QBTS Options Are Pricing a ±$2.13 Move by Friday — Our Read Sees a Tighter, Choppier Week

Listen to this analysis — prefer audio? This QBTS outlook is also available as a podcast episode:

---

The options market implies a $19.04–$23.30 range into the August 21 expiration; here's what's driving that number, where the real barriers sit, and three defined-risk ways to trade the next six days.

Published Saturday, August 15, 2026 · Data as of the 2026-08-14 close

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 21)	$19.04 – $23.30 (±10.0%)
Major support	$20.50 (max pain / heavy gamma shelf); the Aug 21 put wall sits far below at $18.00
Major resistance	$22.00 (Aug 21 call wall)
Max pain (Aug 21)	$20.50
Dealer gamma regime (estimate)	Positive — one rough estimate suggests hedging leans against moves; flip level ≈ $23, which sits above spot
Volatility condition	Compressed — IV rank 9/100 · premium thin: options priced roughly 33 vol points below delivered movement (distorted by the August 6 earnings gap)
Technical check	Confirms (bullish, 3-day and 6-day horizons)
Best-fitting strategy	Aug 21 $21/$23 call debit spread, while $20.75 holds
Analysis invalidated if	QBTS closes below $20.75

1 · What matters today

QBTS closed at $21.17 and the options market is pricing a move of about ±$2.13 — roughly 10% — through Friday, August 21. That number comes from what straddles cost at that expiration: it's the market's own estimate of how far the stock travels, in either direction, over six sessions.

The flow behind it leans mildly constructive. Call activity is running three-to-one over puts, call open interest is building fast, and 25-delta calls now cost more than the equivalent puts — traders are paying up for upside, not for crash protection. But the Aug 21 expiration's own gravity points sideways-to-lower: max pain sits at $20.50, below the current price, and the heaviest call open interest for that date is parked at $22. Between those two numbers is where the week most likely lives. A close below $20.75 kills the constructive read. Both technical models we track also lean bullish, with far more modest targets than the options market's range.

2 · What the options market is pricing

What changed this week

The last five sessions were quietly bullish in the flow and quietly dull in the price. QBTS gained just 1.9% over five trading days, but the positioning underneath moved more than that. The put/call volume ratio collapsed to 0.33 — 33 puts traded for every 100 calls — versus a 7-day average of 0.46 and a 14-day average of 0.48. That's an unusually call-tilted day even for a name that normally skews call-heavy. Open interest tells the same story: the put/call open-interest ratio dropped to 0.70 from a 14-day norm of 0.82, and Friday alone added 15,874 call contracts against just 1,065 puts.

The single biggest change in contracts held open was the September 18 $25 call, which jumped 8,271 contracts to 10,646 — more than a quadrupling in one session. Implied volatility — the market's estimate of how much QBTS will move, baked into option prices — rose 7.9% on the day and 5.4% over five sessions, yet still sits 13.9% below its own 30-day average. Rising demand, still-cheap prices.

One tension is worth naming. Our short- and long-term trend reads disagree: the past week and the past month are both pointing up (price +1.9% over five days, +26.5% over twenty), while the ~50-day read is decisively down, with price off 22% over that stretch. The near-term flow and the bigger trend are pointing different ways, which argues for shorter-dated positions and earlier profit-taking rather than swinging for the prior highs. For context on the settled expiration: into Friday's August 14 expiry the $21 calls traded 3,339 contracts and shed 570 of open interest — history now, not a live level.

Expected move

Into Friday, August 21, the chain prices a 1σ move of ±10.04%, or about ±$2.13, giving a range of $19.04 – $23.30 around the $21.17 chain-snapshot price.

Expiration	Implied move	Range around $21.17
Fri, Aug 21 (6 days)	±10.0%	$19.04 – $23.30
Fri, Aug 28	±14.7%	$18.06 – $24.28
Fri, Sep 4	±15.7%	$17.85 – $24.49
Fri, Sep 18 (~1 month)	±23.4%	$16.22 – $26.12

Note how front-loaded the risk is: the first rung alone prices ±10%, and doubling the time only takes you to ±15.7%. The market is pricing most of the near-term uncertainty into the next six sessions rather than spreading it evenly across the month.

Volatility

At-the-money implied volatility is 83.7%, with an IV rank of 9/100 — meaning today's implied volatility is cheaper than about 91% of the past year's readings. The 52-week percentile agrees at 9. Current IV sits below both its 30-day average (97.2%) and its 90-day average (101.7%), and is down 16.3% over 30 days even after Friday's 7.9% one-day bounce. The front-month read is unavailable today because the nearest expiration had already reached expiry, so the usual comparison of option prices across expiration dates isn't computable from this snapshot.

