RGTI Options Are Pricing a ±$2.47 Week — Our Technical Model Sees a Quarter of That

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The options market implies a $12.46–$17.40 range into the August 7 expiration; here's what's driving it, where the chain's magnets sit, and three defined-risk ways to trade a genuinely two-sided setup.

Published Saturday, August 1, 2026 · Data as of 2026-07-31 close · Export generated 2026-08-01 17:41 UTC

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

Quick answer

Item	Answer
Market bias	Neutral — the signals genuinely disagree this week
Options-implied range (into Aug 7)	$12.46 – $17.40 (±16.6%)
Major support	$13.41 swing shelf (the Aug 7 expiration's own put wall is a thin $10)
Major resistance	$16.00 — heaviest above-market call open interest at Aug 7 (3,416 contracts)
Max pain (Aug 7)	$14.00
Dealer gamma regime (estimate)	Positive — hedging tends to dampen moves; flip level ≈ $14.50 (estimate)
Volatility condition	Flat-to-easing — IV rank 28/100 · premium fair, not rich: options priced ~4 vol points above delivered movement (earnings window — see the caveat below)
Next earnings	Tuesday, August 11 (during market hours) — after the Aug 7 expiration, before Aug 14
Technical check	Mixed (bullish, 3-day and 6-day models — target inside the implied range but pointing against the chain's magnet)
Best-fitting strategy	Aug 7 $13/$12 – $17/$18 iron condor, conditional on accepting break-evens that sit at the 1σ rails
Analysis invalidated if	RGTI closes below $13.41

1 · What matters today

RGTI closed Friday at $14.95 after a 5.4% five-day bounce off the late-July lows — and the options market is pricing another huge week: roughly $12.46 to $17.40 through the August 7 expiration, about ±16.6% either way. That number comes from what straddles cost at that expiration, and it dwarfs anything a chart-based model will project.

Our read of the flow is neutral. Call-side activity is heavy (three puts traded for every ten calls) and new call open interest is building, but the heaviest single pile of open contracts at the August 7 expiration sits at $14 — below the current price — and that same $14 is where the most option value would expire worthless. The short-term technical models point up, to about $15.35. Those two pulls cancel.

The level that changes the picture: a close below $13.41.

2 · What the options market is pricing

What changed this week

The past five sessions turned RGTI's flow from defensive to opportunistic. Put/call volume came in at 0.32 — for every put contract traded there were roughly three calls — against a 7-day average of 0.42 and a 14-day average of 0.54, so call-side chasing has intensified sharply. Open interest tells the same story: puts-to-calls held open slipped to 0.73 from 0.75 five days ago, versus a 14-day average of 0.85, meaning downside protection is being retired faster than it's being replaced. The single biggest one-day change in contracts held open was on the September 18 $14 calls, which added 5,974 to 8,690 — a build that sits deliberately beyond the earnings date.

Volatility barely moved: at-the-money implied volatility eased 5.6% on the day to 100.1%, but is up 1.6% over five sessions and 1.4% over 30. Total option volume was 1.00× its 20-day average — this was a normal-sized session, not a frenzy.

The horizon reads disagree, and that's the honest headline. Over the past week the trend read is bullish on a 5.4% price gain; over the past month it is firmly bearish, with price down 17.9%; over roughly two months it is flat. A momentum crossover flipped bullish on July 22, so the near-term flow and the bigger trend are pointing different ways — which is exactly why the composite lands on neutral instead of picking a side. For context, into Friday's expiration the settled $15.50 and $15.00 calls traded 6,897 and 5,580 contracts respectively; that flow is history now, not a live level.

Expected move

Into August 7 the options market is pricing roughly ±16.6%, or about $2.47 either side of the $14.93 chain-snapshot price — the move implied by what the at-the-money straddle costs. Here is the ladder:

Expiration	Implied move	Range around $14.93
Fri, Aug 7 (7 DTE)	±16.6%	$12.46 – $17.40
Fri, Aug 14 (14 DTE)	±21.0%	$11.80 – $18.06
Fri, Aug 21 (21 DTE)	±23.6%	$11.41 – $18.45

Each rung widens, but note why: at-the-money implied volatility actually falls across the ladder (119.6% at Aug 7, 107.0% at Aug 14, 98.4% at Aug 21). The wider ranges further out are the square root of time doing the work — the front week is the most expensive rung on the curve on a volatility basis.

