QBTS Options Are Pricing a $2.40 Move Into August 14 — But the Premium Is the Cheapest It Has Been All Year

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The options market implies an $18.37–$23.17 range into the August 14 expiration; here's what is driving that band, where the walls sit, and three defined-risk ways to trade it.

Published Saturday, August 8, 2026 · Data as of the August 7 close · Export generated 2026-08-08 16:23 UTC

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

Quick answer

Item	Answer
Market bias	Neutral with a bullish tilt
Options-implied range (into Aug 14)	$18.37 – $23.17 (±11.6%)
Major support	$20.00 (chain's heaviest put strike and largest gamma cluster)
Major resistance	$22.00 (Aug 14 call wall)
Max pain (Aug 14)	$18.50
Dealer gamma regime (estimate)	Positive — hedging tends to dampen moves; flip level ≈ $24 (estimate)
Volatility condition	Falling — IV rank 4/100 · premium thin: options priced about 45 vol points below delivered movement (earnings-distorted)
Technical check	Confirms (bullish, 3-day and 6-day models)
Best-fitting strategy	Aug 14 $20.50/$22.50 call debit spread
Analysis invalidated if	QBTS closes below $20.00

1 · What matters today

QBTS closed at $20.76 after a violent week: a 13.8% gap down on the earnings morning of August 6, then a snap-back that leaves the stock up 15.0% over five sessions. The options market is pricing roughly $2.40 up or down through the August 14 expiration — the move the options market is pricing in, derived from what straddles cost — which frames an $18.37 to $23.17 band. Our read of options flow leans mildly bullish: call-side volume dominates, new open interest is going into calls, and calls are running richer than puts. But the reading is tempered by how poorly this stock's momentum turns have followed through, so the honest label is neutral with an upward tilt. The single level that matters is $22, the heaviest pile of calls at this expiration. Both technical models point the same way. A close under $20.00 ends the discussion.

2 · What the options market is pricing

What changed this week

Two things changed at once: price and price of protection. The underlying is +15.0% over five trading days and +2.9% over twenty, and at-the-money implied volatility — the market's estimate of how much QBTS will move, baked into option prices — collapsed 16.8% in a single session and 21.9% over five, landing at 79.4%. That sits far under both its 30-day average (100.1%) and 90-day average (102.0%). Put/call volume came in at 0.35, meaning roughly one put traded for every three calls, against a seven-day average of 0.51 and a fourteen-day average of 0.47 — noticeably more call-tilted than this name's own recent norm. Open interest tells the same story: puts held open per call fell to 0.79 from a fourteen-day average of 0.89.

The biggest fresh positioning of the day was speculative and far out: 2,095 contracts added at the August 21 $35 calls and 1,492 at the October 16 $27 calls, while downside protection was quietly retired — the September 18 $13 puts shed 998 contracts and the $15 puts 960. Nearer in, the August 14 $25 calls added 510 contracts on 1,153 contracts of volume. Into Friday's now-settled expiration, the $21 calls added 924 contracts of open interest on 2,391 contracts traded — that flow is history now, but it shows where the chase was aimed.

The multi-horizon trend read is openly divergent, and that tension is the week's real story: the past week's 15% pop runs against a market still down 23.4% over the past two-and-a-half months, with the twenty-day read flat in between. The near-term flow and the bigger trend are pointing in different directions, which is exactly the setup where short-dated structures and early profit-taking beat patient position-building.

Expected move

Straddle pricing at the August 14 expiration implies a ±11.6% move — about $2.40 on a $20.77 chain-snapshot price, or a range of roughly $18.37 to $23.17.

Expiration	Implied move	Range around $20.77
Aug 14 (7 days)	±11.6%	$18.37 – $23.17
Aug 21 (14 days)	±16.7%	$17.30 – $24.24
Aug 28 (21 days)	±19.1%	$16.81 – $24.73
Sep 4 (28 days)	±22.0%	$16.21 – $25.33

The ladder is smooth — each rung widens roughly in line with the square root of time, with no step-up hump anywhere in it, which is what a chain looks like when the scheduled event has already passed.

Volatility

At-the-money IV of 79.4% carries an IV rank of 4/100 — where today's IV sits versus the past year, and 4/100 means option prices are cheaper than 96% of the past year's readings. The 52-week percentile is even lower at 3. That is the extreme end of cheap for this name, and it is the direct consequence of the earnings-day volatility crush described below. Meanwhile the stock itself has been anything but calm: 20-day realized volatility is running at 124%, moderately above this stock's own recent norm, and the 5-day-versus-20-day pace ratio at 1.08 says the movement has not slowed down yet. Front-month term structure is unavailable today (the nearest expiration in the snapshot had already reached expiry), so the front-versus-60-day comparison is skipped.

