MSTR Options Are Pricing a ±$9.60 Move Into August 14 — Our Read Says the $94–$106 Corridor Holds

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The options market implies a $90.17–$109.35 range into the August 14 expiration; here's what's driving it, where the walls sit, and three defined-risk ways to trade it.

Published Saturday, August 8, 2026 · Data as of the 2026-08-07 close

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

Quick answer

Item	Answer
Market bias	Neutral with a bullish tilt
Options-implied range (into Aug 14)	$90.17 – $109.35 (±9.6%)
Major support	$94 — the August 14 expiration's put wall
Major resistance	$106 — the August 14 expiration's call wall
Max pain (Aug 14)	$100
Dealer gamma regime (estimate)	Positive — hedging tends to dampen moves; flip level ≈ $100
Volatility condition	Falling — IV rank 28/100 · premium full: options priced ~11 vol pts above delivered movement (post-report window distorts the comparison)
Technical check	Confirms on direction, diverges on width (bullish, 3-day and 6-day)
Best-fitting strategy	Short put spread under the put wall (Aug 14 $94/$90)
Analysis invalidated if	MSTR closes below $94

1 · What matters today

MSTR closed Friday at $100.01 after a 4.6% opening gap and a 7.8% five-session run, and the options market spent that session buying calls almost to the exclusion of puts — roughly 20 puts traded for every 100 calls, against a 60-day norm near 65, on total option volume 3.9 times its 20-day average. That flow is what tilts our read slightly bullish. It is also a chase: MSTR is still about 35% lower than it was two months ago and 6% below its 50-day average, so we read the surge as a bounce being pressed rather than a confirmed turn, and we structure trades accordingly. The options market is pricing a $90.17–$109.35 range into the August 14 expiration, with that expiration's heaviest put strike at $94 and heaviest call strike at $106. A daily close below $94 ends the discussion. Two technical models agree on direction but see a far narrower path.

2 · What the options market is pricing

What changed this week

The single biggest change is the tone of the flow. The put/call volume ratio — how much put activity there is relative to calls, where above 1 means puts dominate — printed 0.20 on Friday. Its 3-day average is 0.27, its 7-day average 0.38, its 14-day average 0.45. Traders didn't just lean call-side, they leaned harder than they have at any point in the past two weeks, and that pace of call-buying is unusually heavy even measured against this stock's own recent history. Open interest — contracts currently held open — followed: call open interest grew by 30,360 contracts day over day while put open interest fell by 29,356, dragging the put/call open-interest ratio to 0.69 from a 14-day average of 0.84. For every call contract held open there are now 0.69 puts; two weeks ago it was closer to 0.84.

Implied volatility — the market's estimate of how much MSTR will move, baked into option prices — kept falling even as price rose. At-the-money IV is 70.6%, down 7.8% over five sessions and down 32% over thirty, and sits 18.7% below its own 30-day average of 86.7%. Our composite read of option flow flipped from mildly negative to strongly positive over three sessions (the daily print is far above its 7- and 14-day averages), which is a description of a sharp turn, not a settled trend.

That turn is exactly where the tension sits. The short-term trend read is bullish on a 7.8% five-day move; the medium-term read is bullish on a 5.6% twenty-day move; the long-term read is bearish, with price down 35.4% over roughly two months. The near-term flow and the bigger trend are pointing different ways, and the multi-horizon read is formally divergent. That argues for shorter-dated directional exposure and earlier profit-taking, not for pressing a position out in time.

Expected move

Into the August 14 expiration, the options market is pricing a ±9.6% move — that's the move implied by what at-the-money straddles cost — or roughly ±$9.59 around the $99.76 chain-snapshot price. In dollars: $90.17 to $109.35.

Expiration	Implied move	Range around $99.76
Friday, August 14 (7 DTE)	±9.6%	$90.17 – $109.35
Friday, August 21 (14 DTE)	±13.5%	$86.34 – $113.18
Friday, August 28 (21 DTE)	±16.9%	$82.95 – $116.57
Friday, September 4 (28 DTE)	±19.5%	$80.27 – $119.25

The ladder scales almost exactly the way the square root of time says it should — 9.6% at one week, 13.5% at two, 19.5% at four — with no hump or kink anywhere along it. There is no single date the chain is bracing for; this is a name that simply carries a very high baseline of movement.

Volatility

At-the-money IV of 70.6% carries an IV rank of 28/100 — that's where today's IV sits versus the past year, so option prices are cheaper than roughly 72% of the past year's readings. On a percentile basis the reading is 49, meaning IV has been below today's level about half the time; the gap between the two tells you the past year contained some enormous IV spikes that stretch the rank scale. The front-month read is unavailable today (Friday was an expiration day, so the nearest-expiry leg can't be interpolated), which means there's no clean term-structure comparison — the way option prices stack up across different expiration dates — to quote.

