NVDA Options Are Pricing a ±$17 Swing by August 28 — and the Charts Are Pricing a Third of That

The options market implies a $200.15–$233.55 range into the August 28 expiration; here's what is driving that number, the one level that changes the picture, and three defined-risk ways to trade it.

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

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

Quick answer

Item	Answer
Market bias	Neutral
Options-implied range (into Aug 28)	$200.15 – $233.55 (±7.7%)
Major support	$210 (Aug 28 put wall); $207.58 (50-day average) below it
Major resistance	$220 (the whole chain's heaviest call strike)
Max pain (Aug 28)	$215
Dealer gamma regime (estimate)	Positive — hedging tends to dampen moves; flip level ≈ $220
Volatility condition	Rising — IV rank 35/100 · premium fair: options priced ~1.8 vol pts above delivered movement (earnings-inflated)
Next earnings	Tuesday, August 25 (after close) — three days before the Aug 28 expiration
Technical check	Diverges (bearish, 3-day and 6-day horizons)
Best-fitting strategy	Wide iron condor with break-evens outside the implied move
Analysis invalidated if	NVDA closes below $210

1 · What matters today

NVDA closed Friday at $214.72 after sliding 3.7% over five sessions, and the options market has largely stopped arguing about direction and started pricing size. Contracts expiring Friday, August 28 imply a move of roughly ±$16.70 — a $200.15 to $233.55 corridor — because the August 25 earnings report lands inside that window. Our read of positioning comes out neutral: put open interest has been building and the price traders pay for downside protection is steepening, yet call contracts still dominate the dollars changing hands in that expiration. The level that decides the next six days is $210, the biggest pile of open put contracts at the August 28 expiration; below it the map thins quickly toward the 50-day average at $207.58. Both technical reads disagree with us and lean lower.

2 · What the options market is pricing

What changed this week

The five-day story is a give-back. NVDA is down 3.69% over the past five trading sessions after peaking near $225 mid-month, while still holding a 4.81% gain over twenty. Implied volatility — the market's estimate of how much NVDA will move, baked into option prices — jumped 6.6% in a single session to 40.0%, and is up 5.3% over five days, though it still sits about 2.8% below its own 30-day average of 41.2%. That is the signature of a chain repricing an event, not a panic.

Positioning tilted defensive underneath. For every call contract held open there are now 0.70 puts, up from 0.61 five days ago — a 14% build — against a 14-day average of 0.65. Put/call volume, at 0.54, is only marginally above its 14-day norm of 0.52, and total option volume ran at just 0.61× its 20-day average: quiet, positioned, waiting. Our flow-momentum read has swung from +10 on a 14-day average to −12 on the day, so the last three sessions have leaned put-heavy after two bullish weeks.

The short- and long-term trend reads are pointing different ways, and that tension matters here. Over the past week the read is bearish — price down 3.7% with flow turning with it — while the 20-day and 50-day reads remain bullish on gains of 4.8% and 8.4%. A fresh momentum crossover to the bearish side registered on Thursday. In plain terms: this is a pullback inside an intact uptrend, and the near-term flow is fighting the bigger picture rather than confirming it.

Expected move

The expected move is the move the options market is pricing in — derived from what at-the-money straddles cost. Into the August 28 expiration that is ±7.7%, or about ±$16.70 around the $216.85 price recorded with Friday's chain snapshot: a $200.15 to $233.55 corridor over six days.

Expiration	Implied move	Range around $216.85
Mon, Aug 24	±2.0%	$212.51 – $221.19
Fri, Aug 28	±7.7%	$200.15 – $233.55
Mon, Aug 31	±8.1%	$199.35 – $234.35
Fri, Sep 18	±11.2%	$192.63 – $241.07

Read the first two rungs together: the jump from ±2.0% to ±7.7% between Monday and Friday is almost entirely one event, and it is the single most informative number in this file. Three extra calendar days should add maybe a point of expected move; they are adding nearly six.

Volatility

At-the-money implied volatility is 40.0%, an IV rank of 35/100 — where today's IV sits versus the past year, meaning option prices are cheaper than 65% of the past year's readings. The percentile read is 51, so today is close to a median year's day. IV is up 6.6% in a session and 5.3% over five days, yet it remains under both the 30-day (41.2%) and 90-day (40.8%) averages. IV rank has averaged 30.2 over the past seven sessions, so today is a modest firming, not a spike.

The tradeable curve, though, is anything but flat. The August 24 rung prices 22.0% IV; August 28 prices 55.6%; August 31 drops to 48.7% and mid-September to 40.3%. That inverted hump around one date is what options expiring after a scheduled report look like — they carry the extra jump risk of that report, which is why the expected move steps up so sharply at the first post-event expiration and then decays.

