QUBT Options Are Pricing a $1.43 Move by Friday — The Charts See a Quarter of That

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The options market implies a $7.71–$10.57 range into the August 14 expiration; here's what's driving it and three defined-risk ways to trade it.

Published Saturday, August 8, 2026 · Data as of 2026-08-07 close

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

Quick answer

Item	Answer
Market bias	Slightly bullish
Options-implied range (into Aug 14)	$7.71 – $10.57 (±15.6%)
Major support	$8.00 (Aug 14 max pain and gamma cluster); the Aug 14 put wall sits far below at $6.00
Major resistance	$10.00 (whole chain's heaviest call strike)
Max pain (Aug 14)	$8.00
Dealer gamma regime (estimate)	Positive — hedging tends to dampen moves; flip level ≈ $2 (rough estimate, far below spot)
Volatility condition	Rising — IV rank 69/100 · premium rich: options priced ~46 vol pts above delivered movement (earnings-inflated)
Next earnings	Monday, August 10 (after close) — before the Aug 14 expiration
Technical check	Confirms (bullish, 3-day and 6-day)
Best-fitting strategy	Short $8.50/$7.50 put spread (Aug 14), earnings-gap risk accepted
Analysis invalidated if	QUBT closes below $8.85

1 · What matters today

QUBT closed at $9.18 after a 12.1% run over five sessions, and our read of options flow leans slightly bullish: call-side activity dominates, put open interest is thinning, and out-of-the-money calls now cost dramatically more than the equivalent puts. The catch is size. The options market is pricing a move of roughly $1.43 either way — a $7.71 to $10.57 range — through the August 14 expiration, because Monday's earnings report (August 10, after the close) sits inside that window. Both technical models agree on direction and disagree violently on magnitude, targeting $9.32–$9.45. The level that changes the picture is $8.85: a close below it breaks the short-term uptrend structure and flips the whole read. Above $9.34, the heavy call strikes at $10 become the next real ceiling.

2 · What the options market is pricing

What changed this week

The single biggest change is volatility, not direction. At-the-money implied volatility — the market's estimate of how much QUBT will move, baked into option prices — jumped 30.0% in one day and 31.1% over five sessions, to 126.3%. That's roughly 30% above its own 30-day average (96.8%), and the one-day expansion is the most extreme reading in our whole positioning snapshot relative to this stock's own recent history. Positioning tilted the other way: put open interest fell relative to calls, with the put/call open-interest ratio moving from 0.75 to 0.66 over five days — for every call contract held open there are now 0.66 puts, against a 14-day average of 0.73. Put/call volume ran at 0.29 versus a 14-day average of 0.59, so call buyers dominated the tape. Total option volume was 1.31× its 20-day average.

The trend reads are openly divergent, and that tension matters: the past week's 12.1% pop and the ~20-day trend both read bullish, while the ~50-day read is bearish with price still down 19.5% over that stretch. Near-term flow and the bigger trend are pointing different ways, and a fresh momentum crossover on August 3 turned the short-term read up only five sessions ago. Into Friday's now-settled expiration, the $9 calls traded almost 3,000 contracts and added 417 of open interest — settled history, but a fair marker of where the chase was.

Expected move

Into August 14, the options market is pricing a ±15.6% move — that figure is derived from what straddles cost, i.e. what a trader pays to own both a call and a put at the money. On a $9.14 chain-snapshot price, that's about $1.43 up or down.

Expiration	Implied move	Range around $9.14
Fri, Aug 14 (7 DTE)	±15.6%	$7.71 – $10.57
Fri, Aug 21 (14 DTE)	±19.6%	$7.35 – $10.93
Fri, Aug 28 (21 DTE)	±21.4%	$7.18 – $11.10
Fri, Sep 18 (42 DTE)	±33.1%	$6.12 – $12.16

The rungs step up more or less in line with the square root of time, which tells you something specific: there is no clean volatility hump further out, because the earnings jump risk is already sitting in the very first rung. Quote quality was too poor to price the September 4 and September 11 rungs, so they're omitted.

Volatility

At-the-money IV of 126.3% carries an IV rank of 69/100 — option prices are higher than about 69% of the past year's readings — and an even more stretched 95th percentile on the share-of-days measure. IV is above both its 30-day (96.8%) and 90-day (99.1%) averages and up 17.8% over 30 days. The front-month read is unavailable today (expiry day), so there's no clean term-structure comparison; the interpolated 60-day tenor sits at 94.1%, well under the front of the curve.

Meanwhile the stock itself has been moving less violently than usual for it: 20-day realized volatility is 80.1%, a below-norm reading versus this stock's own recent history, and the 5-day-to-20-day realized ratio of 0.96 says movement is not accelerating. So the rally has been fast in direction but not unusually wild in day-to-day range.

