NVDA Options Are Pricing a $22 Range Into August 7 — Our Chart Model Sees Half That

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The options market implies a $188.91–$210.73 range into the August 7 expiration; here's what's driving it, the one level that decides the read, and three defined-risk ways to trade it.

Published Saturday, August 1, 2026 · Data as of the 2026-07-31 close

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Quick answer

Item	Answer
Market bias	Neutral with a bullish tilt
Options-implied range (into Aug 7)	$188.91 – $210.73 (±5.46%)
Major support	$195 (max pain + swing shelf); the 6-day expiration's put wall sits far below at $180
Major resistance	$200 (6-day call wall), then a thicker shelf at $207.50–$210
Max pain (Aug 7)	$195
Dealer gamma regime (estimate)	Positive — hedging tends to dampen moves; flip level ≈ $210, which sits above the current price
Volatility condition	Rising — IV rank 57/100 · premium modestly rich: options priced ~2.6 vol points above delivered movement (partly earnings-inflated)
Next earnings	August 26, 2026 (after close) — 19 days after the Aug 7 expiration
Technical check	Confirms (bullish, 3-day and 6-day models)
Best-fitting strategy	Short put spread (Aug 7 $195/$190), if you want to be paid for the $195 shelf holding
Analysis invalidated if	NVDA closes below $195

1 · What matters today

NVDA closed Friday at $200.75 after a violent round trip — down near $190 on Wednesday, then two straight opening gaps higher back onto the $200 shelf. Our read of options flow lands on neutral with a slight upward tilt: the leading positioning read and sentiment in short-dated options both turned firmly call-side on Friday, while five-day price momentum is still negative. The options market is pricing a move of about ±5.5% — roughly $189 to $211 — through the Friday, August 7 expiration, and that expiration settles hours after the July employment report lands at 8:30 a.m. that morning. The level that decides everything is $195: it is max pain for that expiration, the swing shelf under price, and the support line both technical models name. Below it, this read is wrong. Above it, heavy call open interest at $200–$210 caps the enthusiasm.

2 · What the options market is pricing

What changed this week

The week was a shakeout followed by a snapback. NVDA is down 3.4% over the last five sessions but still up 2.6% over twenty, and our option-flow momentum read shows exactly that whipsaw: it printed −56 on Wednesday, the most bearish reading in a month, then recovered to −9 by Friday against a three-day average of −34 and a fourteen-day average of −15. Sentiment in the shortest expirations flipped hardest — the 0–7 day bucket went from −16 on Thursday to +57 on Friday, against a seven-day average of just +7.

Two things moved with it. First, the market's estimate of how much NVDA will move — implied volatility, or IV, baked into option prices — is up 9.3% in five days and 23.2% in thirty, leaving today's 45.1% well above both its 30-day average (39.9%) and its 90-day average (40.0%). Second, how expensive puts are versus calls collapsed: 25-delta puts now cost only 1.0 vol point more than 25-delta calls, against a 60-day norm of 1.5 and a seven-day average of 4.2. In plain terms, traders were paying up hard for crash protection a week ago and have largely stopped. Put/call volume finished at 0.49 — for every put contract traded there were roughly two calls — versus a seven-day average of 0.57. Open interest, the count of contracts held open, still leans slightly more put-heavy than five days ago (0.64 → 0.68 puts per call), so hedges are being kept even as fresh flow chases calls.

The single biggest build in contracts held open was the Aug 7 $197.50 calls, up 17,312 to 24,744, with the $200, $202.50, $207.50 and $210 calls each adding 11,000–16,000 more. That is new money positioned for a recovery inside our exact window. And for the record, into Friday's now-settled expiration the $200 calls traded 981,125 contracts — a reminder that the $200 strike is where this stock's option activity lives.

One tension worth naming: our short- and long-term trend reads both lean lower — price is −3.4% over the past week and −9.4% over the past two months — while the twenty-day read is flat at +2.6%. The near-term bounce is running against a bigger downtrend that has not turned. That argues for shorter-dated structures and earlier profit-taking, not for pressing a directional view.

Expected move

The expected move is the move the options market is pricing in, derived from what straddles cost. Into the August 7 expiration it is ±5.46%, or about ±$10.91 around Friday's $199.82 chain-snapshot price — a $188.91 to $210.73 band.

Expiration	Implied move	Range around $199.82
Wed, Aug 5	±4.41%	$190.99 – $208.63
Fri, Aug 7	±5.46%	$188.91 – $210.73
Fri, Aug 14	±7.56%	$184.72 – $214.92
Fri, Aug 21	±9.28%	$181.28 – $218.36

The rungs scale roughly with the square root of time, which means the chain is not pricing any single date inside our window as unusually dangerous — the risk is spread evenly across the week rather than concentrated. (Quote quality on the Aug 3 expiration was too poor to price that rung, so it's excluded.)

