RGTI Options Price a ±$1.38 Move Into September 4 — The Technical Read Sees $15.05

The options market implies a $14.22–$16.97 range into the September 4 expiration; here's what's driving it and three defined-risk ways to trade it.

Published Saturday, August 29, 2026 · Data as of the 2026-08-28 close

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 Sep 4)	$14.22 – $16.97 (±8.8%)
Major support	$15.38 (swing support; the Sep 4 put wall sits far below at $12.00)
Major resistance	$17.50 (the Sep 4 expiration's call wall)
Max pain (Sep 4)	$17.00
Dealer gamma regime (estimate)	Sep 4 expiration: positive — hedging tends to dampen moves. Whole-chain estimate is negative; flip level ≈ $5.00 (a rough estimate, far below spot)
Volatility condition	Falling — IV rank 3/100 · premium thin: options are priced about 16 vol points below delivered movement (partly a mechanical echo of the August 6 report)
Technical check	Confirms direction (bearish, 3-day and 5-day), but prices a much narrower band
Best-fitting strategy	Sep 4 $15.50/$14.50 put debit spread
Analysis invalidated if	RGTI closes above $16.00

1 · What matters today

RGTI closed at $15.59 after falling 13% in five sessions, and the options market is pricing a move of roughly $1.38 up or down — a $14.22 to $16.97 band — into the September 4 expiration. That figure comes from what straddles cost: it's the market's own estimate of how far the stock travels by Friday, not a forecast of direction. Our composite read of positioning lands at neutral with a bearish tilt: the leading positioning signal is flat, but option-flow momentum and the wall structure both lean lower, and puts have been piling up fast — for every call contract held open there are now 1.17 puts, versus 0.86 a week ago.

The single level that changes the picture is $16.00. Both technical models treat a close back above it as the end of the downtrend thesis; so does this article. Below it, the map is the $15.38 swing shelf, then air down to the lower expected-move rail near $14.22.

2 · What the options market is pricing

What changed this week

Two things moved: price, and where new money went. The stock is down 12.95% over the trailing five sessions after being up 4.42% over twenty — the past week undid a month of grinding recovery. At-the-money implied volatility — the market's estimate of how much RGTI will move, baked into option prices — fell another 10.6% over those five days to 71.8%, and is now 29.1% below where it sat a month ago. That puts it well under its own 30-day average of 89.5% and its 90-day average of 99.7%. Options are getting cheaper while the stock falls, which is unusual and tells you the decline has been orderly rather than panicky.

Positioning tells the other half. Put open interest relative to calls climbed from 0.86 to 1.17 over five sessions (+35%) — that ratio's 14-day average is 0.86, so this is a genuine build in downside protection, not noise. Yet Friday's volume ran call-tilted at 0.47 puts per call against a 7-day average of 0.66, on total option volume of just 0.82× its 20-day norm. Traders are holding hedges but not aggressively adding on the day. The single biggest change in contracts held open was far-dated and two-sided: October 16 $18 calls gained 9,920 contracts (to 11,558) while October 16 $15 puts gained 9,905 (to 12,757) — near-identical size at the same expiration, which reads more like one large two-sided structure than directional conviction.

One tension is worth naming: the short- and long-horizon trend reads disagree. Over the past week the read is decisively bearish (price −13%); over the past month it is still mildly positive (+4.4%); over roughly the past two months it is bearish again (−22.9%). Near-term flow and the intermediate picture are pointing different ways, and the momentum read flipped from bullish to bearish on August 20 — a fresh turn, not an entrenched one. That argues for short-dated directional structures and early profit-taking rather than positioning for a trend.

Expected move

Into September 4, the chain prices a 1σ move of ±8.82%, or about ±$1.38 around the $15.59 spot: $14.22 to $16.97. The ladder:

Expiration	Implied move	Range around $15.59
Sep 4 (7 days)	±8.8%	$14.22 – $16.97
Sep 11 (14 days)	±13.5%	$13.48 – $17.70
Sep 18 (21 days)	±16.3%	$13.05 – $18.13
Sep 25 (28 days)	±19.7%	$12.52 – $18.66

The rungs step up almost exactly in line with the square root of time, with no bulge at any single date — there's no scheduled-event hump anywhere in the covered ladder.