Premium rich or cheap. The volatility risk premium — the gap between how much movement options are priced for and how much QUBT has actually delivered — sits at roughly 46 vol points, richer than 100% of this stock's own recent readings and an unusually extreme gap by its own standards. It nearly tripled in one session, from about 16 vol points on August 6. Normally that combination (IV rank 69 and a top-of-range premium over delivered movement) would argue loudly for collecting premium rather than owning it. Here it doesn't: some of that richness is the market pre-pricing the August 10 report, not free premium, and with earnings two days out the gap is mechanically contaminated. Treat the rich premium as an explanation of the chain's shape, not as an edge.

Earnings on the calendar

QUBT reports Monday, August 10, after the close, with a consensus estimate of a $0.05 loss per share. That lands after the now-settled August 7 expiration and before the August 14 expiration this article is built around — which is why the front rung already prices a ±15.6% move over seven calendar days, and why one-day IV expanded 30%. Every structure below therefore carries gap risk through the print. For context only: the last four reports met or beat expectations, most recently a $0.03 loss against an expected $0.05 loss. Nothing in this data speaks to what the next one will show.

Skew and sentiment

Skew is the most striking number in the file. Puts and calls the same distance from the stock price don't cost the same — and here it is the calls that are expensive: 25-delta call IV is 172.6% against 25-delta put IV of 96.3%, so calls carry roughly 76 vol points more premium than puts. Against a 60-day median of about 9 vol points of call richness, and a 14-day average near 12, that is a stretched-versus-its-own-history reading: traders are paying up hard for upside, not for crash protection. The same skew flattened by about 112 vol points over five sessions on our leading positioning read — put protection bled off fast.

Sentiment across the curve is what the data calls a "bullish recovery": the 0–7d bucket is roughly flat at −4 (versus a 7-day average of +29), while the 7–30d bucket reads +53 and the 60–120d bucket +62. Positioning is being built further out rather than in the front week — consistent with a market that respects Monday's binary but wants exposure beyond it. Our leading positioning composite sits at +56 with no price-versus-score divergence, its strongest stretch in weeks.

The key levels map

Level	Price	Why it matters
Top of Aug 14 implied range	$10.57	One standard deviation up; the options market's own upper rail for Friday
Swing resistance	$10.53 / $10.17	Price-structure pivot cluster from the recent decline
200-day moving average	$10.05	Close sits 8.7% below it — the bigger downtrend's marker
Call wall (whole chain) / largest gamma strike	$10.00	24,445 calls and 24,498 puts open — the heaviest strike in the book and the Aug 21 max pain; a magnet-and-barrier level
Swing resistance / 50-day MA	$9.35 / $9.34	Both technical models' stated ceiling for this window
Spot / close	$9.14 / $9.18	Chain-snapshot price and official close
Call wall (Aug 14 expiration)	$9.00	3,062 calls open — the heaviest call strike at the target expiration, and price is sitting right on it; heavy gamma here
Swing support / TA invalidation	$8.85 / $8.83	The line this read hangs on
Swing support	$8.48 / $8.26	Prior pivot shelf
20-day moving average	$8.15	Close is 12.6% above it — the rally is extended versus its own short-term mean
Max pain (Aug 14) / gamma cluster	$8.00	The price where the most option value would expire worthless at Friday's expiration, and the third-largest gamma pile in the chain
Bottom of Aug 14 implied range	$7.71	One standard deviation down; near swing support at $7.98
Put wall (Aug 14 expiration)	$6.00	4,439 puts open — deep tail protection, not a working floor
Gamma flip estimate	≈ $2	One rough estimate; spot sits far above it, on the supportive side of the hedging regime

Note the disagreement worth naming: the Aug 14 expiration's own call wall is $9.00, while the whole chain's heaviest call strike is $10.00. For Friday, $9 is where the near-dated call open interest is stacked — and price closed on top of it.

Positioning and unusual flow

The dealer gamma estimate for the August 14 expiration is positive, meaning market makers hedge the options they've sold in a way that, in this regime, tends to dampen moves rather than amplify them. That matches the all-expirations aggregate. Read it as an estimate built on an assumed hedging convention, and note it says nothing about a gap through an earnings print, which happens before any hedging can respond.

Three flow items stand out, all still live:

• Aug 28 $12 calls: 4,563 contracts traded against 787 open — 5.8× turnover and about $98,100 of premium. Someone paid for upside well beyond the report date.
• Aug 14 $11 calls: 3,578 contracts on 2,444 open interest, roughly $55,500 of premium — a lottery-ticket strike about 20% above spot, inside the implied range.
• Aug 14 $9 puts: 1,318 contracts against 348 open, 3.8× turnover — the hedge side of the same event, right at the money.

