RGTI Options Are Pricing a ±11% Week — Our Positioning Read Says Fade the Bounce

The options market implies a $14.33–$17.80 band into the August 28 expiration; here's what's driving it, why the charts disagree, and three defined-risk ways to trade the gap.

Published Saturday, August 22, 2026 · Data as of the 2026-08-21 close · Export generated 2026-08-22 16:56 UTC

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

Quick answer

Item	Answer
Market bias	Slightly bearish (options positioning)
Options-implied range (into Aug 28)	$14.33 – $17.80 (±10.8%), anchored to the chain snapshot's $16.07 underlying
Major support	$17.00
Major resistance	$18.40
Max pain (Aug 28)	$17.00
Dealer gamma regime (estimate)	Positive — one rough estimate suggests market-maker hedging currently dampens moves; flip level ≈ $5.00 (estimate, far below spot)
Volatility condition	Falling — IV rank 4/100 · premium thin: options priced roughly 27 vol points below delivered movement (post-report distorted)
Technical check	Diverges (bullish, 3-day and 6-day models)
Best-fitting strategy	Aug 28 $18/$16 put debit spread, if you want the bias expressed with defined risk
Analysis invalidated if	RGTI closes above $18.60

1 · What matters today

Our read of RGTI's options flow leans slightly bearish into the August 28 expiration. The single biggest reason: put activity exploded. For every 100 calls traded, 139 puts changed hands — the typical day over the past two weeks ran about 63. Puts also got relatively more expensive than calls, a reversal of this stock's own norm. The options market is pricing a move of roughly ±10.8% over the next six days — about $1.74 either way from the chain snapshot's $16.07 underlying, or roughly $1.94 either way if you re-anchor to Friday's official $17.91 close. Max pain for that expiration — the price where the most option value would expire worthless — sits at $17.00, below the close. One honest caveat up front: both technical models we track are bullish and target $18.35–$18.55, so this is a genuine disagreement, not a consensus. A close above $18.60 ends the bearish read.

2 · What the options market is pricing

What changed this week

Two things dominate. First, the flow turned put-heavy fast. The put/call volume ratio printed 1.39 against a 14-day average of 0.63 and a 60-day median near 0.43 — traders bought downside protection at a pace that is unusual even by this volatile name's own standards. Second, the pricing of that protection changed: 25-delta puts now carry about 0.9 vol points more implied volatility than 25-delta calls, against a 60-day median of minus 4.1 (calls richer). That's a roughly five-point swing toward downside demand in a stock that normally pays up for calls.

What did not change is open interest. Put open interest sits at 143,380 contracts against 198,958 calls — a ratio of 0.72, essentially unchanged from its 7- and 14-day averages of 0.71. The snapshot showed no net day-over-day change in contracts held open at all, so this week's story is fast turnover in volume, not a durable rebuild of positions. Our composite read of flow momentum sits at −35 today and has averaged −38 over the last three sessions, after averaging roughly zero over the prior week — a sharp, recent turn rather than a settled trend.

The trend reads across horizons openly disagree: the short-term read is bearish, the ~20-day read is bullish (price up 13.4% over that stretch), and the ~50-day read is bearish (down 16.4%). Near-term flow and the bigger picture are pointing different ways, which argues for short-dated structures and early profit-taking rather than anything you intend to hold for weeks. One data note worth naming: the chain snapshot carries a $16.07 underlying while the official daily close printed $17.91 — a vendor timing gap, not an error. Strike math, walls and expected-move bands below are anchored to $16.07; price-structure discussion uses $17.91.

Expected move

The expected move is the move the options market is pricing in — derived from what straddles cost. Into August 28, that's ±10.8%, or about $1.74 around the chain-snapshot price.

Expiration	Implied move	Range around $16.07
Fri, Aug 28 (6 days)	±10.8%	$14.33 – $17.80
Fri, Sep 4	±15.2%	$13.62 – $18.51
Fri, Sep 11	±18.5%	$13.09 – $19.04
Fri, Sep 18	±19.7%	$12.90 – $19.23

The ladder scales almost exactly with the square root of time — there is no bulge at any single rung, which is what you'd expect with no scheduled company event inside the window. Nothing in the term of the curve is bracing for a specific date.

Volatility

At-the-money implied volatility — the market's estimate of how much RGTI will move, baked into option prices — sits at 73.4%. That sounds enormous in absolute terms, and it is, but relative to this stock it is dirt cheap: IV rank is 4/100, meaning options are priced lower than about 96% of the past year's readings. IV is down 3.3% on the day, flat over five sessions, and down 24.1% over 30 days, and today's level sits well under both the 30-day average (93.9%) and the 90-day average (101.4%). Comparing option prices across expiration dates, the front month at 80.2% prints 2.9 vol points below the 60-day tenor at 83.1% — a calm, upward-sloping curve, and unusually calm compared against this stock's own recent history, where stress-driven inversions have been the norm.