Volatility

At-the-money IV is 71.8%, and IV rank is 3/100 — meaning today's implied volatility is cheaper than roughly 97% of the past year's readings for this stock. That is remarkable for a name that just fell 13% in a week. Front-month IV and the term-structure comparison are unavailable in this snapshot because Friday was an expiration day; the ~60-day tenor prints at 76.4%, modestly above the at-the-money read, so the curve is not screaming stress. Realized volatility over the past 20 sessions sits at 87.8%, a touch below this stock's own recent norm, and the 5-day-versus-20-day movement ratio is 1.03 — the pace of actual movement is right about typical for RGTI. Meanwhile the compression reading is near the top of its range: IV at 52-week lows and still contracting is the kind of setup that often precedes a larger move, without saying anything about which direction.

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 negative by about 16 vol points. In plain terms, option sellers have recently been collecting less than the stock's real movement cost them. That gap sits at the 36th percentile versus this stock's own recent readings, meaning it's thinner than about two-thirds of them. It has been narrowing steadily over the past week (from about −31 vol points on August 24 to −16 today), and it flipped from positive to negative in early August — a flip driven mechanically by the August 6 earnings gap entering the 20-day realized-volatility window, not by traders repricing anything. That caveat matters: with that gap still inside the realized window, cheap-looking premium here is not a free edge. On balance, IV rank 3/100 plus a below-average realized-vs-implied gap tilts this week toward owning premium rather than selling it — but own it with modest size and a short leash.

Skew and sentiment

Skew measures whether puts and calls the same distance from the stock price cost the same. Here they don't — and not in the usual direction. The 25-delta call prints at 76.0% implied volatility versus 72.5% for the equidistant put, so calls are running about 3.5 vol points richer than puts, against a 60-day norm of 4.1 points richer. Traders in this name habitually pay up for upside, and they still are, just marginally less than usual. That is a genuinely different picture from the put-heavy open interest — hedges are being held, but the money being paid up is still on the call side.

Directional lean across the curve is mixed. The 0–7 day bucket reads −7, the 7–30 day bucket +1, the 30–60 day bucket +22 and the longest bucket +27 — bearish at the front, bullish further out. That front bucket matters most for a 5-day view, and it has cooled sharply: its 7-day average was +13. Versus this stock's own recent history, the pace of put open-interest building is unusually heavy — well beyond its norm — while the pace of implied-volatility compression is also unusual, running far above what's typical for RGTI.

The key levels map

Level	Price	Why it matters
200-day moving average	$19.59	Price sits 20.4% below it — the long trend is unambiguously down
Call wall, whole chain	$18.00	24,177 calls held open across all expirations — the chain's heaviest overhead strike
20-day moving average	$17.25	Price is 9.6% below; a rally to here would be a full mean-reversion
Call wall, Sep 4 expiration	$17.50	2,818 calls — the ceiling that actually applies to this week
Max pain, Sep 4	$17.00	Where the most option value would expire worthless — sits above the implied range, so it is a weak magnet at best this week
Put wall, whole chain / largest gamma strike	$17.00	27,201 puts, mostly at the Sep 18 expiration; also the chain's largest gamma concentration
50-day moving average	$16.95	Overhead; price 8.0% below
Technical resistance / kill switch	$16.00	The 5-day technical model's invalidation level — a close above ends the bearish read
Swing resistance	$16.12	Recent pivot cluster
Nearest overhead pivot	$15.66	Immediate friction just above spot
Last close / spot	$15.59	Reference for every figure above and below
Swing support	$15.38	Nearest structural shelf; the level that has to hold first
Technical support	$15.10	The 5-day model's named support
Put OI cluster, Sep 4	$15.00	625 puts — modest, but the nearest real downside strike for this week
Lower expected-move rail, Sep 4	$14.22	The 1σ downside boundary the market is pricing
Deeper swing supports	$13.41 / $13.13	Prior pivot cluster
Put wall, Sep 4 expiration	$12.00	1,474 puts — the week's formal put wall, but far enough below spot to be irrelevant to Friday
52-week low	$12.53	Price sits just 24% above it; range position is 7/100
Gamma flip estimate	≈ $5.00	One rough estimate places it here — effectively not in play, and it should be read as an estimate, not a measured level

The disagreement between the two wall sets is worth naming plainly: the whole chain's heaviest put strike is $17.00 — above spot, concentrated in September 18 contracts — while the September 4 expiration's own put wall is all the way down at $12.00. For this week's trading, use the Sep 4 numbers: a call wall at $17.50 and essentially no put support structure until well below the expected-move rail.