Two "vs its own norm" readings are worth flagging — meaning unusual for NVDA specifically, not versus the broader market. Realized movement over the past five sessions has run at only about a third of its 20-day pace, an unusually quiet stretch for this stock; 10-day realized volatility is 25.7% against 38.3% over 20 days. The stock has been coiling, not thrashing, into the event.

Premium rich or cheap. The volatility risk premium — the gap between how much movement options are priced for and how much NVDA has actually delivered — sits at about 1.8 vol points positive, richer than roughly 59% of this stock's own recent readings. That is fair-to-slightly-rich, not a gift. It also flipped from mildly negative on Thursday to positive on Friday as implied volatility jumped, and it spent most of early August below zero while realized movement was elevated. The mandatory caveat applies with force here: with a scheduled report three days out, some of that richness is the market pre-pricing the August 25 event, not free premium. Sellers are not being handed an edge; they are being paid to carry a known binary.

Earnings on the calendar

NVDA reports Tuesday, August 25, after the close — after the August 24 expiration and before August 28. That single fact explains the entire shape of this chain: the ±2.0% Monday rung versus the ±7.7% Friday rung, the 55.6% implied volatility at the August 28 tenor against 40.3% for mid-September, and the heavy new open interest clustered at that Friday. The last four reports each came in above expectations, most recently $1.87 per share against a $1.77 estimate in May. No consensus figure for this quarter is carried in the earnings feed.

Skew and sentiment

Puts and calls the same distance from the stock price don't cost the same. Right now 25-delta puts price at 41.7% implied volatility against 39.1% for the equivalent calls — puts run 2.6 vol points over calls, against a 60-day median of 2.0 for this name, and a 14-day average of 2.1. Traders are paying up for crash protection a bit more than usual, and the steepening has been steady: the three-day average is 2.55 vol points, up from 2.12 across fourteen.

One reading is genuinely unusual for NVDA. Of the contracts that cleared the peer-relative unusual-volume bar on Friday, seven were puts and six were calls — the put side edging ahead for the first time in weeks, and a notably depressed reading against this name's own recent norm, which has skewed call-heavy almost every session this month.

Sentiment across expiration terms is mixed rather than directional. The 0–7 day bucket sits at −1, effectively flat; the 7–30 day bucket reads +25, bullish, driven by call-dominated delta-weighted flow and 25-delta calls that are about half a vol point richer than their own baseline. Longer buckets are near neutral. That split — hedged into the event, constructive just past it — is the honest summary of what traders have done.

The key levels map

Level	Price	Why it matters
Call wall (Aug 28 expiration)	$240	54,073 open calls — the heaviest strike in the target expiration; far above spot, so it caps rather than magnetizes
52-week high	$236.54	Structural ceiling; 9.2% above Friday's close
Top of implied range	$233.55	Upper rail of the ±7.7% move priced for Aug 28
Swing resistance	$232.28 / $227.92	Recent pivot cluster from the price feed
Heavy call strike	$225	185,543 calls open chain-wide and a top-five gamma cluster — a real speed bump
Chain's heaviest call strike + gamma flip (estimate)	$220	271,571 open calls across all expirations; one rough estimate places the dealer-hedging pivot here
Swing resistance / short-term average	$216.51	Where the recent bounce attempts have stalled; the 6-day technical model calls $218.25 the line to reclaim
Max pain (Aug 28)	$215	The price at which the most option value expires worthless at the target expiration; second-largest gamma strike chain-wide
Last close	$214.72	Friday's official close
Swing support / 20-day average	$213.73 / $213.18	The shelf price is sitting on; a decisive loss opens the next leg
Put wall (Aug 28 expiration)	$210	13,475 open puts — the biggest downside pile at the target expiration and this article's kill switch
50-day average	$207.58	The technical model's stated downside support
Bottom of implied range	$200.15	Lower rail of the ±7.7% move; also the chain's largest put-gamma zone below spot
200-day average	$195.29	The structural uptrend line; 9.0% below the close

One important caveat on those walls: the August 28 expiration's own call wall ($240) and the whole chain's heaviest call strike ($220) are not the same level, and they disagree meaningfully. Aggregate across all twelve covered expirations and the biggest downside pile sits at $180; scoped to August 28 alone it sits at $210. For the next six days, use the expiration's own numbers — $240 and $210 — and treat $220 and $225 as the crowded overhead the aggregate chain is defending.

Positioning and unusual flow

Market makers hedge the options they've sold. One rough estimate of that inventory reads positive for both the whole chain and the August 28 expiration specifically — the regime in which hedging tends to dampen moves rather than amplify them — with the pivot estimated at $220. Spot is sitting about 1.5% below that pivot, which is the side where the same estimate says the cushioning effect thins out. Treat both as estimates built on an assumed dealer convention, not as observed inventory.