Two readings stand out versus this stock's own recent history — meaning unusual for QBTS specifically, not versus the broader market. Realized movement has collapsed: the 5-day realized volatility is running at only about a quarter of the 20-day figure, one of the quietest such readings in this name's recent record. And the call-tilted volume mix is meaningfully heavier than QBTS's own baseline. A very quiet tape with a very call-heavy options book is the setup in one sentence.

Premium: cheap on paper, but read the fine print. The volatility risk premium — the gap between how much movement options are priced for and how much QBTS has actually delivered — is negative by about 33 vol points (83.7% implied against 116.3% realized over 20 days). Sitting at the 21st percentile of this stock's own recent readings, that gap is thinner than roughly four out of five recent days: on the raw numbers, option buyers have been paying less than the stock's actual movement has been worth. The caveat matters, though: the August 6 earnings report produced a 13.8% gap-down that still sits inside the 20-day realized-volatility window, mechanically inflating the realized leg. That sign flip — the premium was positive as recently as late July and turned negative on July 30 — is largely that gap entering the window, not traders repricing risk. Verdict: IV rank 9 and a 21st-percentile premium both point away from selling premium and toward owning it, but the "cheap" label is flattered by one earnings gap, so treat it as a reason to prefer debit structures rather than as a standalone edge.

Skew and sentiment

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. QBTS is running the other way. The 25-delta call carries an 81.6% implied volatility against 72.2% for the 25-delta put: calls are about 9.4 vol points richer, versus a 60-day norm of 3.2 points. That's a call chase, and it's stretched compared with this stock's own history.

Sentiment in short-dated options tells a split story. The 0–7 day bucket reads a fractionally negative −9 — driven purely by open interest thinning at that tenor — while the 7–30 day bucket sits at +56 and the 30–60 day bucket at +38. Our read of the flow labels this a "bullish recovery" pattern: conviction is being built past the front week rather than in it. One counterpoint worth flagging: the peer-relative sweep imbalance (4 call contracts to 2 put contracts clearing an unusual-volume bar) is actually weaker than this name's own norm. The call chase is broad, but it isn't frantic.

The key levels map

Level	Price	Why it matters
Whole-chain call wall	$25.00	22,573 calls held open across all expirations — a September-and-beyond magnet, not this week's barrier
Gamma flip estimate	≈ $23.00	One rough estimate of where market-maker hedging changes character; it sits above spot, so the cushioning below is not guaranteed
200-day moving average	$22.38	Price is 5.4% below it — the longer-term trend is still repairing
Call wall (Aug 21)	$22.00	4,896 calls held open at the target expiration — the biggest overhead pile for this week; also a swing-resistance level
Breakout trigger (technical)	$21.58–$21.60	Upper Bollinger Band and the top of the current consolidation
Last close / 50-day MA	$21.17 / $21.13	Price is sitting almost exactly on its 50-day average
Swing support cluster	$20.93 / $20.75	Heuristic swing-pivot support and the technical models' invalidation line
Max pain (Aug 21)	$20.50	The price where the most option value expires worthless — expirations sometimes gravitate toward it
Whole-chain put wall	$20.00	29,009 puts held open and the single largest gamma strike in the chain — a genuine shelf
20-day moving average	$19.06	Price is 11.1% above it after the July–August recovery
Lower rail of implied move	$19.04	The bottom of what the market is pricing through Friday
Put wall (Aug 21)	$18.00	3,727 puts at the target expiration — this week's downside pile, well below spot
52-week range	$12.75 – $46.75	Price sits at roughly the 25th percentile of the past year's range

Two things to be precise about. First, the whole-chain figures and the Aug 21 figures disagree: aggregated across every expiration, the heaviest call strike is $25 and the heaviest put strike is $20, but the Aug 21 expiration's own walls are $22 and $18. For this week, use $22 and $18. Second, every gamma and flip number here is an estimate built on an assumed dealer positioning convention, not observed inventory.

Positioning and unusual flow

One rough estimate puts net dealer gamma positive for the Aug 21 expiration, which in that regime means market-maker hedging tends to dampen moves rather than amplify them — the pin-toward-max-pain case. But the same estimate places the flip level near $23, above the current price, so spot is roughly 8.6% under the level where that cushioning is estimated to be most reliable. Read it as "mildly stabilizing, not a floor."

Three non-expired flow items stood out on Friday:

• September 18 $25 calls — open interest jumped 8,271 contracts to 10,646 on 2,611 contracts of volume. Someone built a large, far-out-of-the-money upside position for the September cycle, well beyond this week's window.
• October 16 $22 calls — 2,847 contracts traded against 373 held open, for about $735,000 of premium, the largest single dollar-premium print in the chain. Turnover more than seven times existing open interest means this is new positioning, not shuffling.
• August 28 $21 puts — 407 contracts against 48 held open (8.5× turnover). Small in dollars, but it's the one clear downside-hedging footprint in an otherwise call-dominated book.

