PLTR Options Are Pricing a ±$17.55 Move — Our Model Sees $125

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The options market implies a $105.28–$140.38 range into the August 7 expiration; here's what's driving that unusually wide band and three defined-risk ways to trade the next six days.

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

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

Quick answer

Item	Answer
Market bias	Slightly bullish (tentative — see the Technical check)
Options-implied range (into Aug 7)	$105.28 – $140.38 (±14.3%)
Major support	$120 (whole chain's heaviest put strike); $117.89 swing support below it
Major resistance	$130 (largest gamma pile in the chain, and this week's biggest new call build)
Max pain (Aug 7)	$124
Dealer gamma regime (estimate)	For the Aug 7 expiration alone, one rough estimate reads positive — hedging would tend to dampen moves; across the whole chain the same estimate reads negative. No flip level is estimable from today's data.
Volatility condition	Elevated and front-loaded — IV rank 79/100 · premium rich: options priced ~20 vol points above delivered movement (earnings-inflated)
Next earnings	Monday, August 3, after close — before the Aug 7 expiration
Technical check	Confirms direction, diverges hard on magnitude (bullish, 3-day and 6-day horizons)
Best-fitting strategy	Wide short put spread below the implied-move rail — only if you accept overnight gap risk
Analysis invalidated if	PLTR closes below $120.40

1 · What matters today

PLTR closed Friday at $123.06 after going almost nowhere over five sessions (−0.1%) but shedding 4.6% over the past month. Our read of options positioning leans slightly bullish: call open interest is building far faster than put open interest, and puts have quietly gotten cheaper than calls — the opposite of a market paying up for protection.

The number that dominates everything else is the priced-in move. Options expiring August 7 imply roughly ±$17.55, or ±14.3% — a $105 to $140 band in six days. That is the market bracing for Monday's post-close earnings report, which sits inside this window. The level that changes the picture is $120.40: a close below it puts the whole slightly-bullish read on the floor. Above, $130 is where the heaviest positioning sits.

2 · What the options market is pricing

What changed this week

The flow flipped sides. Over the past seven sessions our momentum read averaged clearly put-leaning; Friday's single-day print came back to roughly neutral-to-slightly-positive. You can see why in the open interest: call open interest across the chain rose 65,363 contracts against just 2,194 for puts in one session. Put/call open interest — how many puts are held open for every call — sits at 0.89, down from a 0.97 three-day average, meaning puts were being closed while calls were opened.

Volume told the same story. Put volume ran at 0.48 per call traded, versus a 0.63 seven-day average — noticeably call-tilted for this name. Total option volume was unremarkable at 0.96× its 20-day average, so this was concentration, not a stampede.

The single biggest change in contracts held open was the August 7 $130 calls: +6,216 to 9,129 open, on 20,088 contracts traded and $8.54 million of premium — the busiest line in the entire chain. Right behind it: the Aug 7 $125s (+5,777), $124s (+4,671) and $129s (+4,666). Traders piled into the earnings-week upside strikes. Into Friday's now-settled expiration, the $121–$126 calls churned tens of thousands of contracts and the $130s bled 3,241 of open interest as they expired worthless — history, not a live level.

One tension worth naming: the short- and long-term trend reads agree that this has been a downtrend. Price is 4.6% lower over 20 sessions and 9.2% lower over 50, with the last week flat. The near-term flow turning call-friendly is happening inside a market that is still below every major moving average — which argues for short-dated expressions and early profit-taking, not patience.

Expected move

The move the options market is pricing in — derived from what straddles cost — is ±14.3% into August 7, or about ±$17.55 around Friday's $122.83 chain-snapshot price.

Expiration	ATM IV	Implied move	Range around $122.83
Aug 7 (7 days)	103.2%	±14.29%	$105.28 – $140.38
Aug 14 (14 days)	81.5%	±15.96%	$103.23 – $142.43
Aug 21 (21 days)	73.1%	±17.53%	$101.30 – $144.36
Aug 28 (28 days)	68.5%	±18.97%	$99.53 – $146.13

Read the ladder from the IV column, not the range column. Normally implied volatility drifts up the further out you go on a nervous name; here the front rung is priced 22 vol points above the next one. That inversion is the earnings hump landing entirely inside the six-day window.