Volatility

At-the-money IV is 45.1%. IV rank tells you where that sits versus the past year — 57/100 means option prices are richer than 57% of the past year's readings, and by a stricter count 74% of the past year's days were cheaper than today. Both are up sharply from a fortnight ago, when IV rank averaged 44. The front-month read is unavailable today because Friday was an expiration day, so there's no clean comparison of option prices across nearby dates this snapshot.

Realized movement backs the elevated IV up: NVDA's 20-day realized volatility is 42.4% and its 10-day is 43.3%. Measured against this stock's own recent history, the last five sessions have run about a third hotter than the trailing month — an unusually stretched reading for NVDA, and a fair description of a week that produced a $20 round trip.

Premium rich or cheap? The gap between how much movement options are priced for and how much NVDA has actually delivered — the volatility risk premium — is about 2.6 vol points positive (45.1% implied against 42.4% realized). When it's positive, option sellers have been collecting more than realized movement cost them. Today's gap sits richer than about 60% of this stock's own recent readings, a touch above its norm but nowhere near an extreme. That combination — IV rank 57 and a 60th-percentile premium — mildly favors collecting premium rather than owning it, but it is not a fat pitch, and one caveat is mandatory: with the August 26 earnings report 25 days out, part of that richness is the market pre-pricing a scheduled event, not free premium. The gap also peaked near 8 points on Wednesday and has compressed since — that is mechanical, not a signal: last week's outsized moves are now inside the 20-day realized-volatility window, lifting the realized leg.

Earnings on the calendar

NVDA reports on Wednesday, August 26, after the close, with a consensus estimate of $2.01 per share. That lands after the Aug 21 expiration, and the chain shows it: the expected move steps from ±9.28% at Aug 21 to ±12.55% at Aug 28 — an earnings IV hump, where options expiring after a scheduled report price in the extra jump risk of that report. The last four reports each came in a few cents above expectations. Every structure below expires August 7, nineteen days before the report, so none of them carries earnings-gap exposure.

Skew and sentiment

Skew measures the fact that 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 25-delta puts run just 1.0 vol point over calls (45.5% versus 44.5%) against a 60-day median of 1.5. Put skew has bled off 4.6 vol points in five sessions. Compared against this stock's own recent history, that flattening is the loudest thing in the data: the hedging bid that dominated late July has been unwound rather than rolled.

Sentiment in short-dated options is what our read calls a front-end chase — the 0–7 day bucket at +57 and the 7–30 day bucket at +60, while 30–60 days sits at +13 and beyond 60 days at +2. Call-side risk reversals in the front week are 6.6 vol points richer than their own two-month baseline, delta-weighted volume tilts to calls, and net new open interest added 288,201 calls against 92,665 puts in a single session — an unusually heavy call-side build for this name. Conviction is concentrated in the next two weeks and evaporates further out. That is the honest shape of Friday's bullish tilt: real, but short-dated and thin on follow-through.

The key levels map

Level	Price	Why it matters
52-week high	$236.54	15.1% above the close; irrelevant this week but the ceiling of the range
Heaviest call strike, whole chain	$220	275,924 calls across all expirations — the chain's aggregate call wall, well above the 6-day expiration's own
Swing resistance	$213.73	Heuristic pivot cluster from recent swings (estimate)
Top of 6-day implied range	$210.73	1σ upper rail into Aug 7
Gamma flip estimate	≈$210	One rough estimate puts the hedging pivot here; also 34,432 Aug 7 calls open
Swing resistance	$208.78	Nearest overhead pivot from price structure
Aug 7 call shelf	$207.50	35,340 calls open — the heaviest single strike above spot for our expiration
50-day moving average	$206.17	2.6% overhead; the resistance target both technical models name
20-day moving average	$203.30	1.3% overhead; first mean-reversion marker
Call wall (Aug 7)	$200	36,436 calls open and the chain's single largest gamma strike — price is sitting on it
Swing support	$198.65	Nearest shelf beneath price
Max pain (Aug 7) / swing support	$195 – $195.98	Max pain is the price where the most option value would expire worthless — expirations sometimes gravitate toward it; doubles as price-structure support
200-day moving average	$193.11	4.0% below; the long-term trend line, still rising
Aug 7 put shelf	$190	18,422 puts open; Wednesday's low; swing support at $190.47
Bottom of 6-day implied range	$188.91	1σ lower rail into Aug 7
Put wall (Aug 7 and whole chain)	$180	79,309 puts open for Aug 7 (286,332 chain-wide) — the strike with the biggest pile of open put contracts, a barrier a long way below

Note the disagreement: the 6-day expiration's own call wall is $200, right where price closed, while the whole chain's heaviest call strike sits up at $220. For this week, the $200 figure is the one that matters.