Volatility

At-the-money implied volatility is 100.1% — enormous in absolute terms, and utterly ordinary for this name. IV rank is 28/100, meaning today's reading is cheaper than about 72% of the past year's readings; the one-year percentile sits at 50. Current IV is a touch under both its 30-day average (102.3%) and its 90-day average (102.1%). The front-month term-structure read is unavailable today because Friday was an expiry day and front-month IV can't be interpolated from a same-day-expiring contract — that returns on the next trading day.

Two "vs its own norm" observations — where today sits against RGTI's own recent history, not the broader market. First, actual movement is accelerating hard: the ratio of 5-day to 20-day realized volatility is 1.60, well above this stock's own norm. Twenty-day realized volatility itself (95.8%) is about typical. In plain terms: the last week has been much choppier than the last month, and the chart agrees — RGTI has gapped 2% or more at the open in five of the last eight sessions.

Premium rich or cheap. The volatility risk premium — the gap between how much movement options are priced for and how much RGTI has actually delivered — is about +4.3 vol points. When that gap is positive, option sellers have been collecting more than realized movement cost them. Where does 4.3 points sit? At the 37th percentile of this stock's own recent readings: richer than roughly a third of them, thinner than the rest. And it has been draining fast — the same gap was near +39 points on July 20 and has bled down every session since as realized volatility caught up with priced volatility. Combined with an IV rank of 28, that says premium here is fair, not rich: this is not a week where the market is handing sellers an unusual cushion. One caveat is mandatory: with a report ten days out, part of the remaining richness is the market pre-pricing the August 11 earnings, not free premium.

Earnings on the calendar

RGTI reports Tuesday, August 11, during market hours per the data provider's feed, with consensus at a loss of $0.05 per share. That lands after the August 7 expiration and before August 14 — and the notable thing is what the chain isn't doing. There is no earnings volatility hump: front-week implied volatility (119.6%) is higher than the August 14 rung (107.0%) that actually spans the report. The step-up in the expected-move ladder is calendar time, not the report. For history, the last four reports all landed within two cents of the consensus estimate.

Skew and sentiment

Puts and calls the same distance from the price don't cost the same, and in RGTI the imbalance runs the unusual way: 25-delta call implied volatility is 105.3% against 101.3% on the put side, so calls are about 4.0 vol points richer than puts. Against a 60-day median of −4.3 vol points, that is essentially in line — call-richness is this name's normal state, and today it is a hair less extreme than usual. Worth noting the path, though: the same measure averaged +3.5 vol points (puts richer) over the last three sessions before flipping back to call-rich on Friday. Traders spent most of last week paying up for downside protection and stopped abruptly.

Sentiment in short-dated options is mixed by design. The 0–7 day bucket reads +39 — driven by 4,752 contracts of new call open interest against just 576 puts — versus a 7-day average of +5, so Friday's front-end tilt is a genuine jump for this name. The 7–30 day bucket is dead flat at −3. Further out, the 30–60 day and 60–120 day buckets read +43 and +65, where risk reversals show calls running 5 to 11 vol points over puts. The overall regime label is "Mixed": no single part of the curve dominates. The one-day build in new call open interest (calls +16,579 versus puts +4,539) is itself running above this stock's recent norm.