Volatility

At-the-money implied volatility across the chain is 67.7% — the market's estimate of how much PLTR will move, baked into option prices. IV rank is 79/100, meaning today's level is higher than roughly 79% of the past year's readings; by percentile, 92% of the past year sat below it. That rank has been parked in the high 70s to low 80s all fortnight (79.4 average over 14 sessions), so this is a sustained elevated regime, not a one-day spike. Current IV sits 11.8% above its 30-day average and 21% above its 90-day average, and it is up 43% over 30 sessions while barely moving in the last five. The front-month read is unavailable today (Friday was an expiry day).

Compared against this stock's own recent history, movement is accelerating: five-day realized volatility is running about 56% above the 20-day pace, an unusually stretched reading for PLTR — even though the 20-day figure itself (47%) is unusually low for this name. Translation: a quiet month punctuated by violent single sessions. The gap record backs that up — a −4.3% gap on July 28, +2.6% on July 27, −4.9% on July 14.

Premium rich or cheap. The gap between how much movement options are priced for and how much PLTR has actually delivered — when it's positive, option sellers have been collecting more than realized movement cost them — currently stands at about 20 vol points, the richest reading in this stock's entire recent history (100th percentile: richer than every comparable recent day). That gap has been widening steadily since early July, so nothing mechanical flipped this week. But the honest caveat is unavoidable: some of that richness is the market pre-pricing Monday's report, not free premium. Selling a 100th-percentile premium two days before a binary event is not the same trade as selling it in a quiet tape, and IV rank alone (79/100) is the more sober gauge here.

Earnings on the calendar

PLTR reports Monday, August 3, after the close, with a consensus estimate of $0.28 per share. That lands after the (now-settled) July 31 expiration and before August 7 — which is precisely why the front rung of the ladder carries 103% implied volatility against 81% one week later. Every tradeable expiration in this article spans the report. Positioning shows the same fingerprint: the four biggest one-day open-interest builds in the chain are all August 7 calls at $124–$130. For context on the record, the last four reports each came in a few cents above expectations.

Skew and sentiment

Skew tells you whether puts and calls the same distance from the stock price cost the same — when puts are pricier, traders are paying up for crash protection. Right now they aren't. The 25-delta put trades at 68.5% implied volatility versus 69.3% for the equivalent call, so puts are running 0.8 vol points cheaper than calls, against a 60-day norm of puts being 0.6 points richer. That's a 1.4-point flattening versus this stock's own baseline, and the drift is consistent: the 14-day average had puts 2.0 points richer, the 3-day average has them 1.2 points cheaper. Downside protection is being sold, not bought — into an earnings print. Read that as complacency as easily as confidence.

Sentiment in short-dated options is split by tenor. The 0–7 day bucket is effectively flat (+4 on a ±100 scale). The 7–30 day bucket is strongly bullish at +55 versus a +10 seven-day average — driven by 25-delta risk reversals pricing calls 1.3 points richer than their baseline, call open interest up 34,736 against 4,059 for puts, and delta-weighted volume tilted +0.63 to the call side. The 30–60 day bucket is neutral (+1). So the enthusiasm is concentrated in the two-to-four week window that captures the report and its aftermath, not in the very front or further out.

One counterweight, and it's real: among contracts clearing the unusual-volume bar versus their peers, put-side names slightly outnumbered call-side (13 to 11) — a mildly heavier put footprint than this stock's own norm.