Premium rich or cheap. The volatility risk premium is the gap between how much movement options are priced for and how much RGTI has actually delivered — when it's positive, option sellers have been collecting more than realized movement cost them. Right now that gap is about 27 vol points negative: implied volatility of roughly 73% against 20-day realized volatility of about 101%. Its percentile is 18/100 — thinner than about 82% of this stock's own recent readings, and the most negative point in the series, which has been sliding since flipping negative in early August. Here's the mandatory asterisk: the company reported on August 6, and that gap move still sits inside the 20-day realized-volatility window, so a large slice of this "cheapness" is mechanical rather than an edge. What survives the caveat is the 52-week lens — with IV rank at 4/100, owning premium is the more defensible side of the trade this week, and selling it is the side that needs a reason.

Skew and sentiment

Skew means 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. Today 25-delta puts print 80.1% implied volatility against 79.2% for 25-delta calls: a 0.9 vol-point premium for downside, versus a 60-day median where calls ran 4.1 points richer. Traders flipped from paying up for upside to paying up for protection in the space of a few sessions.

Sentiment in short-dated options is genuinely split. The 0–7 day bucket reads flat at +1, while the 7–30 day bucket reads −30 — a sharp drop from its +20 seven-day average, driven by put-side delta-weighted flow and richer puts than usual across four expirations. Further out, the 30–60 day and 60–120 day buckets still lean modestly positive (+11 and +14). The one-phrase summary the data gives is "mixed," and that's accurate: the hedging urgency lives in the one-to-four-week window, not at the front and not in the back. Against this stock's own norm, today's put/call volume ratio is an extreme reading — unusually put-tilted even for RGTI.

The key levels map

Level	Price	Why it matters
Whole chain's heaviest call strike	$28.00	19,771 contracts, mostly legacy far-OTM open interest — not this week's ceiling
Call wall, Aug 28 expiration	$23.00	The 6-day expiration's own biggest call pile, but only 1,521 contracts and far outside the implied band
200-day moving average	$20.05	The close sits 10.7% below it — the longer-term trend is still corrective
Call open-interest shelf	$20.00	19,146 calls open across expirations; the first genuinely heavy strike overhead
Swing resistance (heuristic)	$18.47	Recent pivot cluster from the daily feed
Invalidation level	$18.60	A close above this ends the slightly bearish read
Technical ceiling	$18.40	Where both technical models place the upper-band/shelf confluence
Friday's official close	$17.91	Reference price for the price-structure read
50-day moving average	$17.43	Reclaimed on the bounce; 2.8% below the close
Technical support cluster	$17.30	Both technical reports name this as the first line of defense
Max pain, Aug 28 · heaviest put strike	$17.00	28,652 puts open chain-wide and the largest total gamma strike — the week's magnet
20-day moving average	$16.84	Close sits 6.3% above it
Chain snapshot underlying	$16.07	The basis for every strike, wall and expected-move figure above
Second-largest gamma strike	$16.00	22,451 puts open; a secondary shelf under the market
Put wall, Aug 28 expiration	$15.00	The 6-day expiration's own biggest put pile (1,151) — note this differs from the whole chain's $17.00
Bottom of the implied band	$14.33	Lower rail of the ±10.8% move priced into Aug 28
52-week low	$12.53	The stock sits 69.2% below its 52-week high of $58.15

The aggregate and the week's own levels genuinely disagree, and that's worth saying plainly: across all expirations the heaviest put strike is $17.00 and the heaviest call strike is $28.00, but the August 28 expiration by itself carries its put wall at $15.00 and its call wall at $23.00. For this week's trade, the $15.00/$23.00 pair is the corridor that applies; the $17.00 pile is a chain-wide anchor that shows up as max pain for Friday all the same.

Positioning and unusual flow

The dealer gamma read is an estimate, not observed inventory: it currently reads positive, meaning market makers hedging the options they've sold would tend to dampen moves rather than amplify them, and the same estimate holds for the August 28 expiration specifically. The rough flip level — below which that hedging tends to accelerate selling rather than cushion it — is estimated way down at $5.00, and spot sits unusually far above it versus this stock's own history. Take that as a low-stress reading rather than a precise level.

Three non-expired flow items stand out. The largest by money was a September 18 $30 put: 783 contracts traded against zero prior open interest, about $953,000 of premium — a deep in-the-money put with a −0.93 delta, which behaves like short stock and is typically either a hedge against a position or a synthetic short. At the other end of the strike range, the September 18 $10 put traded 3,522 contracts against 617 held open (nearly 6× turnover) at 101% implied volatility — cheap, far-out-of-the-money crash insurance. Closer to the money, the September 4 $16 put turned over 1,158 contracts against 142 open (8×). All three lean the same way: someone is paying for downside.

