RGTI Options Outlook: The Chain's Magnet Sits at $15.50 — Our Read Still Says Lower

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

---

The options market implies a $12.60–$15.74 range into the July 31 expiration; here's what's driving it, where the magnets sit, and three defined-risk ways to trade the next five sessions.

Published Sunday, July 26, 2026 · Data as of the July 24 close · Export generated July 26, 2026

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

Quick answer

Item	Answer
Market bias	Neutral with a bearish tilt
Options-implied range (into July 31)	$12.60 – $15.74 (±11.1%)
Major support	$13.41 (swing support) — the July 31 put wall sits far below at $9.00
Major resistance	$15.50 (July 31 call wall)
Max pain (July 31)	$15.50
Dealer gamma regime (estimate)	Positive for the July 31 expiration — hedging tends to dampen moves. The all-expirations estimate is negative, with a flip level around $3.00, far below spot. Both are estimates.
Volatility condition	Falling — IV rank 27/100
Next earnings	August 11, 2026 (during market hours) — after the July 31 expiration
Technical check	Confirms (bearish, 3-day and 5-day)
Best-fitting strategy	Iron condor with short strikes on the implied-range rails (conditional — see below)
Analysis invalidated if	RGTI closes above $14.65

1 · What matters today

Rigetti closed at $14.15 after a brutal month — down 23% over 20 sessions — but the last five sessions were flat (+0.35%). The options market is pricing roughly $1.57 up or down through Friday, July 31, which frames a $12.60–$15.74 range. The most interesting number in the chain is $15.50: that single strike is both the July 31 expiration's biggest pile of open call contracts and its max pain, the price where the most option value would expire worthless. That's an upside magnet — but it sits 9% above spot, and there is essentially no put open interest between here and $9 to cushion a slide. Our read of the flow lands neutral with a bearish tilt, and both technical models agree. A close above $14.65 kills that tilt.

2 · What the options market is pricing

What changed this week

The collapse paused rather than reversed. Price ran $15.20 → $14.86 → $14.15 over the last three sessions, leaving the 5-day change at +0.35% against a 20-day change of −23.0%. Volatility bled out with it: at-the-money implied volatility — the market's estimate of how much RGTI will move, baked into option prices — sits at 98.5%, down 4.5% on the day, 2.8% over five sessions and 11.5% over 30, and now below both its 30-day average (103.3%) and its 90-day average (101.3%). Positioning quietly de-risked: put open interest relative to calls fell from 0.97 five days ago to 0.75, versus a 14-day average of 0.92 — for every 100 call contracts held open there are now 75 puts, where a week ago there were 97. Put activity did pick up on the day (put/call volume 0.64 against a 3-day average of 0.52), but total option volume was only 0.73× its 20-day average, so this was a quiet, low-conviction session. The biggest genuine build in open contracts landed further out: the September 18 $14 calls added 996 contracts to 2,246, and the August 7 $20 calls added 769. On the target expiration itself, the $16 and $16.50 calls each added about 150. As settled history, into Friday's expiry the $16.50 calls added 1,546 contracts of open interest before going out worthless.

Expected move

The expected move is derived from what straddles cost — the market's own one-standard-deviation estimate. Into July 31 that is ±11.1%, or about $1.57 on a $14.17 chain-snapshot price.

Expiration	Implied move	Range around $14.17
July 31 (5 sessions)	±11.1%	$12.60 – $15.74
August 7	±21.1%	$11.18 – $17.16
August 14	±25.0%	$10.63 – $17.71
August 21 (~1 month)	±27.1%	$10.33 – $18.01

The rungs widen the way you'd expect with time, but the implied-volatility level jumps hard at the first August expiration — 80.2% at July 31 versus 107.7% at August 7 — so the near rung is by far the cheapest tenor on the board. Against that, realized volatility over the past 20 sessions is 68.5%. Options are priced for meaningfully more movement than the stock has actually delivered lately, which tilts the edge toward selling premium rather than buying it.

Volatility

At-the-money IV of 98.5% sounds enormous until you check where it sits in this stock's own history: IV rank is 27/100, meaning today's reading is cheaper than roughly 73% of the past year's. IV percentile is 46. The 14-day average IV rank was 29, so premium has been quietly deflating, not building. Front-month IV and the term-structure comparison across expirations are unavailable today — July 24 was an expiry day, so that read can't be interpolated from a same-day-expiring contract. Two "vs its own norm" observations matter here — and "unusual" means unusual for RGTI, not versus the broader market. First, 20-day realized volatility at 68.5% is unusually low for this name. Second, the gap between implied and realized volatility — about 30 vol points — is unusually wide versus its own recent history. Translated: the market is charging a fat premium for movement the stock has not been delivering. That favors defined-risk premium selling, with the caveat that a 27 IV rank means you are not being paid an objectively rich price in absolute terms.