The key levels map

Level	Price	Why it matters
Whole chain's heaviest call strike	$155	74,090 contracts held open — a September/long-dated magnet, not a six-day one
200-day moving average	$152.89	Price sits 19.5% below it; the long-term trend is down
Aug 7 expiration's own call wall	$150	13,286 contracts — the week's biggest call pile, but 22% out of the money; a lottery strike rather than a barrier
Heaviest Aug 21 call strike	$140	22,040 contracts and a top-five gamma strike; the upper implied-move rail sits right here
Swing resistance	$137.89 / $135.69	Recent pivot cluster
Top-five gamma strike	$135	2,988 new Aug 7 calls opened Friday from a standing start
Swing resistance	$131.73	The July high-water shelf
50-day moving average	$130.72	Price 5.9% below; the level a real trend change has to reclaim
Largest gamma strike in the chain	$130	The week's biggest new call build (+6,216) on $8.5M of premium — the first genuine overhead shelf
20-day moving average	$129.05	Price 4.6% below
Swing resistance	$128.75 / $126.65	Nearest overhead pivots
Third-largest gamma strike	$125	Heavy two-sided open interest
Max pain, Aug 7	$124	Where the most option value would expire worthless — expirations sometimes gravitate toward it
Friday's close	$123.06	Chain-snapshot price $122.83
Nearest swing support	$122.66	Immediately underfoot
Recent swing low / kill switch	$120.40	The line this article's read dies below
Whole chain's heaviest put strike	$120	57,365 contracts and a top-five gamma strike — the real downside shelf
Swing support	$117.89	Next pivot beneath
Aug 7 expiration's own put wall	$111	Only 3,554 contracts — thin, and 10% below spot
52-week low	$106.37	The bottom edge of the implied move sits just below it

Note the disagreement, because it matters: the August 7 expiration's own walls sit at $150 (calls) and $111 (puts) — a corridor so wide it constrains nothing. The whole chain's heaviest strikes are $155 and $120. For six-day trading, treat $130 above and $120 below as the functional rails, and the week's own walls as evidence that nobody has built a barrier close to the money.

Positioning and unusual flow

On dealer positioning, the two estimates conflict and both are estimates, not observed inventory. Scoped to August 7 alone, one rough estimate reads positive — market makers hedging the options they've sold would tend to dampen moves into that expiration. Scoped across all expirations, the same estimate reads mildly negative, where hedging tends to amplify. No gamma flip level is estimable from today's data, so any talk of a downside acceleration trigger would be invention.

Three flow items stand out, all in live contracts:

• Aug 7 $130 calls — 20,088 traded against 9,129 open, $8.54 million of premium, 2.2× turnover versus contracts already held. The single loudest bet in the chain, and it needs a 5.8% move in six days.
• Aug 28 $121 calls — 617 traded on 114 open (5.4× turnover), the top peer-relative outlier of the day. Small notional, but somebody wanted post-earnings upside a month out, at the money.
• Aug 21 $70 puts — 3,385 traded on 937 open at a $0.115 mid. A 43%-below-spot crash hedge for eleven cents. Cheap, tiny, and worth noticing only as evidence that tail protection is being bought while near-the-money protection is being sold.

3 · Technical check (the 20%)

Both technical horizons come out bullish, so on direction they confirm the slightly bullish options read. The 3-day model targets $124.30 with a $120.50–$125.80 range; the 6-day model targets $125.00 with a $119.00–$126.80 range. The two most decisive reads behind that: a fresh MACD bullish crossover on July 31 (the first in the window, and unconfirmed by volume), and a trend-strength gauge falling from 25 to 20.4 while the bearish directional line's lead narrows to 23.2 versus 20.0 — the downtrend is losing steam rather than accelerating. Both reports also flag the obvious counterweight: price sits below the 50-day ($130.72) and 200-day ($152.89) averages, and money-flow remains mildly negative.

On magnitude, the divergence is the story. The technical model's entire six-day range spans $7.80. The options market is pricing $35.10 for the same date. The chart-based read is describing drift; the options market is describing a gap. Both can be right — a technical model has no way to price a scheduled binary event, and the options market has no view on which way it resolves.

Model vs. Market: The options market implies $105.28–$140.38 into August 7; the 6-day technical model targets $125.00 inside a $119.00–$126.80 band. That gap is Monday's report, and it means any structure whose profit zone matches the technical range is implicitly betting the report underdelivers versus what's priced.