3 · Technical check

Both technical reports we track are bullish, and both classify as confirming the options read: same direction, targets comfortably inside the options-implied range. The 3-day model (checkpoint Tuesday, August 18) targets $21.40 with a $20.70–$21.60 band; the 6-day model, dated to our Friday, August 21 expiration, targets $21.65 with a $20.45–$21.95 band. Both were generated August 15 off a $21.16 reference price, within a cent of our chain snapshot.

The supporting reads: a 14-period ADX of 28.8 with +DI above −DI confirms an established uptrend, though it has cooled from a recent peak near 33.6 — trend intact but decelerating. Chaikin Money Flow at +0.075 stays above the accumulation threshold, indicating steady buying pressure over the last 20 sessions even through the early-August air pocket. Against that, MACD has just crossed marginally bearish with a near-zero histogram, which reads as a momentum stall rather than a reversal. Both reports put the dominant scenario's invalidation at a close below $20.75, and both flag the same short-term-bullish, long-term-bearish split we see in our own trend read — price is still below the 200-day at $22.38.

Model vs. Market: The options market implies $19.04–$23.30 into August 21; the 6-day technical model targets $21.65 inside a $20.45–$21.95 band. The technical band is roughly a fifth as wide as the options band — the chain is paying for a violent week that the chart doesn't see coming, which is exactly why the trade ideas below use defined-risk spreads rather than naked options.

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): that strike holds the heaviest call open interest for the Aug 21 expiration, and the largest concentrations of contracts overhead have historically acted like speed bumps. Above it, positioning thins quickly until roughly $23 — the gamma flip estimate — with the 200-day average at $22.38 sitting in the same neighborhood. A clean close through $22 would put the technical models' $22.00–$22.30 continuation target in play.

If QBTS drifts between the walls: this is the base case the positioning describes. Max pain for Aug 21 is $20.50, below the current price, and the dealer-gamma estimate for that expiration is positive — a regime in which hedging flows tend to lean against extension in either direction. That combination points to a chop between roughly $20.50 and $22.00 into Friday, with the technical range ($20.75–$21.60) sitting neatly inside it.

If QBTS breaks below $20.00: that's the whole chain's put wall and its single largest gamma strike, so it should behave as a shelf on the first test. Below it, the implied lower rail at $19.04 is the next reference, and there is very little Aug 21 put open interest between there and $18. Worth remembering that spot already sits about 8.6% below the estimated flip level, so the "dampening" estimate is at its least reliable on the downside.

5 · Three defined-risk structures

Prices are end-of-day midpoints as of 2026-08-14. All structures are hypothetical. Verify live prices before trading — these will be stale by the open.

Because premium is running thin rather than rich, debit structures lead here — you're generally better paid to own optionality than to sell it this week, with the earnings-gap caveat above kept in mind.

If you lean bullish: Aug 21 $21/$23 call debit spread

• Trade: Buy the Aug 21 $21 call, sell the Aug 21 $23 call. A debit spread means you pay up front and are betting the stock finishes above your long strike, with your gain capped at the short strike.
• Debit: $0.62 · Max profit: $1.38 · Max loss: $0.62 · Break-even: $21.62
• Why it fits: The short strike sits a full dollar above the Aug 21 call wall at $22, so the position is paid in full on a move that merely reaches the barrier rather than needing to smash through it. With IV rank at 9/100 and options priced below delivered movement, buying the long leg is not an expensive proposition. Both technical models target $21.40–$21.65 within this window.
• Makes sense only if: you accept a roughly 2.2-to-1 payoff on a six-session bet and treat $22 as a ceiling, not a launchpad.
• Invalidated if: QBTS closes below $20.75.
• Managing it: Take profit at 70–80% of maximum if $22 trades; the short-term uptrend is fighting a still-negative 50-day trend, so bank rather than press. Exit by Thursday, August 20 regardless — the last day of a debit spread is all gamma and no theta cushion.
• Liquidity note: the $21 calls quoted 6¢ wide (0.90/0.96, about 6.5% of mid) and the $23 calls 5¢ wide (0.29/0.34) — both fine for a two-leg fill.
• Analyze this position →