Earnings on the calendar

Rigetti reports on August 11, during market hours, with a consensus estimate of a $0.05 per-share loss. That date lands after the August 7 expiration and before August 14, which is why the August rungs all carry implied volatility above 100% while the July 31 rung prices at 80% — the whole August complex is holding event premium the July 31 contracts don't. The last report came in at a $0.06 loss against an expected $0.04 loss; the one before that was roughly in line. Every structure below expires eleven days before the report.

Skew and sentiment

Skew measures whether puts and calls the same distance from the stock price cost the same. Here they don't — and unusually for a stock in a downtrend, it's the calls that are richer: 25-delta call IV is 104.1% against 25-delta put IV of 100.6%, a −3.5 vol-point reading. That's structural in this name (the 60-day median is −4.2 points), but it has flattened toward neutral over the last five sessions, which is the chain's way of saying put demand has been creeping in. Our read of short-dated flow is mixed: the 0–7 day bucket scores mildly bullish (+19, driven entirely by calls building open interest), the 7–30 day bucket is flat, and the 30–60 and 60–120 day buckets are clearly negative. Call-side sweeps also ran unusually hot for this name — nine call contracts cleared the peer-relative volume bar against just two puts, well above its own norm. The honest summary: near-dated flow is leaning long into a chart that is still falling, and that combination has historically been hedging and dip-buying rather than conviction.

The key levels map

Level	Price	Why it matters
200-day average	$22.77	Price sits 37.9% below it — the long-term trend is not in question
50-day average	$19.45	27.3% overhead; the entire June–July decline happened beneath it
Whole chain's heaviest put strike	$17.00	26,484 puts and the single largest gamma pile in the chain — but it lives in the August/September expirations, not this week
20-day average	$16.37	13.6% overhead; the first level that would signal a real trend change
Top of implied range	$15.74	Upper rail of what the options market is pricing through Friday
July 31 call wall + max pain	$15.50	4,901 open calls at this expiration and its max-pain strike — the week's upside magnet and barrier
Swing resistance	$15.39	Heuristic swing-pivot cluster from recent price structure
Invalidation level	$14.65	The falling short-term average and prior breakdown level — a close above it ends the bearish tilt
Nearest swing resistance	$14.37	Immediate overhead friction
Spot / last close	$14.17 / $14.15	Chain-snapshot price and official close
Largest near-spot gamma strike	$14.00	Heaviest combined gamma·open-interest strike close to spot; also the technical breakdown trigger
Swing support	$13.41	First real price-structure shelf below the market
Bottom of implied range	$12.60	Lower rail of the July 31 expected move
52-week low	$12.53	Sits almost exactly on the implied-range floor
July 31 put wall	$9.00	4,023 open puts — the expiration's biggest put strike, but 36% below spot; there is no meaningful put cushion in between

Note the disagreement worth knowing about: the whole chain's heaviest call strike is $25 and its heaviest put strike is $17, both dominated by far-dated August and September positioning. For this week, only the July 31 expiration's own levels — call wall $15.50, put wall $9.00, max pain $15.50 — are the actionable ones.

Positioning and unusual flow

Market makers hedge the options they've sold, and the direction of that hedging depends on their inventory. One rough estimate, built on an assumed dealer sign convention, puts the July 31 expiration in a positive-gamma regime, where hedging flows tend to dampen moves and nudge price toward the biggest open-interest strikes. The same estimate for the whole chain combined comes out negative — the amplifying regime — but that reading is driven by the far-dated September and October books, and its flip level lands around $3.00, a very long way below spot. For the next five sessions, the dampening read is the relevant one.

Three flow items stood out among contracts that are still live. The July 31 $15 calls were the busiest contract at the target expiration: 1,701 traded against 824 open, about $64,600 of premium — sitting squarely between spot and the call wall. The July 31 $18 calls printed 2,834 contracts against 934 open, three times turnover and the top of their peer group, but at a $0.055 midpoint that's roughly $16,000 of premium: lottery tickets, not positioning. The single biggest dollar print in the entire chain was elsewhere — 762 September 18 $21 puts, about $560,000 of premium, a deep in-the-money put well outside this week's window. Taken together: the near-dated call activity is cheap and speculative, and the serious money in this chain is expressed further out and lower.