How it moved the strikes below: it didn't widen anything. The technical support cluster at $119.73–$121.60 is why the short put strike sits at $115 rather than $118, and the technical resistance at $125.64 is why the bearish structure sells $130 rather than $126 — selling a call spread straight into a confirming bullish target would be fighting both reads at once.

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

4 · Three ways the six days can go

If PLTR pushes above $130: that is the largest gamma pile in the chain and where Friday's 20,000-contract call build lives. Heavy call open interest overhead tends to slow rallies as it gets bought back and hedged, so expect friction rather than a wall. Above it, positioning thins out fast — the next real cluster is $135, then nothing dense until the $140 shelf that marks the upper implied-move rail.

If PLTR drifts between the rails: max pain for August 7 sits at $124, roughly a dollar above Friday's close, and the gamma estimate scoped to that expiration alone reads positive — hedging that dampens rather than amplifies. That combination is the pin case, and it's the one the technical models effectively describe. The catch is that pins are what happens when nothing happens, and something scheduled happens Monday night.

If PLTR breaks below $120: that's the whole chain's heaviest put strike (57,365 contracts) sitting directly beneath the swing low at $120.40. Below there, structure thins to the $117.89 pivot and then a long air pocket down to the expiration's own put wall at $111 — which holds only 3,554 contracts and would offer very little resistance. No gamma flip level is estimable today, so treat this branch as a structure story, not a mechanical-acceleration story.

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: Aug 7 $115/$111 put credit spread

• Trade: Sell the Aug 7 $115 put, buy the Aug 7 $111 put. A credit spread means you collect premium up front and keep it if the stock stays above your short strike; your loss is capped by the long strike.
• Credit: $1.25 · Max profit: $125 · Max loss: $275 · Break-even: $113.75
• Why it fits: The short strike sits 6.4% below spot and comfortably below the $117.89 pivot and the technical support cluster — but crucially it is inside the lower implied-move rail at $105.28, which is exactly why it pays $1.25. Skew running 1.4 vol points flatter than this stock's norm means put premium is relatively unloved; you're selling the side nobody wants.
• Makes sense only if: you actively want post-earnings exposure and are sized for a gap that blows through both strikes.
• Invalidated if: PLTR closes below $120.40.
• Earnings exposure: Spans the August 3 report. Premium is inflated for that reason, and the position can gap through both strikes overnight — a repeat of the July 14 −4.9% gap would put spot near the short strike's zip code in one session.
• Managing it: Close at ~50% of max credit; with the near-term trend flat but the 50-day still falling, take profits early rather than holding for the last dime. Exit regardless by Wednesday August 5 once the report is digested. If PLTR closes through $115, close rather than hope.
• Liquidity note: The $115 puts traded 5¢ wide (1.5% of mark) on 1,859 contracts; the $111 puts 10¢ wide on 321. Both fillable; the $111 leg is the slower one.
• Analyze this position →

If you expect the range to hold: Aug 7 $111/$115/$135/$142 iron condor

• Trade: Sell the $115 put and buy the $111 put; sell the $135 call and buy the $142 call. Four legs, one credit, profit if PLTR finishes between the short strikes.
• Credit: $2.53 · Max profit: $253 · Max loss: $447 · Break-evens: $112.48 and $137.53
• Why it fits: The short strikes bracket the max-pain strike at $124 and sit outside every technical pivot in play, and the expiration's own gamma estimate leans toward dampening. IV rank at 79/100 means you are collecting near the top of the past year's premium.
• Makes sense only if: you believe the market has overpaid for Monday's report. Be explicit about that — your $112.48–$137.53 profit zone is narrower than the $105.28–$140.38 the market is pricing. This is a direct bet against the priced-in gap, not a neutral trade.
• Invalidated if: PLTR closes outside $112.48–$137.53 at any point after the report; there is no repair from there in five days.
• Earnings exposure: Spans the August 3 report. Premium is inflated for that reason, and the position can gap through either short strike overnight — the maximum loss is a realistic Tuesday-morning outcome, not a tail.
• Managing it: Take 40–50% of credit if Tuesday's reaction is muted; do not add to the losing side. Close the entire structure by Thursday August 6 rather than carrying pin risk into Friday.
• Liquidity note: The $135 calls traded 7¢ wide on 2,116 contracts and the $142 calls 7¢ wide on 319; the put wing quotes are noted above. All four fill, but expect to give up 10–15¢ on a four-leg fill.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bearish: Aug 7 $130/$135 call credit spread