The dollars in the target expiration lean upside. The August 28 $222.50 calls traded 32,450 contracts for roughly $11.7 million of premium, the $230 calls 39,712 contracts for about $7.2 million, and the $220 calls another $7.0 million — versus roughly $5.7 million in the $217.50 puts and $5.2 million in the $215 puts. Someone is buying lottery tickets on the report, and they are buying calls.

Two smaller items stand out. The August 28 $187.50 puts printed 1,341 contracts against zero prior open interest — brand-new protection roughly 13% below spot, cheap disaster insurance for the event. And in the August 24 expiration, 3,108 contracts traded in the deep in-the-money $232.50 puts against just 76 open — a turnover ratio above 40, the kind of print that usually reflects synthetic positioning rather than a directional bet.

3 · Technical check

Both technical reads lean bearish, and both were generated Saturday from a $214.75 reference price that matches Friday's official close almost exactly. The 3-day model targets $212.80 by Monday, August 25, inside a $210.00–$218.50 band, citing RSI at 32.9, price below a falling short-term average near $216.09, and a negative directional index with −DI (21.6) above +DI (15.2). The 6-day model targets $210.50 by August 28 within $204.50–$220.00, naming $207.58 (the 50-day average) as support and $218.25 as the level bulls must reclaim.

Against our neutral options read, that is a divergence on direction — but not on magnitude. Both technical targets sit comfortably inside the options-implied corridor, and the more interesting gap is width, not direction: the technical model's six-day range spans $15.50 while the options market is pricing $33.40 for the identical date. The chart model is reading a decelerating pullback (ADX falling from 22 to 17.9, money flow recovering from −0.18 to +0.036); the options market is reading a scheduled binary the chart cannot see. Both can be right — a quiet drift lower right up to Tuesday's close, then a gap that ignores every trendline on the page.

Model vs. Market: The options market implies $200.15–$233.55 into August 28; the 6-day technical model targets $210.50 inside $204.50–$220.00. When the priced range is more than twice the modeled range for the same date, the technical levels are a map of the path to Tuesday, not a forecast of Friday's close.

The practical effect on strike selection below: it pushed the bearish structure's short strike down to $225 rather than $230, and it is the reason no structure below leans long delta into the report.

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

4 · Three ways the next six days can go

If NVDA pushes above $220: that is the whole chain's heaviest call strike — 271,571 contracts — and the estimated hedging pivot. Heavy call open interest overhead tends to slow rallies as it is absorbed, and $225 stacks another 185,543 calls on top. A clean move through both leaves relatively thin positioning until $233.55, the top of the implied move, with the expiration's own call wall at $240 as the outer boundary.

If NVDA drifts between $210 and $220: this is the pin case, and it is where the base case sits. Max pain for August 28 is $215 — $0.28 above Friday's close — and $215 is also the second-largest gamma strike on the board. In a positive-gamma estimate regime, hedging flows tend to lean against moves in both directions, and expiring open interest at $215 and $217.50 gives price a reason to gravitate back toward the middle once the event risk clears Wednesday morning.

If NVDA breaks below $210: that is the expiration's put wall and the level below which the neutral read stops working. Spot is already sitting on the fragile side of the estimated $220 flip, and the next real shelves are the 50-day average at $207.58 and then the $200.15 implied-range floor, where the chain's largest downside gamma cluster sits. A close below $210 is also what the 6-day technical model's dominant scenario is looking for.

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, and every one of them spans a scheduled earnings report.

If you expect the range to hold: wide iron condor

• Trade: Sell the Aug 28 $200/$195 put spread and the Aug 28 $235/$240 call spread (four legs, one condor)
• Credit: $1.12 · Max profit: $112 · Max loss: $388 · Break-evens: $198.88 and $236.12
• Why it fits: A credit spread pays you upfront to be right about where price won't go. Both break-evens sit outside the ±7.7% move the market itself is pricing, the long call wing sits exactly on the expiration's call wall ($240, 54,073 contracts), and the short put wing sits at the implied-range floor. It is also the cleanest way to be paid for the implied-volatility collapse from 55.6% to something near the 40% baseline the moment the report is public.
• Makes sense only if: you accept that a gap through either wing costs the full $388 and you are explicitly selling event premium, not a volatility edge — IV rank is 35/100, which is not high.
• Invalidated if: NVDA closes outside $198.88–$236.12.
• Earnings exposure: Spans the August 25 report — the premium is inflated for exactly that reason, and the position can gap through a wing overnight.
• Managing it: Most of the profit arrives at Wednesday's open when implied volatility collapses; take it off at ~50% of max credit rather than grinding to Friday, and close a tested side rather than hoping the other wing bails you out.
• Liquidity note: the $200 puts traded 4¢ wide and the $195 puts 2¢; the $235 calls 3¢ and the $240 calls 2¢. All four have four- to five-figure open interest — fills are easy.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bullish: short put spread