3 · Technical check (the 20%)

Both technical models we track are bullish, and both are working from Friday's $17.90 tape rather than the options chain's $16.07 snapshot — the same timing gap flagged above, and the main reason the options-implied band below sits under where the stock actually closed. The 3-day model targets $18.35 by August 25 with a range of $17.10–$18.80; the 6-day model targets $18.55 by August 28 with a range of $17.15–$18.70. Both cite the same evidence: a fresh MACD crossover after a deep negative trough, a directional-index flip in favor of buyers with a strong trend reading, and money-flow turning from distribution to accumulation inside 36 hours off the $15.78 low.

Against our options read, that's a divergence on both counts — opposite direction, and a target above the top of the chain-anchored implied band. Both reports also concede the bigger picture: the stock remains well below its $20.05 200-day average, so their own framing is a counter-trend bounce, with the $18.30–$18.40 upper-band confluence as the obstacle. Their dominant scenarios invalidate on a close back below $17.30 — which is exactly where our slightly bearish case wants to travel.

Model vs. Market: The options market implies $14.33–$17.80 into August 28; the 6-day technical model targets $18.55. That gap resolves one of two ways this week — either the bounce clears $18.40 on volume and the put-heavy flow was hedging into an intact recovery, or the stock stalls under it and drifts back toward the $17.00 max-pain magnet.

The practical effect on strikes below: the technical support cluster at $17.30 kept us from placing any short strike between $17 and $18, and the $18.40 ceiling set the invalidation.

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

4 · Three ways the next six days can go

If RGTI clears $18.40 and holds: the week's own option structure would do very little to slow it. The August 28 expiration's call wall sits at $23.00 with barely 1,500 contracts behind it — beyond the implied band and effectively irrelevant. The first genuinely heavy call shelf isn't until $20.00. In that scenario the put-heavy flow reads as hedging into a recovery rather than conviction, and the technical targets ($18.55, then the $19.00–$19.20 supply zone) become the relevant map.

If RGTI drifts between the rails: this is the base case the positioning data supports. Max pain for Friday is $17.00, the two largest total-gamma strikes on the chain are $17.00 and $16.00, and the estimated dealer-hedging regime is the dampening kind. Expirations sometimes gravitate toward max pain, and a drift from $17.91 back into the $17.00–$17.50 zone into Friday's close would be the least eventful path — and the one that pays most of the structures below.

If RGTI breaks below $15.00: that's the August 28 expiration's own put wall, and below it the week's positioning thins out quickly toward the $14.33 lower rail of the implied band. Worth noting that spot sits unusually far above the estimated gamma flip level for this name, so the classic "hedging amplifies the selling" regime is not what this data describes — a break lower would more likely be plain supply than a hedging cascade.

5 · Three defined-risk structures

Prices are end-of-day midpoints as of 2026-08-21. All structures are hypothetical. Two warnings, not one: these midpoints were quoted against a $16.07 underlying while the stock closed at $17.91, so every number below will re-price materially at the open — the analyzer links backfill live quotes. Verify before trading.

If you lean bearish: Aug 28 $18/$16 put debit spread

• Trade: Buy the Aug 28 $18 put, sell the Aug 28 $16 put
• Debit: $1.42 · Max profit: $0.58 · Max loss: $1.42 · Break-even: $16.58
• Why it fits: A debit spread means you pay up front and profit if the stock falls — and with IV rank at 4/100, buying premium is the defensible side this week. It expresses the slightly bearish positioning read toward the $17.00 max pain without needing a collapse. The $18 put is also the tightest-quoted strike in the expiration.
• Makes sense only if: you think the bounce stalls under $18.40 and Friday's expiration drifts toward $17.00.
• Invalidated if: RGTI closes above $18.60.
• Managing it: the short-term flow fighting a still-bearish 50-day trend argues for taking money early — close at roughly 60–70% of maximum value if the stock trades $17.00 or lower with two or more days left; exit on a close above $18.60 rather than hoping; flatten by Friday's close regardless.
• Liquidity note: the $18 puts traded 15¢ wide (about 7% of mid, the tightest strike in the week, on 430 contracts); the $16 puts 9¢ wide on 411 contracts. Both are workable with limit orders; nothing in this expiration fills at the mid automatically.
• Analyze this position →

If you expect the range to hold: Aug 28 iron condor, $14.50/$15.50 puts – $20/$21 calls