Positioning and unusual flow

Market makers hedge the options they've sold, and one rough estimate of that positioning reads positive for the Aug 7 expiration — in that regime hedging tends to dampen moves rather than amplify them, which fits a pin-toward-$195 story. The same estimate places the flip level near $210, above the current price; taken literally that would put NVDA on the fragile side of the pivot, so treat the flip strike as a soft marker rather than a switch, and lean on the walls instead.

Three non-expired flow items stand out. The Aug 7 $172.50 puts traded 14,883 contracts against 860 held open — 17 times existing interest and the top of their peer group — deep-tail insurance bought on a day when everything else was chasing calls. The Aug 7 $200 calls moved $21.6 million of premium on 44,757 contracts, the biggest money print in our expiration by a distance. And the Aug 7 $210 calls traded 65,052 contracts for $7.8 million, adding 11,741 to open interest — that is who is selling the rally into $210 as much as who is buying it.

3 · Technical check

Both technical models lean the same way as the options tilt. The 3-day read is bullish, targeting $203.75 with a $196.50–$206.50 band; the 6-day read is bullish, targeting $204.50 with a $195.50–$207.50 band. Both targets sit comfortably inside the options-implied $188.91–$210.73 range, so both confirm rather than diverge on direction.

The decisive indicator reads: a MACD bullish crossover that fired July 30 and has held with an expanding histogram, and ADX at 27.1 with +DI (29.6) far above −DI (13.1) — trend strength in the "strong" band with buyers in control. The caveat both reports flag is money flow: CMF sits at roughly zero, so volume-based conviction has not confirmed the price bounce. The dominant scenario in the 6-day report invalidates on a close back below $197, with $195 as the harder line.

Model vs. Market: The options market implies $188.91–$210.73 into August 7 — a $22 band. The 6-day technical model expects $195.50–$207.50 and a $204.50 target — barely half as wide. The market is paying for tail risk the chart model does not expect; if realized movement stays inside the technical band, premium sellers get paid, and that gap is why every structure below is a credit structure with defined wings rather than a directional bet.

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

4 · Three ways the next six days can go

If NVDA holds above $200 and presses $207.50: the heaviest call open interest for this expiration sits at $200, $207.50 and $210, and stacked call inventory overhead tends to slow rallies as hedging flows lean against them. Reclaiming the 50-day average at $206.17 and holding above $207.50 would leave comparatively thin positioning until the chain's aggregate call wall at $220 — but there's no data in this file suggesting the market is pricing that outcome as the base case.

If NVDA drifts between $195 and $207.50: this is the shape the positioning favors. Max pain for August 7 is $195, the single largest gamma strike in the chain is $200, and the estimated dealer regime for this expiration is the dampening kind. Expiring open interest and hedging flows in that state tend to pull price toward the strikes where the most contracts die worthless, and $195–$200 is that pocket. Macro prints land every day of the window — ISM Manufacturing Monday, JOLTS Tuesday, ADP and ISM Services Wednesday, jobless claims Thursday — with the July employment report at 8:30 a.m. on expiration Friday itself, so a quiet drift is a base case that a single 8:30 print can end.

If NVDA loses $195: the next shelves are $190 (18,422 puts open, Wednesday's low) and the 200-day average at $193.11, with the real put wall a long way down at $180. Positioning offers little cushion between $195 and $190, and the flip estimate near $210 sits above price — meaning by that rough estimate NVDA is already on the side where market-maker hedging amplifies selling rather than cushioning it. A close below $195 is where this article's read stops being useful.

5 · Three defined-risk structures

Prices are end-of-day midpoints as of 2026-07-31. All structures are hypothetical. Verify live prices before trading — these will be stale by the open.

If you lean bullish: short put spread (the featured structure)

• Trade: Sell the Aug 7 $195 put / buy the Aug 7 $190 put. You collect a credit up front and keep it if NVDA stays above $195.
• Credit: $1.05 · Max profit: $105 · Max loss: $395 · Break-even: $193.95
• Why it fits: $195 is max pain for this exact expiration, price-structure support at $195.98, and the level both technical models call the line in the sand. IV rank 57 and a premium running ~2.6 vol points above delivered movement mean you're selling something modestly rich rather than cheap.
• Makes sense only if: you accept that Friday's payroll print sits inside the window and can gap price through $195 in one session.
• Invalidated if: NVDA closes below $195.
• Earnings exposure: Expires 19 days before the August 26 report — no earnings-gap risk.
• Managing it: Close at roughly 50% of max credit; take profits early rather than holding into Friday morning's employment report, because the near-term bounce is fighting a two-month downtrend. If NVDA closes through $195, close rather than hope.
• Liquidity note: The $195 puts traded 5¢ wide (about 2.4% of mark) on 12,806 contracts and the $190 puts 3¢ wide on 21,468 — fills are easy.
• Analyze this position →

