dwarfs open interest is same-day trading around the money, not new directional positioning.
• The $105 and $100 calls expiring August 7 added 7,579 and 7,273 contracts of open interest respectively. This is new positioning, and it reinforces the $100–$105 shelf as the week's overhead.
• The $98.50 puts expiring August 7 traded 6,061 contracts against 59 open — a 103× turnover ratio at the 100th peer percentile, and $4.3 million of premium in a deep in-the-money contract. Someone put real money into a downside-anchored structure in the expiring week.

3 · Technical check

Both technical reports run against this window come back bearish, which diverges from the mildly call-tilted options flow. The 3-day model targets $91.50 by Wednesday, August 5 inside an $89.30–$95.10 range; the 5-day model targets $91.20 by Friday, August 7 inside $88.90–$96.20. Both reference a price of $93.37, within a dollar of Friday's $93.28 close, so the two data sets are describing the same market. The most decisive reads behind them: the 13-period exponential average crossed below the 34-period on July 31 — a fresh bearish crossover — and Chaikin Money Flow at −0.137 shows money leaving through the bounce, meaning the recovery off the gap low was not bought. The offsetting detail is ADX at 15.1, below the 20 threshold that marks a real trend, which argues for chop rather than a directional slide.

The two disagree on magnitude as much as direction. Options are pricing a ±10.3% week; the technical model expects the entire five days to resolve inside a 7.6% band. If the chart is right, the premium being paid for the expiring week is too high.

Model vs. Market: The options market implies $82.97–$102.11 into August 7; the 5-day technical model targets $91.20 inside $88.90–$96.20. That gap resolves the moment MSTR either reclaims $95.19 — the technical invalidation level — or loses $90.45; until then, the technicals argue for shading short strikes symmetrically rather than betting on the upside continuation the call flow implies.

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

4 · Three ways the next five days can go

If MSTR pushes above the call wall ($100): that is the strike with 12,077 contracts open for Friday and 78,013 across the chain, and heavy call open interest overhead tends to slow rallies as hedging flows lean against the move. It would also take price back above max pain at $99 and through the 20-day average at $96.04 on the way. Above $105 — where 7,579 new call contracts were added Friday — positioning thins out quickly, with only the $110 strike offering another shelf. This branch would require MSTR to travel through Wednesday's ISM Services and ADP prints and Friday's payrolls report intact.

If MSTR drifts between the walls: this is the base case the positioning describes. The estimated dealer gamma regime for August 7 is positive, meaning hedging in this expiration tends to cushion rather than accelerate, and max pain at $99 sits above spot while the week's own put wall sits far below at $82. That combination — a pinning estimate plus a wide, lopsided corridor — usually produces sideways grind with an upward tug into Friday. Weak trend strength on the chart (ADX 15.1) says the same thing from the other direction.

If MSTR breaks below the put wall ($90): this is the fragile branch, and it is the one the technicals favour. Below $89.95 swing support there is almost nothing in the way until the August 7 expiration's own put wall at $82, which is also within a dollar of the 52-week low at $81.81 and near the bottom rail of the implied range. Spot is already sitting unusually far below the chain-wide gamma flip estimate near $120 versus this stock's own recent history, and one rough estimate suggests hedging becomes less supportive the further price travels below that pivot — so a break of $90 would run into thin positioning rather than a cushion.

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. Note that every structure below expires the same morning the July employment report is released at 8:30 a.m. Eastern; overnight gap risk into that print is real and is not separately priced in the chain.

If you expect the range to hold: August 7 iron condor

• Trade: Sell the August 7 $85/$80 put spread and the $100/$105 call spread (four legs, one condor)
• Credit: $1.41 · Max profit: $141 · Max loss: $359 · Break-evens: $83.59 and $101.41
• Why it fits: A credit spread means you collect premium up front and keep it if price stays on your side of the short strike. The short call sits exactly at the $100 call wall and above max pain at $99; the short put sits between the chain-wide put wall at $90 and this expiration's own put wall at $82. Both short strikes are outside the technical model's entire projected range ($88.90–$96.20), and the premium being sold is running about 17 vol points above what the stock has actually delivered.
• Makes sense only if: you accept that MSTR routinely moves 5% in a session and that a 10% five-day range is the market's honest estimate, not a ceiling.
• Invalidated if: MSTR closes below $89.95 or above $100 — either close breaks the corridor the trade is built on.
• Managing it: close at ~50% of max credit; with the short-term trend flat and the two-month trend down 43.8%, take profits early rather than holding for the last few cents. Exit the whole structure by Thursday's close if you don't want to carry it through Friday's payrolls report. If either short strike is breached on a closing basis, close the tested side rather than hoping.
• Liquidity note: the $85 puts quote 92¢ bid / $1.00 ask (8¢ wide) on 4,812 contracts traded, and the $100 calls quote $1.50/$1.61 (11¢, ~7% of mid) on 17,294 traded — both easy. The $105 calls are the problem leg at $0.64/$0.81, roughly 23% of the mid; work that fill with a limit order or the slippage eats a chunk of the credit.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bearish: August 7 $100/$105 call credit spread

