RGTI Options Are Pricing a ±$2.15 Move Into August 14 — Our Positioning Read Leans Lower Than the Chart

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The options market implies a $15.78–$20.08 range into the August 14 expiration; here's what's driving it, why our positioning read disagrees with the chart, and three defined-risk ways to trade it.

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

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Quick answer

Item	Answer
Market bias	Slightly bearish (options positioning)
Options-implied range (into Aug 14)	$15.78 – $20.08 (±11.97%)
Major support	$17.00
Major resistance	$18.55
Max pain (Aug 14)	$16.50
Dealer gamma regime (estimate)	Positive for the Aug 14 expiration — hedging tends to dampen moves; whole-chain flip estimate ≈ $21
Volatility condition	Falling — IV rank 19/100 · premium thin: options priced roughly 14 vol points below delivered movement (earnings-distorted)
Technical check	Diverges (bullish, 3-day and 6-day models)
Best-fitting strategy	Aug 14 $18 / $16.50 put debit spread
Analysis invalidated if	RGTI closes above $18.55

1 · What matters today

RGTI closed Friday at $17.94 after a 20% run in five sessions — and the options chain has not followed it higher. Our composite read of options positioning lands mildly bearish for the next six days, for one blunt reason: the biggest pile of open call contracts for the August 14 expiration sits at $17, which the stock has already passed, leaving thin, unhelpful positioning above and the expiration's max pain — the price where the most option value would expire worthless — down at $16.50. At the same time, puts have gotten unusually expensive relative to calls for this name.

Options price a ±$2.15 move into Friday, or $15.78–$20.08. The level that decides it is $18.55 (the 50-day average and the nearest swing high): a close above that and this read is wrong. Both technical models we checked disagree with us and target $18.25–$18.50 — that tension is the whole story below.

2 · What the options market is pricing

What changed this week

Price did the moving; the options chain did the shrugging. RGTI is up 20.1% over five trading days and 8.4% over twenty, and implied volatility — the market's estimate of how much RGTI will move, baked into option prices — collapsed 10.5% in a single session to 90.8%, and 9.3% over five days. That leaves it well under its own 30-day average (101.4%) and 90-day average (102.8%). IV rank, which locates today's reading against the past year, sits at 18.6/100 versus a 7-day average of 28.0 — option prices are cheaper than at almost any point in the past two weeks.

Flow stayed call-tilted: put volume ran at 0.29 contracts for every call, against a 7-day average of 0.48 — traders leaned heavily to the call side on volume 1.87× the 20-day norm. Open interest tells a slightly different story: the largest non-expired build was +3,422 contracts at the August 21 $16 calls, with another +1,464 stacked into the August 14 $17 calls — money buying strikes at or below the current price, not chasing far above it. Total put/call open interest slipped to 0.71 from a 14-day average of 0.76.

The bigger-picture read is genuinely split. The short- and long-term trend reads point in different directions: the past week's 20% pop and the past month's 8% gain run straight against a market still down 26% over the past two months. That is the definition of a counter-trend rip, and it argues for shorter-dated structures and earlier profit-taking rather than anything you hold for weeks.

Expected move

Into August 14, the options market is pricing a move of ±11.97%, or about ±$2.15 — that figure comes from what at-the-money straddles cost, and it brackets roughly a two-in-three outcome, not a guarantee.

Expiration	Implied move	Range around $17.93
Fri, Aug 14 (7 DTE)	±11.97%	$15.78 – $20.08
Fri, Aug 21 (14 DTE)	±17.58%	$14.78 – $21.08
Fri, Aug 28 (21 DTE)	±21.13%	$14.14 – $21.72
Fri, Sep 4 (28 DTE)	±24.94%	$13.46 – $22.40

Each rung widens roughly in line with the square root of time and nothing more — there is no bump or kink anywhere in the ladder, which means the chain is not bracing for a specific scheduled event inside the next month.

Volatility

At-the-money IV of 90.8% sounds enormous until you measure it against this stock: IV rank 18.6/100 means option prices are cheaper than roughly 81% of the past year's readings. Front-month term structure — comparing option prices across expiration dates — is unavailable today because the nearest expiration had already reached zero days, a routine expiry-day gap, not missing data.

Meanwhile the stock has been moving hard. Realized volatility runs 121.8% over 10 days, 105.0% over 20 and 92.0% over 30. One "versus its own norm" reading is worth noting: the last five sessions' movement is running slightly slower than the stock's own trailing month, so the frenzy is decelerating even as price grinds higher.