3 · Technical check

Both technical reads are bearish, and both reference the same $14.17 price the options snapshot uses, so there's no data-date mismatch. The 3-day model targets $13.80 by July 29 with a $13.45–$14.30 range; the 5-day model targets $13.85 by July 31 with a $13.55–$14.60 range. The most decisive indicator cited is a trend-strength reading (ADX) at 31.5 and still rising, with the negative directional line dominant — a strengthening downtrend rather than a range — alongside money-flow (CMF) at −0.059, in active distribution territory. Price is below every key moving average and pinned to the lower Bollinger Band.

Classification: Confirms. Both targets sit comfortably inside the options-implied $12.60–$15.74 range, and both point the same way as our positioning tilt. The tension is not about direction — it's about magnitude and magnet. The chain's July 31 structure wants price at $15.50; the technical models want $13.85. Both invalidate on the same trigger: a reclaim of roughly $14.65.

Model vs. Market: The options market implies $12.60–$15.74 into July 31 with max pain at $15.50; the 5-day technical model targets $13.85. That $1.65 gap is the whole question this week — whether expiring open interest drags price back toward $15.50 or the downtrend simply walks through $14.00 with no put open interest underneath to slow it.

Practically, the technical read pushed the call-side short strikes below where the walls alone would suggest, and it is why the range structure below is shaded rather than symmetric.

Full technical write-ups: 3-day report → · 5-day report →

4 · Three ways the next five days can go

If RGTI pushes above the call wall ($15.50): That strike holds 4,901 open calls and is this expiration's max pain, so it tends to act as both magnet and brake — rallies into the heaviest call open interest typically slow there. A clean break through it leaves thin positioning until $16.00–$16.50, where fresh call open interest was added this week. Any close above $14.65 is the early warning that this branch is live.

If RGTI drifts between the rails: This is the pin case, and the positioning estimate supports it — the July 31 book reads positive-gamma, where hedging tends to dampen moves toward the biggest strikes. With max pain at $15.50 and spot at $14.17, the pull is technically upward, but 9% in five sessions against a downtrend of this strength is a stretch. A grind between $13.41 and $15.00 with implied volatility continuing to deflate is the highest-probability version of this week.

If RGTI breaks below $14.00: This is the branch with the least structure underneath it. The July 31 put wall is at $9.00 — there is no meaningful pile of open put contracts between spot and there to anchor price. The commonly cited gamma-flip accelerant isn't the story here: one rough estimate places the flip level near $3.00, far below spot, so this isn't a dealer-hedging cascade setup. It's simpler and more mundane: an intact downtrend, a 52-week low at $12.53 sitting almost exactly on the implied-range floor, and nothing structural in between.

5 · Three defined-risk structures

Prices are end-of-day midpoints as of July 24. All structures are hypothetical. Verify live prices before trading — these will be stale by the open.

If you lean bullish: short put spread

• Trade: Sell the July 31 $13 put, buy the July 31 $12 put
• Credit: $0.16 · Max profit: $16 · Max loss: $84 · Break-even: $12.84
• Why it fits: A credit spread pays you upfront to be right about where price won't go. The $13 short strike sits below the $13.41 swing shelf, and the short put carries a delta of −0.21, so the market is assigning roughly a one-in-five chance of it finishing in the money. Implied volatility 30 points above realized is what makes the credit worth collecting at all.
• Makes sense only if: You believe the five-session flat patch is a base and $13.41 holds.
• Invalidated if: RGTI closes below $13.41.
• Earnings exposure: Expires eleven days before the August 11 report — no earnings-gap risk.
• Managing it: Close at roughly 50% of max credit; exit regardless at Thursday's close; if RGTI trades through $13, close rather than hope — with five days to run there is no time for a recovery.
• Liquidity note: The $13 puts traded 3¢ wide ($0.20/$0.23) on 506 contracts, the $12 puts 1¢ wide. Fills are workable, but the credit is small in absolute dollars, so pay attention to commissions.
• Analyze this position →

If you expect the range to hold: iron condor (the best fit)