The key levels map

Level	Price	Why it matters
200-day average	$21.97	Price sits 31.9% below it — the long-term trend is still down
50-day average	$19.15	21.9% overhead; nothing about this week reaches it
Upper 1σ rail (Aug 7)	$17.40	Top of the options-implied range for the outlook window
Whole-chain heaviest gamma strike / aggregate put wall	$17.00	26,864 puts held open across all expirations — the chain's biggest single cluster, mostly September and October, not this week
Swing resistance	$16.12	Late-July rejection zone
Aug 7 heaviest above-market call OI	$16.00	3,416 calls; the nearest overhead pile that matters for this expiration
Technical resistance	$15.65	Upper Bollinger Band and prior swing high, per both technical models
20-day average	$15.34	Price is 2.6% below it — the first thing a continued bounce has to reclaim
Friday's close	$14.95	Reference (chain-snapshot price $14.93)
Technical support	$14.66	EMA34 cluster; the dominant technical scenario dies below it
Gamma flip level (estimate)	$14.50	One rough estimate suggests market-maker hedging switches from cushioning to amplifying below here
Aug 7 max pain and call wall	$14.00	Where the most option value expires worthless at this expiration, and the strike with the most open calls (5,859) — also the whole chain's heaviest call strike at 18,842
Swing support	$13.41	The late-July shelf; the level that invalidates this read
52-week low	$12.53	Price sits at the 5th percentile of its 52-week range
Lower 1σ rail (Aug 7)	$12.46	Bottom of the options-implied range
Aug 7 put wall	$10.00	Technically the biggest put pile at this expiration — but only 1,071 contracts, i.e. no real cushion

Positioning and unusual flow

One rough estimate of dealer positioning says hedging currently dampens moves rather than amplifying them: the signed gamma estimate is positive both across the whole chain and for the August 7 expiration specifically, with the flip level estimated around $14.50. Read that as a mild stabiliser while price holds above roughly $14.50, and nothing more — it is an estimate built on an assumed dealer convention, not observed inventory.

Three non-expired items stand out. First, the August 7 $17.50 calls traded 1,504 contracts against 901 held open — about $36,800 of premium paying roughly $0.25 for a 17% move up inside six days. Second, and pointing the other way, the August 7 $10.50 puts printed 1,000 contracts against a single contract of prior open interest, alongside 1,179 contracts in the $11.50 puts on 131 open — brand-new, very cheap crash insurance, roughly $3,000 and $8,300 of premium respectively. Somebody is buying lottery tickets in both directions. Third, the largest open-interest build in the file was the September 18 $14 calls, +5,974 to 8,690 — positioning that deliberately spans the earnings report rather than this week's expiration.

One structural oddity worth naming: at the August 7 expiration, price has already traded above the strike with the most open calls. The heaviest pile of open contracts is at $14, below the money, while the put side of that expiration is unusually thin — the biggest put strike is $10 with barely 1,000 contracts. There is no wall of downside insurance underneath this week.

3 · Technical check

Both technical timeframes read bullish and both are far more modest than the options market. The 3-day model (target date August 4) projects $15.20 with a range of $14.30–$15.75, citing a fresh MACD crossover on July 30, EMA13 back above EMA34, RSI at 55.7 holding above 50, and ADX rising to 23.8 with +DI (28.9) clearly above −DI (16.3). The 6-day model, which lands exactly on our August 7 expiration, projects $15.35 with a range of $14.30–$15.55. Both flag the same warning: Chaikin Money Flow is −0.075, so the bounce has come without money-flow confirmation, and price remains ~32% below both its 50- and 200-day averages.

Classification: mixed. The technical target sits comfortably inside the options-implied range, so it doesn't fight the market's volatility pricing — but it points up, while this expiration's own magnet ($14 max pain, $14 heaviest call open interest) sits below spot. The two readings are not compatible enough to justify a directional bias, which is why the headline read stays neutral.

Model vs. Market: The options market implies $12.46–$17.40 into August 7; the 6-day technical model targets $15.35 within a $14.30–$15.55 range. The options market is pricing roughly four times the width the chart model expects — which means every defined-risk structure below is sized against a market that thinks a $2.47 swing is normal, while the chart thinks a $0.60 one is.

Practically, the technical work did one thing to the strikes below: it kept the short call side of the range trade at $17 rather than shading it down toward $15.65, because a close through $15.65 is precisely the technical trigger that would put a run at $16 on the table.