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 14 vol points negative. Option sellers are collecting less than the stock's recent movement has cost them, and that reading is thinner than roughly three-quarters of this stock's own recent readings. Normally that combination (IV rank 19 and a bottom-quartile premium) is a straightforward argument for owning premium rather than selling it. One caveat matters here: RGTI reported on August 6, so the report-reaction moves now sit inside the 20-day realized-volatility window while post-report implied vol has been crushed. The sign flip from a small positive gap earlier in the week to −14 points is mechanical, not a trader signal — treat "cheap options" as directionally right but overstated.

Earnings on the calendar

The relevant report is behind us, not ahead: RGTI reported after the August 6 close, delivering a loss of $0.16 per share against an expected $0.06 loss (the two prior quarters came in at or slightly better than expectations). Its footprint on the chain is the one-day 10.5% implied-volatility crush and the inflated realized-volatility figures above — the classic post-event deflate. No expiration in the ladder shows the step-up in expected move you would see if another report were being priced in, which is why the rungs widen so smoothly.

Skew and sentiment

This is where the bearish tilt actually comes from. Skew measures whether puts and calls the same distance from the stock price cost the same; here, 25-delta puts are running 0.9 vol points over calls, against a 60-day norm of calls being 4.3 vol points over puts. That is a 5.2-point swing toward downside protection, and it is unusually steep versus this stock's own recent history — traders are paying up to hedge a drop even as the share price rips.

Volume tells the opposite tale, which is exactly why the composite is only mildly negative: put/call volume of 0.29 is well below its 60-day median of 0.45, and call open interest grew +20,932 against +9,317 on the put side day-over-day. But one more "versus its own norm" reading undercuts the enthusiasm: the peer-relative unusual-flow count came in at 7 call contracts versus 6 puts — nearly balanced, and unusually weak call-side dominance for a name that normally prints two- and three-to-one call skews on this measure.

Sentiment in short-dated options has also gone flat: the 0–7 day bucket reads +1 and the 7–30 day bucket +7, versus 7-day averages of +24 and +13 respectively. The overall regime label is still "bullish recovery," but that is being carried almost entirely by the 60–120 day bucket at +45 — positioning is building far out, not into this week.

The key levels map

Level	Price	Why it matters
Whole-chain heaviest call strike	$28	19,753 contracts, mostly Aug 21 — far overhead, irrelevant inside this window
200-day moving average	$21.14	The longer-term line RGTI is still 15% below
Dealer gamma flip (estimate)	≈ $21	One rough estimate of the pivot where hedging behaviour changes; spot sits well beneath it
Swing resistance	$20.17	Late-July supply zone
Upper implied-move rail	$20.08	Top of the 6-day options-implied range
Invalidation / 50-day MA	$18.55	50-day average and the technical models' resistance target — a close above kills this read
Nearest swing resistance	$18.47	First real overhead shelf
Friday's close	$17.94	Reference price for everything below
Nearest swing support	$17.71	Recent pivot cluster
Aug 14 call wall / largest gamma strike / whole-chain put wall	$17.00	6,052 calls for Aug 14, plus 28,131 puts across the chain — the single busiest strike anywhere; now sits below price, so it reads more as a floor than a ceiling
Max pain (Aug 14)	$16.50	Where the most Aug 14 option value would expire worthless
Swing support	$16.12	Early-August base
Lower implied-move rail	$15.78	Bottom of the 6-day options-implied range
20-day moving average	$15.33	Price is a stretched 17% above it
Aug 14 put wall	$13.00	Only 995 contracts — the put side of this expiration is genuinely thin
52-week low	$12.53	July's floor

Note the disagreement worth naming: the whole chain's heaviest call strike is $28 and its heaviest put strike is $17, while the August 14 expiration's own walls are a call wall at $17 and a put wall at $13. For this week, use the expiration's own numbers — and the fact that spot has already cleared its call wall is the single most bearish input in our composite.

Positioning and unusual flow

The dealer-gamma picture is an estimate, and the two versions of it don't agree. Scoped to the August 14 expiration alone, the estimate reads positive — market makers' hedging would tend to dampen moves into Friday. Across the full chain, the rough flip estimate sits near $21, roughly 17% above spot, and RGTI is sitting further beneath that estimated pivot than is typical for this name. Read both as approximations, not inventory.

Three non-expired flow items stood out:

• Aug 14 $18 calls: 5,351 contracts traded against 1,010 open — about $455,000 of premium, and the tightest quote on the board (82¢/88¢). A straightforward at-the-money continuation bet on the week.
• Aug 14 $20 puts: 1,266 traded against 189 open, roughly $330,000 of premium. That's an in-the-money put — someone paying real money for downside inside the week rather than for a lottery ticket.
• Aug 14 $12.50 puts: 1,070 traded against just 55 open, nearly 20× turnover at the 100th peer percentile — cheap crash insurance being restocked at a penny a contract.