• Trade: Sell the Aug 28 $205/$200 put credit spread
• Credit: $0.95 · Max profit: $95 · Max loss: $405 · Break-even: $204.05
• Why it fits: The $205 short strike sits five points beneath the expiration's put wall at $210, below the 50-day average at $207.58, and carries a delta of −0.22 — you are collecting the steepened put skew rather than paying it. Term sentiment in the 7–30 day bucket reads +25, the most constructive corner of the curve.
• Makes sense only if: you believe the intact 20- and 50-day uptrend outweighs the near-term technical damage — and you are comfortable being short puts through a binary.
• Invalidated if: NVDA closes below $210, the put wall; the break-even is $204.05.
• Earnings exposure: Spans the August 25 report: premium is inflated for that reason, and the position can gap straight through both strikes overnight.
• Managing it: Close at ~50% of max credit; with the short-term trend fighting the longer one, take profits early rather than holding for the last dime, and exit outright if NVDA closes below $205.
• Liquidity note: the $205 puts traded 6¢ wide on a $2.22 mid (2.7%) and the $200 puts 4¢ — both with well over 8,000 contracts open.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bearish: short call spread

• Trade: Sell the Aug 28 $225/$230 call credit spread
• Credit: $1.27 · Max profit: $127 · Max loss: $373 · Break-even: $226.27
• Why it fits: This is the structure that agrees with both technical reads. The $225 short strike sits under 185,543 open calls chain-wide, inside the top-five gamma cluster, and above the $220 pivot estimate — the crowded overhead price has already failed at twice this month. Post-report volatility collapse works in your favour alongside direction.
• Makes sense only if: you think the $220–$225 shelf holds through the report; a strong reaction takes this out fast, since $233.55 is inside the priced move.
• Invalidated if: NVDA closes above $226.27.
• Earnings exposure: Spans the August 25 report: the premium reflects that event, and the spread can gap to full loss in a single print.
• Managing it: Take ~50% of the credit Wednesday if the reaction is muted; if NVDA closes above $225, close rather than hope for a Friday pin back to max pain.
• Liquidity note: the $225 calls traded 5¢ wide on a $3.73 mid (1.3%) and the $230 calls 4¢ on $2.45, with 39,712 contracts of $230-strike volume — the tightest markets in the expiration.
• Analyze this position →

If none of these: no trade

There is a real case for standing aside this week, and it is not a cop-out. Every August 28 structure above is, whatever its strikes, a position on a scheduled binary — and the premium that looks generous is generous because of that binary, not because volatility is mispriced. IV rank is 35/100, the middle of its own year, and the 1.8-vol-point cushion over delivered movement is only a touch richer than this stock's own norm. That is not a premium-selling edge; it is compensation for a known risk. The one clean pre-report tenor is the August 24 expiration at ±2.0% implied, and it pays almost nothing precisely because it carries almost nothing. If your reason for trading is "the premium looks rich," the honest answer is that the rich part is the event, and you would be selling insurance on a coin flip. Waiting until Wednesday, when implied volatility resets to something near 40% and the positioning map is legible again, is a perfectly good plan.

6 · Quick FAQ

What is NVDA's expected move this week? ±$16.70, or ±7.7%, into the August 28 expiration — a $200.15 to $233.55 range, per the options market's straddle pricing as of the 2026-08-21 close. The August 24 expiration prices only ±2.0%.

Is NVDA expected to go up or down over the next six days? Options positioning as of August 21 reads neutral — put open interest is building and skew is steepening, but call flow still dominates the dollars traded at the target expiration — and that is a read of what traders have done, not a forecast. Both technical models lean lower, targeting $210.50–$212.80. The actionable map is the $200.15–$233.55 range with $210 and $220 as the decision levels.

Are NVDA options expensive right now? Two lenses. IV rank 35/100 says option prices are lower than 65% of the past year's readings; on top of that, they're running about 1.8 vol points above the movement NVDA has actually delivered, richer than roughly 59% of this stock's own recent readings. Call it fair — and remember that some of that richness is the market pre-pricing the August 25 report, not free premium.

When is NVDA's next earnings report? Tuesday, August 25, after the close — after the August 24 expiration but before August 28, which is why options past August 24 carry noticeably more premium (55.6% implied volatility versus 22.0%).

Where is NVDA's biggest options support and resistance? For the August 28 expiration: put wall $210, call wall $240, max pain $215. Across the whole chain the heaviest call strike is $220 and the heaviest put strike is $180 — the two views disagree, and for this week the expiration's own levels are the ones to trade.

What invalidates this read? A close below $210.

---

Methodology & disclosures. Data: end-of-day options-chain snapshot for NVDA, 2026-08-21, generated 2026-08-22T16:40:46.919Z. 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 2026-08-22T16:40:46.919Z; 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.