• Trade: Sell the August 7 $100 call, buy the August 7 $105 call
• Credit: $0.83 · Max profit: $83 · Max loss: $417 · Break-even: $100.83
• Why it fits: You are selling the strike with the most call open interest on the board and buying protection at the strike that saw Friday's largest new call build. It pays if MSTR does anything except rally more than 8% in five sessions — which is what both technical models say is the least likely outcome, and what a still-broken 20-day and 50-day price structure supports.
• Makes sense only if: you're comfortable with a small credit against a large defined loss; the reward-to-risk here is 1:5, so the trade lives or dies on hit rate, not payoff.
• Invalidated if: MSTR closes above $100.
• Managing it: take 50–60% of max credit and leave; with only $83 of upside there is nothing to be gained by holding into expiration-morning payrolls. If price reclaims the 20-day average at $96.04 on a closing basis, that's the early warning — consider closing then rather than at the short strike.
• Liquidity note: the $100 calls trade 11¢ wide with 12,077 contracts open; the $105 calls are 17¢ wide on $0.72 mid — the wider of the two legs, so leg in carefully or use a spread limit.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bullish: August 7 $90/$85 put credit spread

• Trade: Sell the August 7 $90 put, buy the August 7 $85 put
• Credit: $1.33 · Max profit: $132 · Max loss: $368 · Break-even: $88.68
• Why it fits: The short strike sits on the chain's heaviest put cluster (37,393 contracts across all expirations) and within a nickel of swing support at $89.95 — the level everything else in this article hangs on. It also collects the richest premium of the three structures relative to width, because 25-delta skew has flattened so far that put sellers are being paid unusually well versus this stock's own norm.
• Makes sense only if: you believe the $90 shelf holds. It is the highest-risk of the three: the short strike carries a 0.36 delta and the technical models both project trade below $91.
• Invalidated if: MSTR closes below $89.95.
• Managing it: this is the structure to be quickest with. Take 40–50% of max credit; with the short-term direction flat and the medium- and long-term trend both down, don't hold a short put through Friday morning's employment report. A close under $90.45 — the technical support level both reports name — is the exit trigger, not the short strike.
• Liquidity note: the $90 puts quote $2.18/$2.39 (21¢, ~9% of mid) on 6,824 contracts traded, and the $85 puts 8¢ wide on 4,812 traded. Both are fillable near the mid, which is not true of every strike on this chain.
• Analyze this position →

If none of these: no trade

There is a genuine case for standing aside this week, and it is not laziness. The premium that looks rich — about 17 vol points above delivered movement, richer than 92% of this stock's own recent readings — is rich for mechanical reasons: June's crash just rolled out of the 20-day realized-volatility window and a July 30 earnings gap sits inside it. Strip those out and you are selling premium on a name whose five-day realized movement is already running 40% hotter than its month-long baseline, into an expiration that settles hours after a scheduled macro data release, with bid-ask spreads on the wings running 15–23% of mid. Every one of those facts takes a bite out of a $141 maximum credit. If you can't get filled near the midpoint, or you don't want expiration-morning gap exposure, waiting for the August 14 or August 21 expirations — where the same walls exist with more time to manage them — is the better trade than forcing this one.

6 · Quick FAQ

What is MSTR's expected move this week? About ±$9.57, or ±10.3%, into the August 7 expiration — an $82.97 to $102.11 range, per the options market's straddle pricing as of the July 31 close.

Is MSTR expected to go up or down over the next five days? Options positioning as of July 31 reads neutral — call-heavy flow and unusually flat skew on one side, a broken price structure and two bearish technical models on the other — but that's a read of what traders have done, not a forecast. The actionable map is the $82.97–$102.11 range and the $90 / $100 levels.

Are MSTR options expensive right now? Two lenses. 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 17 vol points above the movement MSTR has actually delivered, richer than roughly 92% of this stock's own recent readings. The catch: that second number is distorted by June's crash rolling out of the realized-volatility window and by the July 30 earnings gap sitting inside it, so treat "rich" as arithmetic rather than edge.

Where is MSTR's biggest options support and resistance? Resistance is the $100 call wall — 12,077 contracts open for August 7 and 78,013 chain-wide. Support is the $90 put wall at 37,373 contracts, though the August 7 expiration's own put wall sits much lower at $82.

What invalidates this week's read? A close below $89.95. Below that shelf there is very little open interest between here and $82.

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Methodology & disclosures. Data: end-of-day options-chain snapshot for MSTR, 2026-07-31, generated 2026-08-02T19:38:11.910Z. 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 2026-08-02T19:38:11.910Z; 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.