If you expect the range to hold: iron condor

• Trade: Sell the Aug 7 $187.50 put / buy the $185 put, and sell the Aug 7 $210 call / buy the $212.50 call. Two credit spreads, one on each side; you keep the credit if price finishes between the short strikes.
• Credit: $0.62 · Max profit: $62 · Max loss: $188 · Break-evens: $186.88 and $210.62
• Why it fits: Both short strikes sit essentially on the edges of the implied ±5.46% rails ($188.91 / $210.73), and the $210 short call also sits on 34,432 contracts of open call interest and the gamma-flip estimate. It is the cleanest expression of the Model vs. Market gap: the options market is pricing roughly twice the width the technical model expects.
• Makes sense only if: you believe the market over-priced the week after a $20 round trip — this trade needs NVDA to under-deliver its own expected move.
• Invalidated if: NVDA closes below $187.50 or above $210.
• Earnings exposure: Expires well before the August 26 report — no earnings-gap risk.
• Managing it: Target 40–50% of max credit; close the threatened side rather than defending both. With four macro prints and payrolls inside a six-day window, take the profit early if it appears mid-week.
• Liquidity note: The $187.50 puts trade 3¢ wide and the $210 calls 4¢ wide on 65,052 contracts; the $212.50 call wing is the loosest leg at about 6% of mark, so use limit orders and expect to give up a cent or two.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bearish: short call spread

• Trade: Sell the Aug 7 $205 call / buy the Aug 7 $210 call. You collect a credit and keep it if NVDA stays below $205.
• Credit: $1.36 · Max profit: $136 · Max loss: $364 · Break-even: $206.36
• Why it fits: The $205, $207.50 and $210 strikes carry 26,016, 35,340 and 34,432 contracts of open call interest respectively — the densest overhead positioning in the expiration — and the declining 50-day average at $206.17 sits right inside the spread. It also respects the trend reads: price is still down 9.4% over two months.
• Makes sense only if: you think Friday's call-side chase was a one-day snapback rather than the start of a trend, and you're willing to fade a rising ADX.
• Invalidated if: NVDA closes above $207.50.
• Earnings exposure: Expires 19 days before the August 26 report — no earnings-gap risk.
• Managing it: Close at ~50% of max credit; exit on any daily close above $207.50 rather than waiting for $210. Short-dated is the point here — do not roll this out past the window.
• Liquidity note: The $205 calls traded 9¢ wide (3.5% of mark) on 21,441 contracts and the $210 calls 4¢ wide — both liquid.
• Analyze this position →

If none of these: no trade

There is a real case for standing aside, and it isn't about premium being cheap — it isn't. At IV rank 57 with options priced ~2.6 vol points above delivered movement, selling is the mildly favored side. The case against acting is that the richness is thin and partly explained: some of it is the market pre-pricing the August 26 report, and the rest sits on top of a realized-volatility reading that has been accelerating, with the last five sessions running about a third hotter than the trailing month. Selling a 2.6-point edge into a week that contains four macro prints and a payroll report on expiration morning is a small premium for real gap risk. If your read is that this week's distribution is fat-tailed rather than pinned, the honest trade is no trade — wait for either a close through $195 or a hold above $207.50 to tell you which regime you're in.

6 · Quick FAQ

What is NVDA's expected move this week? About ±5.46%, or ±$10.91 — a $188.91 to $210.73 range into the August 7 expiration, per straddle pricing as of the July 31 close.

Is NVDA expected to go up or down over the next six days? Options positioning as of July 31 leans neutral with a slight upward tilt — short-dated sentiment and new call-side open interest turned firmly bullish on Friday while five-day price momentum is still negative — but that's a read of what traders have done, not a forecast. The actionable map is the $188.91–$210.73 range and the $195 / $200–$207.50 levels.

Are NVDA options expensive right now? IV rank 57/100 says option prices are higher than 57% of the past year's readings; on top of that they're running about 2.6 vol points above the movement NVDA has actually delivered — richer than roughly 60% of this stock's own recent readings. Modestly rich, and part of that richness is the market pre-pricing the August 26 earnings report rather than free premium.

When is NVDA's next earnings report? August 26, 2026, after the close — 19 days after the August 7 expiration, which is why the expected move jumps from ±9.28% at Aug 21 to ±12.55% at Aug 28.

Where is NVDA's biggest options support and resistance? For the August 7 expiration, the put wall is $180 and the call wall is $200, with the practical near-term shelves at $195 (max pain) below and $207.50 above.

What invalidates this read? A close below $195.

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Methodology & disclosures. Data: end-of-day options-chain snapshot for NVDA, 2026-07-31, generated 2026-08-01T14:51:10Z. 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 2026-08-01T14:51:10Z; 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.