As settled history: into Friday's expiration, 15,017 of the August 7 $18 calls changed hands and expired just out of the money with the stock at $17.94 — the last-day chase that defined the week's tone.

3 · Technical check

Both technical models lean the other way from the options data. The 3-day model is bullish, targeting $18.25 with a range of $17.20–$18.65: ADX at 28.2 with +DI (31.1) well above −DI (14.0), a widening MACD histogram, and money-flow readings that have swung from distribution to strong accumulation. The 6-day model is also bullish, targeting $18.50 into August 14 with a range of $17.10–$18.70, and it flags the same overbought caveat — RSI at 70.4 with price walking above the upper Bollinger Band.

Classified against the options read, both diverge on direction while sitting comfortably inside the implied range. That is the interesting part: the technical range ($17.10–$18.70) occupies a narrow band in the upper half of what options are pricing, and its own stated invalidation is a close below $17.00–$17.30. That happens to be the exact level the options chain marks as its structural pivot.

Model vs. Market: The options market implies $15.78–$20.08 into Friday; the 6-day technical model targets $18.50 with a floor at $17.10. The chart says a rally into the 50-day average at $18.55; the chain says the heaviest call positioning has already been passed and Friday's centre of gravity is $16.50. Whichever side of $17.00 RGTI is trading on by mid-week resolves the argument.

The practical effect on strikes below: because the technical models are credible and fresh, we did not push the bearish structure's long strike above the money, and the range structure's call side was placed above $18.55 rather than at it.

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

4 · Three ways the next six days can go

If RGTI pushes above the $18.47–$18.55 shelf: August 14's call positioning above the money is thin — 1,430 contracts open at $19, 1,290 at $20 — so there is little accumulated open interest to slow a move once the 50-day average gives way. The next reference points become the $20.08 upper rail and the $20.17 swing high. This is also the branch where our read is simply wrong and should be closed, not defended.

If RGTI drifts between $17.00 and $18.50: this is the base case the chain points to. The August 14 max pain sits at $16.50 and the expiration's own estimated dealer positioning reads dampening, which historically shows up as chop that grinds toward the heavy strikes rather than trending. The $17 strike carries the largest gamma exposure anywhere on the chain, which tends to make it sticky.

If RGTI breaks below $17.00: that strike is doing triple duty — the week's call wall, the chain's put wall, and the biggest gamma strike — so losing it removes the shelf that has been holding the rally up. Below it, this expiration's put side is unusually thin (the put wall holds only 995 contracts at $13), which means little accumulated positioning to cushion a slide toward $16.12 and the $15.78 lower rail. Spot already sits well beneath the whole-chain gamma flip estimate near $21, and one rough estimate suggests hedging on that side of the pivot amplifies moves rather than absorbing them.

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, and RGTI's weekly quotes are wide enough that fills matter more than usual.

If you lean bearish (our lean): August 14 $18 / $16.50 put debit spread

• Trade: Buy the Aug 14 $18 put, sell the Aug 14 $16.50 put. A debit spread means you pay up front and profit as the stock falls, with both loss and gain capped.
• Debit: $0.56 · Max profit: $0.94 · Max loss: $0.56 · Break-even: $17.44
• Why it fits: The short strike sits exactly on August 14's max pain ($16.50) and the long strike sits above the chain's busiest level ($17). It also buys premium at IV rank 19 with the volatility premium in the bottom quartile of this stock's recent readings — you are not overpaying for the movement RGTI has actually been delivering.
• Makes sense only if: you accept that the counter-trend rip stalls at the 50-day average rather than through it.
• Invalidated if: RGTI closes above $18.55.
• Managing it: Take profits at roughly 60–70% of maximum value rather than holding for the pin; a short-term uptrend fighting a two-month downtrend cuts both ways, so exit early rather than late. Close the position outright on any daily close above $18.55, and don't carry it into Friday morning hoping for the last dime.
• Liquidity note: the $18 puts quote 74¢ × 99¢ (25¢ wide, ~29% of mid) and the $16.50 puts 25¢ × 36¢. That is meaningful slippage — work the spread as a single limit order near the mid and be prepared to walk away rather than pay the offer.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bullish (with the charts): August 14 $18 / $20 call debit spread