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

4 · Three ways the next six days can go

If RGTI pushes above $16 (the heaviest overhead call pile at this expiration): the first hurdle is $15.65, the level both technical models name as resistance, with the 20-day average at $15.34 in between. Above $16 the open-interest map thins quickly at this expiration — the next meaningful clusters are $17 (1,846 calls) and the $20/$21 lottery strikes, which drew 2,186 and 1,615 contracts of volume on Friday. Heavy call open interest overhead tends to slow rallies; there is comparatively little of it here, which is the honest bull case.

If RGTI drifts between $14 and $16: this is the base case the positioning describes. Max pain for August 7 sits at $14, the same strike carries this expiration's heaviest call open interest, and the dealer-gamma estimate for that expiration is positive — a configuration where expiring open interest and hedging flows tend to pull price toward the shelf rather than away from it. A close anywhere from $13 to $16 on Friday would leave the great majority of this week's out-of-the-money contracts worthless.

If RGTI breaks below $14: the cushion is genuinely thin. This expiration's biggest put strike is $10 with about 1,000 contracts — there is no wall of protective open interest between here and the swing shelf at $13.41 or the 52-week low at $12.53. Spot currently sits about 2.9% above the estimated gamma flip level of $14.50, and that distance is smaller than usual for this name; below the flip, one rough estimate suggests market-maker hedging amplifies selling rather than cushioning it. The lower 1σ rail at $12.46 is only a normal week's move away.

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. Every structure below expires August 7, four days before the August 11 earnings report.

If you expect the range to hold: Aug 7 iron condor

• Trade: Sell the Aug 7 $13/$12 put spread and the Aug 7 $17/$18 call spread (four legs, one package). You collect premium and win if RGTI finishes between the short strikes.
• Credit: $0.28 · Max profit: $28 · Max loss: $72 · Break-evens: $12.73 and $17.28
• Why it fits: the break-evens sit essentially on the options market's own 1σ rails ($12.46 / $17.40), max pain and the heaviest call open interest both sit at $14 inside the range, and the dealer-gamma estimate for this expiration is positive (hedging tends to dampen). One health warning: at an IV rank of 28 and a 37th-percentile premium over delivered movement, you are selling premium that has not been rich lately — and part of what's left is the market pre-pricing August 11.
• Makes sense only if: you believe last week's realized-volatility acceleration (5-day vs 20-day ratio of 1.60) fades rather than persists.
• Invalidated if: RGTI closes through either short strike — below $13 or above $17.
• Earnings exposure: expires four days before the August 11 report — no earnings-gap risk.
• Managing it: close at roughly 50% of max credit; exit the whole package by Thursday's close regardless, because $28 of credit does not pay for expiry-day gamma in a name that gaps 2%+ routinely.
• Liquidity note: the Aug 7 $17 calls traded 3¢ wide on about $18,800 of premium and the $13 puts 4¢ wide; the $12 puts are 4¢ on a $0.12 mark — the widest leg at roughly a third of mark. Work the four legs as one limit order at the package mid and do not chase.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bullish: Aug 7 $14.50/$16 call debit spread

• Trade: Buy the Aug 7 $14.50 call, sell the Aug 7 $16 call. You pay a debit up front and are betting on a move up to and through $16 by Friday.
• Debit: $0.66 · Max profit: $85 · Max loss: $66 · Break-even: $15.16
• Why it fits: a debit structure is the right shape when premium isn't rich — IV rank 28 and a thinning volatility risk premium mean you are not paying up for the movement. The break-even of $15.16 sits below the 6-day technical target of $15.35, and the short strike is parked at $16, the heaviest overhead call pile at this expiration, where rallies have structural friction.
• Makes sense only if: the July 30 momentum crossover carries and price reclaims the $15.05–$15.34 band early in the week; the short-term trend read is fighting a month-long downtrend, so this is a shorter-dated expression by design, not a hold.
• Invalidated if: RGTI closes below $14.30 (the floor of both technical ranges and just under the $14.50 gamma-flip estimate).
• Earnings exposure: expires four days before the August 11 report — no earnings-gap risk.
• Managing it: take profits into any tag of $15.65 rather than waiting for the full $16; with the longer-term trend still down, earlier profit-taking is the correct instinct here. Cut at half the debit if $14.30 gives way.
• Liquidity note: the $14.50 calls traded 15¢ wide (about 12% of mark) and the $16 calls 4¢ wide (7%) on 968 contracts and $55,000 of premium — the short leg is easy, the long leg needs a limit at mid.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bearish: Aug 7 $15/$13.50 put debit spread