Premium rich or cheap. The gap between how much movement options are priced for and how much QBTS has actually delivered — when it is positive, option sellers have been collecting more than realized movement cost them — is deeply negative right now: about 45 vol points below delivered movement. That sits at the 12th percentile of this stock's own recent readings, meaning today's gap is richer than only 12% of them. Ten sessions ago the same measure was about +43 vol points; it flipped negative around July 30 and has widened every day since. That flip is mechanical, not a signal: the August 6 earnings gap and the swings around it are now inside the 20-day realized-volatility window, which inflates the realized leg for the next month — some of this "cheapness" is arithmetic, not free optionality. What survives that caveat is the IV rank: at 4/100, option prices are genuinely at the low end of their own 52-week range. The combination favors owning premium over selling it this week, which is why the debit structures lead in Section 5.

Earnings on the calendar

QBTS reported on August 6, posting a $0.55 loss per share against an expected $0.12 loss; the stock gapped down 13.8% at the open that morning before recovering. That report is the mundane explanation for everything odd in the volatility picture: IV fell 16.8% in one session as the event premium came out, realized volatility spiked into the 120s, and the expected-move ladder now shows no hump at any rung. No follow-up report is scheduled inside this outlook window, so none of the structures below carry earnings-gap risk.

Skew and sentiment

Puts and calls the same distance from the stock price don't cost the same — and right now the imbalance runs the unusual way. The 25-delta call is marked at 86.0% implied volatility versus 77.1% for the 25-delta put: calls are 8.8 vol points richer than puts, against a 60-day median of 2.9 points. Traders are paying up for upside participation, not for crash protection, and that stretch is comfortably above this stock's own recent norm. The five-session flattening of put skew (4.8 vol points) is one of the strongest readings in the whole file.

Sentiment across expiration dates is quiet by comparison. Every bucket of the term-structure read sits within ±20 — the regime label is simply "calm" — with the 0-7 day bucket at +7 and the 7-30 day bucket at +6, both mildly call-tilted, against seven-day averages of +23 and +3. Our leading positioning read prints +65 today (bullish conditions), but its ten-session divergence flag reads the other way: price rose about 18% over that window while the underlying positioning trend fell. That is a description of conditions that have historically preceded a turn — not a confirmed turn, and not a forecast — and it is one reason the bias label below stops short of an outright bullish call.

The key levels map

Level	Price	Why it matters
Gamma flip estimate	$24.00	One rough estimate places the pivot here; spot sits further below it than is typical for this name
Swing resistance	$22.42	Prior pivot cluster from the daily price feed
Call wall (Aug 14) / chain's heaviest call strike	$22.00	2,830 calls open at this expiration and 13,794 across the whole chain — the two agree, which is rare and makes this the week's ceiling of record
50-day moving average	$21.99	Price is 5.6% below it; confluence with the call wall
Nearest swing resistance	$20.93	The first shelf directly overhead
Spot / close	$20.77 / $20.76	Chain-snapshot price and official close
Largest gamma strike / whole-chain put wall	$20.00	28,637 puts open across all expirations and the single biggest gamma cluster — the floor of record, and the invalidation line
Swing support	$19.54	Recent pivot low
Unfilled gap	$19.41 – $19.72	August 7's opening gap, not yet closed
Max pain (Aug 14)	$18.50	The price where the most option value would expire worthless — a weak magnet from $2.27 away
20-day moving average / lower expected-move rail	$18.37	Price sits 13.0% above the 20-day average — the rally is stretched against its own base
Put wall (Aug 14)	$17.00	Only 684 contracts — thin, and a long way from a real barrier

Note the disagreement: the August 14 expiration's own put wall is $17, but that strike holds only 684 contracts. Across the full chain the heaviest put strike is $20 with 28,637 contracts. For this week's map, treat $20 as the level that matters and $17 as a technicality of a thinly-populated weekly.

Positioning and unusual flow

The dealer-gamma picture is an estimate, not observed inventory: under the standard sign assumption, net signed gamma for the August 14 expiration reads positive, meaning market-maker hedging in this regime tends to dampen moves rather than amplify them — the pin case, not the acceleration case. The aggregate chain reads positive too, with an estimated flip strike near $24 overhead.

Three live flow items stand out, all at the August 14 expiration. The $21 calls traded 1,775 contracts against 675 open — 2.6 times the existing position, and $156,200 of premium changing hands, the busiest non-expired contract on the board. The $21.50 calls turned over 935 contracts against 355 open. On the other side, the $19.50 puts traded 336 contracts against just 112 open — three times turnover — which is the one clear piece of downside hedging in an otherwise call-dominated tape. Read together: the week's positioning is a leveraged push at the $21–$23 zone with a modest hedge parked just under $20.