The interesting part is what the stock has actually been doing. Twenty-day realized volatility is 59.6%, unusually low compared against MSTR's own recent history, and the five-day-to-twenty-day realized ratio is 0.51 — the last week has moved at roughly half the pace of the past month, also an unusually depressed reading for this name. Even a 4.6% gap on Friday didn't change that: this stock has been quieting down.

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 — is about 11 vol points positive (70.6% implied against 59.6% delivered). When it's positive, option sellers have been collecting more than realized movement cost them. That gap is richer than about 71% of this stock's own recent readings. Two caveats keep it from being an edge. First, the gap only turned positive about two weeks ago, and mechanically so: the violent late-June selloff rolled out of the 20-day realized-volatility window, which lowered the realized leg rather than lifting the implied one — that sign flip is a calendar artifact, not a trader signal. Second, the July 30 earnings report still sits inside that same 20-day realized window, so the implied-versus-delivered comparison isn't clean right now. Net: with IV rank at 28/100 and the richness partly manufactured by the calendar, treat premium as fully priced rather than as free money. You get paid for selling the right strikes here, not simply for being short volatility.

Skew and sentiment

Skew is the reason this week's read tilts up at all. Normally, 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. Right now the opposite is true: 25-delta puts are marked at 71.3% implied volatility and 25-delta calls at 73.7%, so calls cost about 2.4 vol points more than puts. Against this stock's own 60-day median of puts running 1.6 vol points over calls, that's a four-point swing toward the call side — an unusually flat, complacent skew for MSTR, and the flattening has been steady (the 14-day average skew is essentially zero, the 3-day average is already negative).

Sentiment across expiration dates splits the same way the trend does. The 0–7 day bucket reads bearish at −33, driven entirely by call open interest bleeding out of the just-expired Friday contracts. The 7–30 day bucket reads +68, the 30–60 day bucket +36, and the 60–120 day bucket +30 — the chain's own summary label for that shape is "bullish recovery": the front end is unwinding while positioning builds further out. For the expiration this article covers, the 7–30 day read is the relevant one, and it is decisively call-tilted.

The key levels map

One note before the ladder: the August 14 expiration's own walls do not match the whole chain's. Aggregated across every expiration, the heaviest call strike is $100 (82,080 contracts) and the heaviest put strike is $90 (37,486). Scoped to August 14 alone, the call wall is $106 and the put wall is $94. For this week's map, the August 14 row is the one that matters; the aggregate levels tell you where the longer-dated crowd is parked.

Level	Price	Why it matters
Implied range top (Aug 14)	$109.35	Upper edge of the move options are pricing for the week
Fresh call open interest	$110 – $111	44,698 and 29,654 contracts traded Friday; the $111 strike didn't exist a day earlier
50-day moving average	$106.34	Price sits 5.95% below it — the first trend-level hurdle
Call wall (Aug 14)	$106	13,147 contracts held open, of which 12,777 were added Friday — the biggest one-day OI build in the chain. These often act like magnets or barriers
Swing resistance	$104.69	Price-structure pivot from the recent range
Technical resistance (6-day model)	$103.50	Top of the 6-day model's expected range
Swing resistance cluster	$100.05 – $101.95	Two overlapping pivots directly overhead
Max pain (Aug 14) / gamma flip estimate	$100	The price where the most option value would expire worthless; also the whole chain's heaviest call strike and the estimated dealer-gamma pivot
Friday's close	$100.01	Essentially sitting on max pain and the flip estimate
Technical support (both models)	$97.00	Both technical reports flag a close below here as their invalidation
20-day moving average	$96.40	Price is 3.74% above it — the first real trend support
Put wall (Aug 14)	$94	6,609 contracts, the heaviest put strike for this expiration; +2,858 added Friday
Implied range floor (Aug 14)	$90.17	Lower edge of the week's priced move
Whole-chain put wall	$90	37,486 puts held open across all expirations — the market's structural floor
Swing support / 52-week low	$89.76 / $81.81	The last shelf before the June low

Positioning and unusual flow

One rough estimate of dealer positioning puts net gamma positive for the August 14 expiration, with the pivot around $100. In that regime, market makers hedge the options they've sold in a way that tends to dampen moves rather than amplify them. Read that estimate with care here: spot closed roughly 0.2% below the estimated flip level, an unusually tight distance for this name, so the cushioning story only holds while MSTR trades in the neighborhood of $100 or above.