• Trade: Sell the July 31 $13 put / buy the $12 put, and sell the July 31 $15.50 call / buy the $16.50 call
• Credit: $0.295 · Max profit: $29.50 · Max loss: $70.50 · Break-evens: $12.71 and $15.80
• Why it fits: The break-evens land almost exactly on the options-implied range rails ($12.60/$15.74), and the short call sits precisely on the July 31 call wall and max-pain strike — a pin at $15.50 is the maximum-profit outcome on that side. You're being paid because options are priced for 98.5% volatility while the stock has delivered 68.5%.
• Makes sense only if: You accept a 4:1 risk/reward for a high-probability outcome, and you're willing to manage it actively — this is a 100%-implied-volatility stock with five days to expiration, so gamma risk is real near either short strike.
• Invalidated if: RGTI closes above $15.50 or below $13.00 — either short strike breached ends the thesis.
• Earnings exposure: Expires eleven days before the August 11 report — no earnings-gap risk.
• Managing it: Close at ~50% of max credit, which on a five-day condor often arrives in two or three sessions; exit the whole thing by Thursday's close rather than carrying pin risk into Friday; if one side is threatened, close that vertical rather than rolling.
• Liquidity note: The $15.50 calls quoted 5¢ wide on a 26.5¢ midpoint — nearly 19% of mid — so this must be worked with limit orders on the spread as a package, never legged at market. The $13 puts and $16.50 calls are tighter (3¢ and 2¢).
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bearish: put debit spread

• Trade: Buy the July 31 $14.50 put, sell the July 31 $13.50 put
• Debit: $0.48 · Max profit: $52 · Max loss: $48 · Break-even: $14.02
• Why it fits: A debit spread means you pay upfront and profit if price falls through your short strike. This is the cleanest expression of the technical read: at the 5-day model's $13.85 target the spread is worth about $0.65, and at $13.50 or below it pays the full $52. Selling the $13.50 leg finances the trade and caps the cost of buying 86% implied volatility.
• Makes sense only if: You want directional exposure and accept that this structure needs a further 1% decline just to break even — the pin case at $15.50 is a total loss.
• Invalidated if: RGTI closes above $14.65.
• Earnings exposure: Expires eleven days before the August 11 report — no earnings-gap risk.
• Managing it: Take profits at roughly $0.75–$0.80 rather than waiting for the full $1.00; cut it immediately on a close above $14.65; do not hold a debit spread into Friday hoping for a last-day move.
• Liquidity note: The $14.50 puts traded 7¢ wide ($0.82/$0.89) on 390 contracts — acceptable. The $13.50 puts are 9¢ wide on a 37.5¢ midpoint, roughly a quarter of mid, so expect to give up a cent or two of edge on entry.
• Analyze this position →

If none of these: no trade

There is a legitimate case for standing aside. IV rank of 27 means premium is cheap relative to this stock's own year, so the credit-selling structures above collect $16 to $30 per spread while risking $70 to $84 — you are being paid by the implied-versus-realized gap, not by rich absolute premium. Meanwhile the stock can plausibly move 11% in five sessions and has no put open interest between $14 and $9. If you can't monitor positions intraday, or you'd rather own optionality into the August 11 report than fight for nickels this week, doing nothing until the August tenors set up is the better trade.

6 · Quick FAQ

What is RGTI's expected move this week? About ±$1.57, or ±11.1%, into the July 31 expiration — a $12.60–$15.74 range, per the options market's straddle pricing as of July 24.

Is RGTI expected to go up or down over the next five days? Options positioning as of July 24 leans neutral with a bearish tilt — near-dated call flow is mildly constructive, but the wider curve, the flattening skew and the absence of any put cushion below spot all point lower — and that's a read of what traders have done, not a forecast. The actionable map is the $12.60–$15.74 range and the $13.41 / $15.50 levels.

When is RGTI's next earnings report? August 11, 2026, during market hours — after the July 31 and August 7 expirations but before August 14, which is why every August expiration prices implied volatility above 100% while July 31 prices at 80%.

Where is RGTI's biggest options support and resistance? For the July 31 expiration, the call wall is $15.50 (4,901 open contracts) and the put wall is $9.00 (4,023) — meaning the nearest real support is price-structure based, at $13.41, not options based.

Is RGTI implied volatility high or low right now? IV rank is 27/100 — today's 98.5% at-the-money reading is cheaper than roughly 73% of the past year, even though it's still running about 30 points above the stock's 68.5% realized volatility.

What invalidates this read? A close above $14.65.

---

Methodology & disclosures. Data: end-of-day options-chain snapshot for RGTI, 2026-07-24, generated 2026-07-26T17:47:27Z. Prices shown are midpoints and will differ from live markets. Momentum/positioning scores are descriptive measurements of past option flow — not investment advice, signals, forecasts, or guarantees. Earnings dates and reported results are from the data provider's earnings feed as of 2026-07-26T17:47:27Z; 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.