3 · Technical check

Both technical models line up with the mild upward tilt. The 3-day model (target date August 11) is bullish, targeting $21.15 with a $19.95–$21.60 band, citing an RSI recovery to 56, price back above its short-term moving-average cluster and VWAP, and money-flow readings firmly in accumulation. The 6-day model (target date August 14, the same date this article's structures expire) is also bullish, targeting $21.30 with a $19.85–$21.65 band, and flags support at $20.20 and resistance at $21.94 where the 50-day average and upper Bollinger band converge.

Both models classify as Confirms — same direction as the options read, with targets sitting comfortably inside the options-implied range. Both also add the same caveat the options data cannot see: price remains below its 50-day ($21.99) and 200-day ($22.66) averages, so this is a counter-trend bounce inside a larger downtrend, which is precisely the divergence the multi-horizon flow read flagged above. The 6-day model's own invalidation is a close back below $20.00–$20.20 — close enough to the chain's $20 put wall that the two disciplines agree on the kill switch.

Model vs. Market: The options market implies $18.37–$23.17 into August 14; the 6-day technical model targets $21.30 within a $19.85–$21.65 band. The technical band is barely a third as wide as what options are pricing — either the models are underestimating how much a 124%-realized-volatility stock can travel in six sessions, or option buyers this week are getting the better end of it.

The practical effect on strikes below: the technical resistance shelf at $21.94 and the options call wall at $22.00 are effectively the same level, so the bullish structure's short strike is placed just above both, at $22.50.

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

4 · Three ways the next six days can go

If QBTS pushes above the call wall ($22.00): the heaviest call open interest at this expiration sits exactly there, reinforced by the 50-day average at $21.99. Piles like that tend to slow rallies as dealers hedge into strength. A clean break and hold above leaves comparatively thin positioning until the $24 area, where the gamma flip estimate sits — but $22 is where the first real friction lives.

If QBTS drifts between $20 and $22: this is the case the positioning estimate favors. Net signed gamma at the August 14 expiration reads positive, which under the standard assumption means hedging flows push against moves rather than with them, and price is bracketed by the $22 call wall above and the $20 gamma/put cluster below. Max pain sits at $18.50, well beneath spot — from $2.27 away, its pull is weak, and it mainly says that the freshly-bought $21 and above calls would expire worthless if the drift turns into a fade.

If QBTS breaks below $20.00: the largest gamma cluster and the whole chain's heaviest put strike sit there together, and both technical models put their invalidation within twenty cents of it. Below that, the map thins fast — swing support at $19.54, the unfilled August 7 gap at $19.41–$19.72, then nothing structural until the $18.50 max-pain strike and the 20-day average at $18.37. The August 14 put wall at $17.00 is too thin to count on as a floor.

5 · Three defined-risk structures

Prices are end-of-day midpoints as of August 7. All structures are hypothetical. Verify live prices before trading — these will be stale by the open.

A note on fills before anything else: quoted spreads on this chain are wide in percentage terms across the board — 15% to 30% of mark is normal here even on the busiest strikes. Work limit orders at the midpoint; do not pay the offer.

If you lean bullish: Aug 14 $20.50/$22.50 call debit spread

• Trade: Buy the Aug 14 $20.50 call, sell the Aug 14 $22.50 call
• Debit: $0.74 · Max profit: $1.26 per spread ($126) · Max loss: $74 · Break-even: $21.24
• Why it fits: IV rank of 4/100 means you are buying the cheapest optionality this stock has offered in a year, and the short strike sits just above the $22.00 call wall and the $21.94 technical resistance shelf — you are selling the level the market has already decided is hard to clear. Break-even at $21.24 sits just under both technical targets ($21.15 and $21.30).
• Makes sense only if: you want the upside participation the call skew is already paying up for, with a capped, known cost.
• Invalidated if: QBTS closes below $20.00.
• Managing it: take profit at roughly 60–70% of max value rather than holding for the full $1.26 — with the short-term trend running against a two-month downtrend, this is a fast trade, not a hold. Exit by the Wednesday before expiration regardless; the last two sessions are almost all gamma risk.
• Liquidity note: the $20.50 calls traded 20¢ wide today (about 18% of mark) on 515 contracts; the $22.50 calls 7¢ wide on 560. Both are among the more active strikes at this expiration, but the percentage spreads mean midpoint limits are mandatory.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bearish: Aug 14 $20.00/$18.50 put debit spread