On the open-interest side, the Aug 14 $12 calls added 255 contracts and the Aug 14 $7 puts added 311 — barbell positioning around Monday, which is exactly what a two-day-out binary tends to produce.

3 · Technical check (the 20%)

Both technical reports read bullish. The 3-day model (target date August 11) targets $9.32 with a $8.95–$9.40 range, calling support at $9.00 and resistance at the 50-day average near $9.34, and invalidating on a close back below $9.00. The 6-day model (target date August 14) targets $9.45 with a $8.85–$9.55 range, same $9.34 ceiling, invalidating below $8.85. Its most decisive reads are a strong-trend ADX at 25 with +DI clearly above −DI, and a Chaikin money-flow reading of 0.33 — heavy accumulation into the bounce. Both note the honest tension: price still sits under the 50-day ($9.34) and 200-day ($10.05) averages, so this is a counter-trend rally inside a larger downtrend — the same divergence the options-side trend reads show.

On direction, that confirms the slightly bullish options read, and both targets sit comfortably inside the options-implied range. On magnitude, the two frameworks are not looking at the same thing at all.

Model vs. Market: The options market implies $7.71–$10.57 into August 14; the 6-day technical model targets $9.45 inside a $8.85–$9.55 band. The chart is extrapolating trend and the chain is pricing an event — the $2.16 of extra width is Monday's earnings report, which no indicator can see. If the report passes without a gap, the options-implied range is far too wide and premium sellers get paid; if it gaps, the chart's range is fiction.

Practically, the TA shifted strike selection in one way: the bullish structure's short strike sits at $8.50, below both models' support shelf ($8.85–$9.00) rather than at it.

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

4 · Three ways the next six days can go

If QUBT pushes above the Aug 14 call wall ($9.00) and clears $9.34: the heaviest near-dated call open interest is already behind price, and above $9.34 the next real pile sits at $10.00 — where both the biggest call and biggest put open interest in the whole chain live. Positioning there tends to slow rallies rather than accelerate them, and $10.57 is the upper implied rail.

If QUBT drifts between $8.85 and $9.35: this is the pin case. Max pain for Friday sits at $8.00, well below spot, and the Aug 14 call wall at $9.00 is directly underfoot — expiring open interest and dampening hedging flows in a positive-gamma estimate tend to keep price glued near the heaviest strikes. Note that a report on Monday night usually ends pin dynamics before Friday can enforce them.

If QUBT breaks below $8.85: the short-term structure both technical models rely on is gone, and the map thins fast — $8.48, $8.26, then the $8.00 max-pain/gamma cluster and the lower implied rail at $7.71. The dealer-gamma flip estimate near $2 is far below spot, so one rough estimate says hedging still cushions rather than amplifies here; the drop would be flow and disappointment, not a hedging cascade.

5 · Three defined-risk structures

Prices are end-of-day midpoints as of 2026-08-07. All structures are hypothetical. Verify live prices before trading — these will be stale by the open. QUBT options are penny-wide in absolute terms but wide as a percentage of mark; assume slippage.

If you lean bullish: short $8.50/$7.50 put spread

• Trade: Sell the Aug 14 $8.50 put, buy the Aug 14 $7.50 put
• Credit: $0.23 · Max profit: $23 per spread · Max loss: $77 · Break-even: $8.27
• Why it fits: A credit spread means you collect premium now and win if price simply stays above your short strike. $8.50 sits below both technical support shelves and below the 20-day average at $8.15's… no — below the swing cluster at $8.48/$8.26, and the break-even of $8.27 is well inside the lower implied rail. Call skew is stretched 76 vol points over puts, so the put side is the comparatively cheap wing to be short.
• Makes sense only if: you accept holding through Monday's report and believe an 8.5% drop is the outer bound of a bad reaction.
• Invalidated if: QUBT closes below $8.85.
• Earnings exposure: Spans the August 10 report — premium is inflated for that reason, and the position can gap through both strikes overnight.
• Managing it: Close at roughly 50% of max credit; because the short-term uptrend is fighting a bearish ~50-day trend, take profits early rather than holding for the last few cents, and exit by Thursday regardless. If QUBT closes through $8.50, close rather than hope.
• Liquidity note: The $8.50 puts quoted $0.25/$0.31 (6¢ wide) and the $7.50 puts $0.03/$0.07 — tight in cents, wide in percentage terms, so work the mid and expect to give up a cent or two.
• Analyze this position →