• Trade: Sell the Aug 7 $130 call, buy the Aug 7 $135 call.
• Credit: $1.44 · Max profit: $144 · Max loss: $356 · Break-even: $131.44
• Why it fits: $130 is the heaviest gamma strike in the chain and where Friday's crowd bought calls — you are selling to the enthusiasm. It also sits just under the 50-day average at $130.72, so the break-even at $131.44 requires PLTR to reclaim a level it hasn't held since late July. Both technical targets ($124.30 and $125.00) finish well below the short strike.
• Makes sense only if: you think the earnings reaction gets sold into the falling 50-day, which is what the 20-day and 50-day trend reads have been describing all month.
• Invalidated if: PLTR closes above $131.73 (the July swing shelf) — that would put the trade at max risk with days to run.
• Earnings exposure: Spans the August 3 report. Premium is inflated for that reason, and a gap-up through $135 hands you the full $356 loss overnight.
• Managing it: Close at ~50% of credit; because this fights a confirming bullish technical read, cut at 1.5× the credit received rather than riding to max loss.
• Liquidity note: The $130 calls are the most liquid line in the chain — 10¢ wide (2.4% of mark) on 20,088 contracts and $8.5M of premium; the $135s 7¢ wide. Fills are easy.
• Analyze this position →

If none of these: no trade

This is the week where standing aside is genuinely competitive, and the reason is precise. Premium looks extraordinary — a 20-vol-point gap over delivered movement, the richest reading in this stock's recent history — but that richness has a scheduled cause two days out, which means selling it is not harvesting an edge, it's underwriting an event. Every tradeable expiration in the chain now spans the report; there is no "before earnings" structure left, because the only expiration that qualified settled Friday. A directional read that's only slightly bullish, sitting on a stock 4.6% lower over a month and below all four major moving averages, is a thin reason to accept a ±14% overnight distribution. The cheapest trade available is waiting until Tuesday, when the implied volatility in the front week collapses and you can express the same views against a range you can actually measure.

6 · Quick FAQ

What is PLTR's expected move this week? ±$17.55, or ±14.3%, into the August 7 expiration — a $105.28 to $140.38 band, per the options market's straddle pricing as of 2026-07-31.

Is PLTR expected to go up or down over the next six days? Options positioning as of July 31 leans slightly bullish — call open interest built 65,363 contracts in a day against 2,194 for puts, and puts are trading cheaper than calls versus their own norm — but that's a read of what traders have done, not a forecast, and the record for this kind of bullish positioning read at a one-week horizon is mixed at best. The actionable map is the $105.28–$140.38 range and the $120 / $130 levels.

Are PLTR options expensive right now? IV rank 79/100 says option prices are higher than 79% of the past year's readings; on top of that, they're running about 20 vol points above the movement PLTR has actually delivered — the richest such gap in this stock's recent history. But a scheduled earnings report on August 3 is the reason, so "rich" here does not mean "free."

When is PLTR's next earnings report? Monday, August 3, after the close — after the July 31 expiration but before August 7, which is why the August 7 options carry 103% implied volatility against 81% for August 14.

Where is PLTR's biggest options support and resistance? The whole chain's heaviest put strike is $120 and its heaviest call strike is $155; for the August 7 expiration specifically the walls sit at $111 and $150, a corridor too wide to constrain price. The functional levels for the week are $120 below and $130 above.

What invalidates this read? A close below $120.40.

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Methodology & disclosures. Data: end-of-day options-chain snapshot for PLTR, 2026-07-31, generated 2026-08-01T19:34:42.412Z. 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 2026-08-01T19:34:42.412Z; 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.