• Trade: Buy the Aug 14 $20.00 put, sell the Aug 14 $18.50 put
• Debit: $0.42 · Max profit: $1.08 per spread ($108) · Max loss: $42 · Break-even: $19.59
• Why it fits: the long strike is the chain's heaviest put strike and the largest gamma cluster — the level whose failure opens the trapdoor — and the short strike is the $18.50 max-pain strike, the natural stopping point for a drift lower into expiration. Cheap implied volatility means you are not overpaying for the option to be wrong.
• Makes sense only if: you read the past week as a counter-trend bounce inside a downtrend that is still intact below the 50- and 200-day averages, and you want a defined-cost way to express it.
• Invalidated if: QBTS closes above $21.40 (the technical resistance the 3-day model names as its own bearish invalidation).
• Managing it: this fights both the options flow lean and both technical models, so size it small and treat $18.50 as the exit, not a waypoint — take profit if price touches the max-pain strike rather than waiting for expiration.
• Liquidity note: the $20.00 puts traded 10¢ wide on 347 contracts; the $18.50 puts 7¢ wide on 197. Acceptable, but the percentage slippage on the $18.50 leg is meaningful relative to its 20¢ mark.
• Analyze this position →

If you expect the range to hold: Aug 14 $18/$19 – $22.50/$23.50 iron condor

• Trade: Sell the $19.00 put / buy the $18.00 put, and sell the $22.50 call / buy the $23.50 call, all Aug 14. A credit spread pays you up front and profits if price stays away from your short strikes; the long wings cap what you can lose.
• Credit: $0.37 · Max profit: $37 · Max loss: $63 · Break-evens: $18.63 and $22.87
• Why it fits: the short call sits just above the $22.00 call wall and the short put just under the $20 gamma cluster, and the estimated positive gamma regime at this expiration favors dampened, range-bound behavior.
• Health warning: you are selling premium that has not been rich lately — IV rank is 4/100 and option prices are running below what this stock has actually delivered. The $37 credit against $63 of risk is exactly what a cheap-vol chain looks like, and the short strikes sit inside the options-implied range, so this needs the market to move less than it is priced to move.
• Makes sense only if: you believe the post-earnings realized-volatility spike is fading fast and the $20–$22 corridor holds all six sessions.
• Invalidated if: QBTS closes above $22.00 or below $20.00 — either wall break means the range case has failed, well before the break-evens are threatened.
• Managing it: close at roughly 50% of max credit; with this little premium there is no margin for hoping. If either short strike trades through, close the tested side rather than defending it.
• Liquidity note: the $19.00 puts traded 14¢ wide on 263 contracts, the $18.00 puts 2¢ wide on 268, the $22.50 calls 7¢ wide on 560, and the $23.50 calls 7¢ wide on 73. Four legs at these spreads can eat a third of the credit — leg it at midpoints or skip it.
• Analyze this position →

If none of these: no trade

There is a clean case for standing aside. Realized volatility of 124% on a $20 stock means a 6% day is ordinary, and the August 14 expiration is only six sessions out — every structure above is short-dated enough that a single gap does most of the work. The condor in particular is the trade to skip: collecting $37 to risk $63 while implied volatility sits at the bottom of its 52-week range is selling something that is not expensive, and the $2.40 implied move is wider than either short strike's cushion. If you have no view on whether the past week was a reversal or a bounce, the fourth option — waiting for a close through $20.00 or $22.00 to tell you — costs nothing and removes most of the guesswork.

6 · Quick FAQ

What is QBTS's expected move this week? About ±$2.40, or ±11.6%, into the August 14 expiration — a range of roughly $18.37 to $23.17 — per the options market's straddle pricing as of the August 7 close.

Is QBTS expected to go up or down over the next six days? Options positioning as of August 7 leans mildly bullish — call-tilted volume, call open interest building, and calls priced 8.8 vol points richer than puts — but that is a read of what traders have already done, not a forecast. The actionable map is the $18.37–$23.17 range and the $20.00 / $22.00 levels that bracket it.

Are QBTS options expensive right now? No. IV rank of 4/100 says option prices are lower than 96% of the past year's readings, and on top of that they are running about 45 vol points below the movement QBTS has actually delivered — thinner than all but 12% of this stock's own recent readings. The caveat: that "cheapness" is partly mechanical, because the August 6 earnings gap is inflating the realized-movement side of the comparison for the next month. The IV rank alone still favors owning premium over selling it.

Where is QBTS's biggest options support and resistance? Resistance is the $22.00 call wall for the August 14 expiration, which is also the heaviest call strike across the entire chain. Support is $20.00 — the chain's heaviest put strike (28,637 contracts) and its largest gamma cluster. The August 14 expiration's own put wall at $17.00 holds only 684 contracts and is too thin to lean on.

What invalidates this read? A close below $20.00. Both technical models put their own bearish trigger within twenty cents of the same level.

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Methodology & disclosures. Data: end-of-day options-chain snapshot for QBTS, 2026-08-07, generated 2026-08-08T16:23:39Z. 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 2026-08-08T16:23:39Z; 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.