If you expect the range to hold: Aug 21 $18/$19/$23/$24 iron condor

• Trade: Sell the $19 put / buy the $18 put, sell the $23 call / buy the $24 call, all Aug 21. You collect a credit up front and keep it if QBTS finishes between the short strikes.
• Credit: $0.24 · Max profit: $0.24 · Max loss: $0.76 · Break-evens: $18.76 and $23.24
• Why it fits: The short strikes bracket almost exactly the walls and the implied-move rails — $19 sits above the Aug 21 put wall at $18, $23 sits above the call wall at $22, and both are outside the $19.04–$23.30 band the market is pricing. The positive dealer-gamma estimate for this expiration and the $20.50 max-pain shelf both describe the pin scenario this trade needs.
• Makes sense only if: you genuinely believe the last five sessions' collapse in actual movement persists — and you're comfortable that you're selling premium that hasn't been rich lately. At a 21st-percentile volatility premium and IV rank 9, this is the least-favored structure of the three on pricing grounds; the risk/reward (risk $0.76 to make $0.24) leaves no room for a bad fill.
• Invalidated if: QBTS closes outside $20.50–$22.00 with expanding volume — that's the signal the consolidation is resolving rather than continuing.
• Managing it: Close at ~50% of max credit if it comes quickly; close the tested side outright if either short strike trades, rather than hoping a 6-day option decays back.
• Liquidity note: the wings are penny options — the $19 puts quote 0.12/0.19 (nearly 45% of mid) and the $18 puts 0.05/0.07. Assume you give up meaningful edge on entry and exit; that alone can eat a third of the credit.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bearish: Aug 21 $21/$19 put debit spread

• Trade: Buy the Aug 21 $21 put, sell the Aug 21 $19 put. You pay up front and profit as QBTS falls, capped at $19.
• Debit: $0.61 · Max profit: $1.39 · Max loss: $0.61 · Break-even: $20.39
• Why it fits: This is the max-pain trade. Max pain for Aug 21 sits at $20.50, below spot, and the short $19 strike sits just above the whole-chain put wall at $20 — so the position pays most of its value on a drift, not a crash. It's also the honest expression of the trend split: the 50-day picture is still down 22%, and the call chase in the options book is complacency as much as conviction.
• Makes sense only if: you read the flattened, call-rich skew as crowding rather than information — and you accept that this trade fights both technical models.
• Invalidated if: QBTS closes above $21.60 (the top of the consolidation band).
• Managing it: Target the $20.35–$20.55 zone the technical models name as their pullback objective; take profit there rather than waiting for the $19 wall to break. Exit by Thursday, August 20.
• Liquidity note: the $21 puts quoted 7¢ wide (0.73/0.80, about 9% of mid); the $19 puts are wider at 0.12/0.19 — work the spread as a package rather than legging in.
• Analyze this position →

If none of these: no trade

There is a clean case for standing aside. The "options are cheap" headline is real on the raw numbers but flattered by one event: the August 6 earnings gap of nearly 14% still sits inside the 20-day realized-volatility window and will roll out of it over the coming weeks. When it does, realized movement mechanically drops toward implied and the apparent bargain in long premium narrows without the stock doing anything. On the other side, IV rank 9/100 means credit structures collect very little, and the condor above risks $0.76 to make $0.24 with short strikes sitting essentially on the implied-move rails. If you don't have a view on whether $22 breaks, the honest position is none — the six-day window offers a mediocre premium sale and a directional bet whose two models disagree with the max-pain magnet.

6 · Quick FAQ

What is QBTS's expected move this week? About ±$2.13 (±10.0%) into the August 21 expiration, giving a $19.04–$23.30 range, based on straddle pricing as of the 2026-08-14 close.

Is QBTS expected to go up or down over the next six days? Options positioning as of August 14 leans mildly bullish — call volume is running three-to-one over puts and 25-delta calls cost about 9.4 vol points more than equivalent puts — but that's a read of what traders have already done, not a forecast. The actionable map is the $19.04–$23.30 range with $20.50 and $22.00 as the levels that matter.

Are QBTS options expensive right now? IV rank 9/100 says option prices are lower than about 91% of the past year's readings; on top of that, they're running roughly 33 vol points below the movement QBTS has actually delivered, thinner than about 79% of this stock's own recent readings. That combination favors owning premium over selling it — but some of the "cheapness" is the August 6 earnings gap inflating the realized-movement side of the comparison, so it's a preference, not an edge.

Where is QBTS's biggest options support and resistance? For the August 21 expiration: put wall $18.00, call wall $22.00, with max pain at $20.50 between them. Across the whole chain the heaviest strikes are $20 on the put side and $25 on the call side.

What invalidates this week's read? A close below $20.75.

---

Methodology & disclosures. Data: end-of-day options-chain snapshot for QBTS, 2026-08-14, generated 2026-08-15T14:30:21.021Z. 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 2026-08-15T14:30:21.021Z; 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.