Friday's tape was almost purely a call story on the August 14 expiration. The $105 calls traded 55,612 contracts against 2,920 held open — about $11.3 million of premium, the largest single-contract figure in the chain. The $107 calls traded 31,213 against just 555 open (a turnover of 56 times the open interest), the $110 calls 44,698 against 2,324, and the brand-new $111 strike 29,654 contracts from a standing start. Open interest confirms some of it stuck: the $106 calls added 12,777 contracts and the $101 calls added 11,058. On the put side, only the $94 puts saw a meaningful build (+2,858) — traders are buying upside, not protection. As settled context, into Friday's expiration the August 7 $94 and $95 calls shed 6,214 and 5,284 contracts of open interest as they were closed or rolled forward.

3 · Technical check

Both technical reports lean bullish and both land inside the options-implied range, so on direction this confirms the tilt. The 3-day read (target date August 11) targets $101.75 within a $97.00–$103.00 band, citing a fresh short-term EMA crossover and a MACD line above its signal, but with a weak trend-strength reading (ADX 18.2) that argues for range behavior rather than acceleration. The 6-day read (target date August 14 — the same date this article is scored on) targets $102.00 within $96.50–$103.50, with support at $97 and resistance at $103.50.

Where the two views split is width. The options market is pricing a $19-wide corridor for the same six days that the technical model expects to resolve inside a $7 band. That is the whole trade: the chain is paying for tail risk the chart-based read doesn't see. Both technical reports also flag the same thing our long-horizon read does — price is far below the 50-day ($106.34) and 200-day ($152.94) averages, so any strength is a bounce inside a downtrend.

Model vs. Market: The options market implies $90.17–$109.35 into August 14; the 6-day technical model targets $102.00 inside $96.50–$103.50. If the chart read is right, the wings of that priced range never get tested — which is precisely what a defined-risk credit structure gets paid for. If the options market is right, a single 9% session resolves it.

The practical effect on strike selection below: we keep the short strikes at the walls ($94 and $106) rather than tightening them toward the technical targets, because the technical band is narrow enough that we'd be giving up the cushion that makes the trade worth doing.

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

4 · Three ways the next six days can go

If MSTR pushes above the call wall ($106): that strike now holds the heaviest call open interest of the August 14 expiration, and it added nearly 13,000 contracts in a single session — the kind of pile that tends to slow rallies as dealers hedge into it. It also sits within a few cents of the 50-day moving average at $106.34, so a technical hurdle and an options hurdle coincide. A clean break through leaves noticeably thinner standing positioning until the $110–$111 area, where Friday's buying created new strikes from nothing.

If MSTR drifts between the walls: this is the base case the positioning describes. Max pain for August 14 is $100, the stock closed at $100.01, and the dealer-gamma estimate for this expiration is positive — the configuration in which expiring open interest and hedging flows tend to pull price toward the middle rather than push it out. In this branch the $94–$106 corridor holds and the time premium in the middle of the chain decays out.

If MSTR breaks below the put wall ($94): that's the acceleration case. The August 14 put wall is thin by this stock's standards (6,609 contracts), so it's a speed bump rather than a floor; below it, the implied range floor at $90.17 lines up with the whole chain's 37,486-contract put wall at $90 and the swing shelf at $89.76. Note the fragility on the way there: spot is already sitting a hair below the estimated gamma flip near $100, and one rough estimate suggests that below that pivot market-maker hedging amplifies selling rather than cushioning it.

5 · Three defined-risk structures

Prices are end-of-day midpoints as of 2026-08-07. All structures are hypothetical. Verify live prices before trading — these will be stale by the open.

If you lean bullish: short put spread (put credit spread)

• Trade: Sell the Aug 14 $94 put, buy the Aug 14 $90 put. You collect a credit up front and keep it if MSTR stays above $94 at expiration.
• Credit: $0.78 · Max profit: $78 · Max loss: $322 · Break-even: $93.22
• Why it fits: the short strike sits exactly at the August 14 put wall, roughly 5.8% below Friday's close and comfortably inside the $90.17 implied floor. Skew is flat — puts are actually cheaper than calls right now — so you aren't selling the crowded side, you're selling the ignored one, which is why the credit is modest relative to the width.
• Makes sense only if: you accept the bullish tilt as a bounce being pressed, and you're willing to be paid slowly for it rather than paid immediately.
• Invalidated if: MSTR closes below $94.
• Managing it: close at ~50% of max credit; with a short-term uptrend fighting a two-month downtrend, take profits earlier than you would in a trending name. Exit regardless by Wednesday, August 12, and close rather than hope if MSTR closes through $94.
• Liquidity note: the $94 puts traded 15¢ wide (about 10% of mark) and the $90 puts 7¢ wide. That's wider than ideal — work the midpoint with a limit, don't pay the offer.
• Analyze this position →