• Trade: Sell the Aug 28 $15.50 put / buy the $14.50 put, and sell the $20 call / buy the $21 call
• Credit: $0.40 · Max profit: $0.40 · Max loss: $0.61 · Break-evens: $15.11 and $20.40
• Why it fits: a credit structure pays you now and wins if the stock stays between the short strikes. Those strikes bracket the implied move and sit outside both walls that matter this week — the $15.00 put wall sits just inside the lower short strike, and there is no meaningful call open interest until $20.
• Health warning: you're selling premium that hasn't been rich lately — implied volatility is running about 27 vol points below what RGTI has actually delivered, an 18th-percentile reading. A stock realizing 101% annualized volatility can travel through a $5-wide corridor in six days.
• Makes sense only if: you believe the post-crash volatility is finally decaying and neither $20 nor $15 comes into play.
• Invalidated if: RGTI closes above $18.60 or below $15.00 — either tests a wing well before expiration.
• Managing it: close at roughly 50% of the credit collected; exit the whole condor if either short strike is breached rather than rolling into a fast-moving tape.
• Liquidity note: the call wing is the problem — the $20 calls were quoted 4¢ bid / 21¢ ask, 17¢ wide against a 12.5¢ mid, and the $14.50 puts 9¢ wide against a 14.5¢ mid. Expect real slippage; work the spread as a package with a limit.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bullish: Aug 28 $16/$14.50 put credit spread

• Trade: Sell the Aug 28 $16 put, buy the Aug 28 $14.50 put
• Credit: $0.55 · Max profit: $0.55 · Max loss: $0.95 · Break-even: $15.45
• Why it fits: this is the trade that agrees with the technicals rather than the flow — you collect premium and keep it as long as the stock stays above $16, roughly 11% below Friday's close and right at the bottom of the implied band. The 6-day expiration's $15.00 put wall sits between the two strikes, giving a rough open-interest shelf just under the short leg.
• Health warning: same caveat as the condor — you're selling premium that has been thin versus delivered movement, so the compensation for this risk is smaller than the raw credit suggests.
• Makes sense only if: you side with the technical read that $17.30 holds and the MACD/money-flow turn follows through.
• Invalidated if: RGTI closes below $17.00 — that's max pain, the heaviest put strike on the chain, and the level whose loss would confirm the positioning read instead.
• Managing it: close at roughly 50% of the credit; do not carry a tested short put into Friday afternoon on a name with this realized volatility.
• Liquidity note: the $16 puts traded 9¢ wide on 411 contracts; the $14.50 wing is thin (53 contracts open, 9¢ wide on a 14.5¢ mid) — the wing is what you're paying for, so use a package limit.
• Analyze this position →

If none of these: no trade

There is a strong case for standing aside this week. The options snapshot was recorded against a $16.07 underlying while the stock closed $1.85 higher — every strike, wall and midpoint above is a picture of Thursday's market, and the positioning read that produces the slightly bearish lean was built on that tape. On top of that, the "cheap premium" signal is partly mechanical: the August 6 report's gap still sits inside the 20-day realized-volatility window, inflating the realized side of the comparison. If you cannot check live quotes before the open, or you're not comfortable holding six-day exposure on a stock that has moved more than 10% in a week three times this month, no position is a perfectly good position.

6 · Quick FAQ

What is RGTI's expected move this week? About ±10.8% into the August 28 expiration — roughly $1.74 either side of the chain snapshot's $16.07 price, giving a $14.33–$17.80 band, per straddle pricing as of the 2026-08-21 close.

Is RGTI expected to go up or down over the next six days? Options positioning as of August 21 leans slightly bearish — put volume ran more than twice its two-week norm and puts flipped to a premium over calls — but that's a read of what traders have done, not a forecast. Both technical models disagree and target $18.35–$18.55. The actionable map is the $14.33–$17.80 implied band and the $17.00 / $18.40 levels.

Are RGTI options expensive right now? IV rank of 4/100 says option prices are lower than about 96% of the past year's readings. On top of that, they're running roughly 27 vol points below the movement RGTI has actually delivered — thinner than about 82% of this stock's own recent readings. The 52-week lens favors owning premium; just remember part of that "cheapness" is the August 6 report's gap still sitting inside the realized-volatility window.

Where are RGTI's biggest options support and resistance? For the August 28 expiration specifically: put wall $15.00, call wall $23.00, max pain $17.00. Across the whole chain the heaviest put strike is $17.00 (28,652 contracts) and the heaviest call strike is $28.00.

What invalidates this week's read? A close above $18.60.

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Methodology & disclosures. Data: end-of-day options-chain snapshot for RGTI, 2026-08-21, generated 2026-08-22T16:56:14Z. 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 2026-08-22T16:56:14Z; 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.