• Trade: Buy the Aug 7 $15 put, sell the Aug 7 $13.50 put. You pay a debit and are betting price gravitates back to and through the $14 shelf.
• Debit: $0.62 · Max profit: $89 · Max loss: $62 · Break-even: $14.39
• Why it fits: this is the structure that expresses the chain's own gravity — max pain and the heaviest call open interest at $14, an unusually thin put side above $10, and price sitting closer than usual to the estimated gamma flip at $14.50, below which hedging is estimated to amplify rather than cushion. Again a debit, not a credit, because premium is only fair here.
• Makes sense only if: the bounce is a relief move inside an intact downtrend — the 20-day trend read is bearish on a 17.9% decline, and money flow never confirmed the rally.
• Invalidated if: RGTI closes above $15.65.
• Earnings exposure: expires four days before the August 11 report — no earnings-gap risk.
• Managing it: the $14 shelf is the target, not the 52-week low; take profit if price trades to $13.90–$14.00 mid-week rather than holding for max value into expiry.
• Liquidity note: the $15 puts traded 9¢ wide (8.8% of mark) on about $44,700 of premium — the most liquid put on the board this week; the $13.50 puts are 12¢ wide (~29%), so leg the package with one limit order and expect to give up a couple of cents.
• Analyze this position →

If none of these: no trade

Standing aside is defensible this week, and the argument is not laziness. Premium looks superficially fat — 100% implied volatility gets attention — but an IV rank of 28 and a volatility risk premium at only the 37th percentile of this stock's own readings say sellers are not being paid unusually well, and the cushion that existed two weeks ago (a ~39 vol-point gap on July 20) has almost entirely bled away. What remains is partly the market pre-pricing August 11, which is not free money. On the other side, buying premium into a market that already prices ±16.6% in six days means paying full fare for movement. And the directional read is a genuine coin flip: the chain's magnet is below spot, the technical models point above it. When you have no edge on direction and no edge on volatility, the position size that maximises expected value is zero.

6 · Quick FAQ

What is RGTI's expected move this week? About ±$2.47 (±16.6%) into the August 7 expiration, or roughly $12.46 to $17.40, per straddle pricing as of the 2026-07-31 close.

Is RGTI expected to go up or down over the next six days? Options positioning as of July 31 reads neutral — call-side flow is heavy and puts are thinning, but this expiration's heaviest open interest and its max-pain strike both sit at $14, below the current price. That's a read of what traders have already done, not a forecast. The actionable map is the $12.46–$17.40 implied range and the $13.41 / $16.00 levels.

Are RGTI options expensive right now? Two lenses. IV rank 28/100 says option prices are lower than about 72% of the past year's readings; on top of that, they're running roughly 4 vol points above the movement RGTI has actually delivered — richer than only about 37% of this stock's own recent readings, and falling fast. Verdict: fair, not rich, and some of what's left is the market pre-pricing the August 11 report rather than genuine excess premium.

When is RGTI's next earnings report? Tuesday, August 11, during market hours — after the August 7 expiration but before August 14. Unusually, the chain shows no volatility hump for it: the August 7 rung is actually pricier on a volatility basis than the August 14 rung that spans the report.

Where is RGTI's biggest options support and resistance? For the August 7 expiration, the heaviest open call interest is at $14 (5,859 contracts, below the money) with the nearest overhead pile at $16 (3,416). The put wall is a thin $10 (1,071), so the meaningful downside reference is the $13.41 swing shelf rather than an options level.

What invalidates this read? A close below $13.41. On the other side, a close above $15.65 would resolve the tension in the bulls' favour and put $16 in play.

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Methodology & disclosures. Data: end-of-day options-chain snapshot for RGTI, 2026-07-31, generated 2026-08-01T17:41:07Z. 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 2026-08-01T17:41:07Z; 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.