If you expect the range to hold: iron condor

• Trade: Sell the Aug 14 $94/$90 put spread and the Aug 14 $106/$111 call spread. You collect one combined credit and keep all of it if MSTR finishes between $94 and $106.
• Credit: $1.65 · Max profit: $165 · Max loss: $335 · Break-evens: $92.35 and $107.65
• Why it fits: both short strikes sit on the August 14 expiration's own walls, and both break-evens sit inside the $90.17–$109.35 the market is pricing. It is the direct expression of the Model vs. Market gap: the technical models expect this to resolve inside a $7 band, and this structure is paid for anything narrower than a $15 band.
• Makes sense only if: you're comfortable with the fact that realized movement has been unusually quiet for this stock lately and can turn on a single headline — MSTR gapped 4.6% on Friday alone.
• Invalidated if: MSTR closes outside $94–$106; manage the threatened side, don't defend both.
• Managing it: take it off at ~50% of max credit, or by Wednesday, August 12, whichever comes first. If one side is breached, close that vertical and let the other run to expiration rather than rolling into more risk.
• Liquidity note: the $106 calls traded 8¢ wide and the $111 calls 6¢ wide — the tightest markets in the expiration. The put legs are the slippage risk, not the calls.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bearish: short call spread (call credit spread)

• Trade: Sell the Aug 14 $105 call, buy the Aug 14 $110 call. You collect a credit and keep it if MSTR stays below $105.
• Credit: $1.00 · Max profit: $100 · Max loss: $400 · Break-even: $106.00
• Why it fits: the break-even lands exactly on the August 14 call wall, and the 50-day moving average sits at $106.34 right beside it. This is the structure for the reader who believes the long-horizon downtrend — price 35% lower than two months ago and 6% under the 50-day — outranks a five-day call-buying burst.
• Makes sense only if: you're willing to sell into the exact strikes the crowd was buying on Friday. That is a real risk: 55,612 contracts went through the $105 line in one session.
• Invalidated if: MSTR closes above $106.
• Managing it: close at ~50% of max credit; exit regardless by Wednesday, August 12. If MSTR closes above $106, close it — do not wait to see whether the wall holds.
• Liquidity note: the $105 calls traded 5¢ wide (about 2.5% of mark, the tightest contract in the expiration) and the $110 calls 6¢ wide. Fills are easy here.
• Analyze this position →

If none of these: no trade

There is a serious case for standing aside. The premium looks rich against delivered movement, but that richness came from the June selloff rolling out of the realized-volatility window and is measured across a window that still contains the July 30 report — it isn't the clean, self-generated premium you'd want to be short. And IV rank of 28/100 means you're selling option prices that are cheaper than roughly 72% of the past year's readings, in a stock that just moved 7.8% in five sessions and gapped 4.6% in one. Six days of $4–$5-wide credit spreads is not a lot of cushion against that. If you don't have a view on whether the $94–$106 corridor holds, the honest answer is that this week's edge is thin, and cash is a position.

6 · Quick FAQ

What is MSTR's expected move this week? About ±9.6%, or ±$9.59 — a $90.17 to $109.35 range into the August 14 expiration, per what at-the-money straddles cost as of the 2026-08-07 close.

Is MSTR expected to go up or down over the next six days? Options positioning as of August 7 leans mildly bullish — flat skew, a collapsed put/call volume ratio, and heavy call open-interest building at $106 — but that's a read of what traders have already done, not a forecast. The actionable map is the $90.17–$109.35 range and the $94 / $106 levels, with $100 as the gravity point.

Are MSTR options expensive right now? Two lenses. IV rank of 28/100 says option prices are lower than about 72% of the past year's readings. On top of that, they're running roughly 11 vol points above the movement MSTR has actually delivered over the past month — richer than about 71% of this stock's own recent readings. The verdict: fully priced rather than cheap, but the richness is partly a calendar artifact of the June selloff leaving the realized-volatility window with the July 30 report still inside it, so don't treat it as free premium.

Where is MSTR's biggest options support and resistance? For the August 14 expiration, the put wall is $94 (6,609 contracts) and the call wall is $106 (13,147 contracts). Across the whole chain, the heaviest strikes sit lower — $90 on the put side and $100 on the call side.

What invalidates this week's read? A daily close below $94.

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Methodology & disclosures. Data: end-of-day options-chain snapshot for MSTR, 2026-08-07, generated 2026-08-08T15:51:31Z. 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 2026-08-08T15:51:31Z; 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.