If you expect the range to hold: Aug 14 iron condor

• Trade: Sell the $8.50 put / buy the $7.50 put and sell the $10 call / buy the $11 call, all Aug 14
• Credit: $0.39 · Max profit: $39 per condor · Max loss: $61 · Break-evens: $8.11 and $10.39
• Why it fits: The short strikes bracket the heaviest chain-wide call/put strike at $10 above and the swing shelf below, and both break-evens sit inside the ±15.6% implied rails. It is the purest expression of "the market has priced more movement than QUBT usually delivers" — realized volatility is running below its own norm at 80%.
• Makes sense only if: you specifically want to be short an earnings move. Note the honest arithmetic: the short strikes sit inside the implied range, so a one-standard-deviation move breaches a wing.
• Invalidated if: QUBT closes outside $8.11–$10.39.
• Earnings exposure: Spans the August 10 report — the credit is fat precisely because of it, and a gap can jump straight past a short strike to the long wing.
• Managing it: Close at ~50% of max credit, which for this structure will most likely arrive Tuesday morning on the post-report volatility collapse if the gap is small. Do not hold a breached wing into Friday.
• Liquidity note: The $10 calls quoted $0.28/$0.35 and the $11 calls $0.13/$0.18; the $10 calls turned over 1,199 contracts, so the call side fills, but four legs of percentage-wide spreads means slippage is a real cost here.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bearish: long $9/$8 put spread

• Trade: Buy the Aug 14 $9 put, sell the Aug 14 $8 put
• Debit: $0.335 · Max profit: $66.50 per spread · Max loss: $33.50 · Break-even: $8.67
• Why it fits: A debit spread means you pay up front and win if price falls to or through your lower strike. This targets exactly the pin case that fails: max pain for Friday is $8.00, and the ~50-day trend is still bearish with price 12.6% above its 20-day average. Puts are the cheaper wing given the 76-vol-point call skew, so you're buying the discounted side.
• Makes sense only if: you think the run into the report is the trade being over-owned. Be clear that you are buying premium at IV rank 69 with an event already priced in — a benign report deflates this position even if price drifts lower.
• Invalidated if: QUBT closes above $9.45.
• Earnings exposure: Spans the August 10 report — you own the gap in your favour and the volatility crush against you; both hit Tuesday morning.
• Managing it: Take profit into any Tuesday flush rather than waiting for max value at expiry; with the short-term trend up, this is a shorter-leash position by design. Cut it if $9.34 breaks decisively to the upside.
• Liquidity note: The $9 puts quoted $0.43/$0.54 on 1,318 contracts of volume and the $8 puts $0.12/$0.18 — the most-traded put strikes at this expiration, but again ~20% wide relative to mark.
• Analyze this position →

If none of these: no trade

Standing aside is genuinely defensible this week, and the reason is precisely the thing that looks attractive. Yes, premium is rich by any measure — IV rank 69, a 46-vol-point gap over delivered movement, the widest such gap in this stock's recent history. But every one of those numbers is inflated by a scheduled report two days out, so "selling expensive volatility" here is really "selling an earnings gap," which is a different trade with a fatter tail than the credit implies. There is no expiration between now and Monday, so a short-dated structure that avoids the print doesn't exist; the nearest way to trade the positioning without owning the report would be to wait until Tuesday and use the August 21 expiration once volatility has reset. Add penny-wide-but-percentage-fat spreads on a $9 stock, and doing nothing until the print clears costs you very little.

6 · Quick FAQ

What is QUBT's expected move this week? About ±$1.43, or ±15.6%, into the August 14 expiration — a $7.71 to $10.57 range, per the options market's straddle pricing as of 2026-08-07.

Is QUBT expected to go up or down over the next six days? Options positioning as of 2026-08-07 leans slightly bullish — call-heavy volume, thinning put open interest, and 25-delta calls priced 76 vol points above puts — but that's a read of what traders have done, not a forecast. The actionable map is the $7.71–$10.57 range and the $8.00 / $10.00 levels.

Are QUBT options expensive right now? IV rank 69/100 says option prices are higher than about 69% of the past year's readings; on top of that, they're running roughly 46 vol points above the movement QUBT has actually delivered, richer than every comparable reading in this stock's own recent history. Normally that favours selling premium — but with earnings on August 10, much of the richness is the market pre-pricing that report, not free money.

When is QUBT's next earnings report? Monday, August 10, after the close, with a consensus estimate of a $0.05 loss per share — after the settled August 7 expiration and before August 14, which is why the very first expiration rung already prices a ±15.6% move.

Where is QUBT's biggest options support and resistance? For the August 14 expiration, the heaviest call strike is $9.00 and the put wall is far out at $6.00, with max pain at $8.00; across the whole chain, $10.00 carries both the largest call and largest put open interest.

What invalidates this read? A close below $8.85.

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Methodology & disclosures. Data: end-of-day options-chain snapshot for QUBT, 2026-08-07, generated 2026-08-08T13:46:41.855Z. 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 2026-08-08T13:46:41.855Z; 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.