• Trade: Buy the Aug 14 $18 call, sell the Aug 14 $20 call.
• Debit: $0.57 · Max profit: $1.43 · Max loss: $0.57 · Break-even: $18.57
• Why it fits: This is the trade that expresses the technical models rather than the chain — trend strength, accumulation and an intact short-term uptrend, with the short strike parked at the $20.08 upper implied-move rail. Cheap implied volatility argues for owning this exposure as a debit rather than legging into anything short.
• Makes sense only if: RGTI clears $18.55 and holds it; the break-even at $18.57 requires the 50-day average to be taken out, not just tested.
• Invalidated if: RGTI closes below $17.00.
• Managing it: Because the near-term uptrend is running against a market down 26% over two months, take profits into strength — half off at a double, the rest on any close back under $17.71. Don't hold to expiry for the last 30 cents.
• Liquidity note: the $18 calls quote 82¢ × 88¢ (6¢ wide) and the $20 calls 26¢ × 31¢ — the two tightest strikes on this expiration, with $455,000 of premium already traded at the $18 line. Fills here are easy by RGTI standards.
• Analyze this position →

If you expect the range to hold: August 14 $16/$15 – $19/$20 iron condor

• Trade: Sell the $16 put / buy the $15 put, and sell the $19 call / buy the $20 call, all expiring Aug 14. A condor collects a credit up front and keeps it if the stock finishes between the short strikes.
• Credit: $0.32 · Max profit: $0.32 · Max loss: $0.68 · Break-evens: $15.68 and $19.32
• Why it fits: The short strikes bracket max pain ($16.50) and clear the $18.55 resistance shelf on the upside, and the August 14 expiration's own estimated dealer positioning is the dampening kind. Health warning: you are selling premium that hasn't been rich lately — the volatility risk premium is about 14 vol points negative and in the bottom quartile of this stock's own readings, so this is the least-supported structure of the three on volatility grounds.
• Makes sense only if: you specifically believe the ±12% implied move is too wide. Note the shorts sit inside those rails — this position needs RGTI to stay within roughly ±9% over six days.
• Invalidated if: RGTI closes above $19.32 or below $15.68 — but manage well before either.
• Managing it: Close at ~50% of max credit, and exit the tested side rather than rolling if either short strike is touched. Given the stock's 20% five-session move, size this half of what you'd normally allocate.
• Liquidity note: $16 puts 18¢ × 21¢, $15 puts 6¢ × 11¢, $19 calls 47¢ × 52¢, $20 calls 26¢ × 31¢. The call side fills cleanly; the $15 put is 5¢ wide on a 8.5¢ mid, so the put wing's credit is fragile — enter the whole condor as one order.
• Analyze this position →

If none of these: no trade

There is a strong case for standing aside this week. The options data and both technical models point in opposite directions, which is honest information: the edge is small. On top of that, RGTI's weekly bid-ask spreads run 7% to 30% of mid on the strikes you'd actually use, so round-trip slippage can eat a third of the theoretical profit on a $0.56 debit. And while cheap options normally argue against selling premium, that "cheapness" is partly an artifact of a fresh earnings reaction sitting inside the realized-volatility window — so the usual "buy the cheap vol" reflex deserves a discount here too. Waiting for a clean close on one side of $17.00 or $18.55 costs you nothing but a day or two of time value.

6 · Quick FAQ

What is RGTI's expected move this week? About ±$2.15 (±11.97%) into the August 14 expiration, a $15.78–$20.08 range, per straddle pricing as of the 2026-08-07 close.

Is RGTI expected to go up or down over the next six days? Options positioning as of 2026-08-07 leans slightly bearish — the August 14 call wall at $17 now sits below the stock and 25-delta puts have swung 5.2 vol points richer than their own norm — but that's a read of what traders have already done, not a forecast. The actionable map is the $15.78–$20.08 range and the $17.00 / $18.55 levels.

Are RGTI options expensive right now? IV rank 18.6/100 says option prices are cheaper than roughly 81% of the past year's readings; on top of that, they're running about 14 vol points below the movement RGTI has actually delivered — thinner than about three-quarters of this stock's own recent readings. That favours owning premium over selling it, with the caveat that the August 6 earnings reaction is inflating the realized side of that comparison.

Where is RGTI's biggest options support and resistance? For the August 14 expiration, the heaviest call open interest sits at $17.00 (6,052 contracts, now below the stock and acting as a floor) and the put wall is thin at $13.00. Structurally, the level that matters overhead is $18.55.

What invalidates this week's read? A daily close above $18.55.

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Methodology & disclosures. Data: end-of-day options-chain snapshot for RGTI, 2026-08-07, generated 2026-08-08T20:08:18.138Z. 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 2026-08-08T20:08:18.138Z; 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.