Positioning and unusual flow

Market makers hedge the options they've sold, and one rough estimate of that positioning says the September 4 expiration sits in a positive regime — hedging flows that tend to dampen moves rather than amplify them — while the same estimate applied to the whole chain comes out negative. The week's expiration is the one that governs Friday, so treat the near-term backdrop as mildly stabilizing, and treat both figures as estimates built on an assumed dealer convention, not observed inventory.

Three flow items stood out, all in live expirations:

• September 18 $15.50 calls: 1,049 contracts traded against just 7 held open — 150× turnover and about $113,000 of premium. This is brand-new positioning right at the money three weeks out, not an adjustment to something existing.
• October 16 $19 calls: 1,935 contracts and $135,450 of premium — the largest single dollar-premium print in the chain — with open interest nearly doubling to 1,513. Paired with the matched $18 call / $15 put open-interest builds at the same expiration, this looks like structured October positioning rather than a directional bet on this week.
• September 4 $20 calls: 2,138 contracts traded against 1,272 open, at a $0.03 midpoint. These are lottery tickets 28% above spot expiring in five sessions — cheap, popular, and almost certainly a small piece of a larger book.

For context on what just settled: into Friday's expiration, the $15.50 puts traded 2,746 contracts and added 328 of open interest, while 2,425 of the $16 calls changed hands and went out at a penny. The late-week flow was defensive, and the upside bets expired worthless.

3 · Technical check (the 20%)

Both technical reads are bearish, and both are fresh — generated from the same August 28 close. The 3-day model targets $15.20 with a $14.95–$15.85 band and treats a reclaim of $15.90 as the invalidation. The 5-day model, which lines up exactly with this article's September 4 horizon, targets $15.05 with a $14.55–$15.75 band, names support at $15.10 and resistance at $16.00, and invalidates on a daily close back above $16.00.

The two most decisive indicator reads are trend strength and money flow. ADX at 27 with the negative directional line (32.5) well above the positive line (14.9) describes a downtrend that is strengthening, not fading — it rose from about 19 the prior session. Chaikin Money Flow at −0.219 shows sustained distribution across multiple sessions, with no bullish divergence anywhere: RSI, MACD and price are all making lower lows together. Price sits below every major moving average.

Classification: confirms the direction, extends the magnitude downward, and prices a far narrower band. The technical models want a drift to $15.05–$15.20, while the options market is pricing a band nearly three times as wide. That gap is the interesting part: the chain is priced for a stock that could go anywhere in a $2.75 corridor, and the trend model thinks it grinds to a specific spot near the bottom third of it.

Model vs. Market: The options market implies $14.22–$16.97 into September 4; the 5-day technical model targets $15.05. If the technical read is right, the options market is over-paying for the upside half of that band — which is exactly why the structures below lean on defined-risk debit spreads with strikes shaded toward the lower half of the range rather than on selling the wings.

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

4 · Three ways the next five days can go

If RGTI pushes above the Sep 4 call wall ($17.50): That would require a 12% rally in five sessions — right at the top of what the market is pricing. The heaviest call open interest for this expiration sits there, and strikes with that much open interest tend to slow rallies as hedging flows lean against the move. Above it, positioning thins quickly until the whole chain's $18.00 call concentration. Realistically, the $16.00–$16.12 zone is the first real test, and this article's read is dead on arrival above it.

If RGTI drifts between the walls: This is the quiet case, and it has the mildly-dampening estimate on its side. Max pain for September 4 sits at $17.00 — above the implied range entirely — so expiring open interest is not pulling price toward a nearby pin the way it sometimes does. Instead, the practical corridor is the $15.38 swing shelf up to the $16.00 resistance zone, and a week spent chopping inside it would bleed both the debit structures below.

If RGTI breaks below $15.38 and the $15.10 technical support: There is very little options structure underneath. The September 4 put wall is $12.00, and the nearest meaningful put cluster is only 625 contracts at $15.00 — meaning no strike below spot carries enough open interest to act as a barrier before the $14.22 expected-move rail. Spot is sitting unusually far above the estimated flip level for this name, which places it on the calmer side of that estimate, so this is a thin-structure case rather than a hedging-cascade case. But thin structure cuts both ways: nothing is there to catch it either.

5 · Three defined-risk structures

Prices are end-of-day midpoints as of 2026-08-28. All structures are hypothetical. Verify live prices before trading — these will be stale by the open.

Because implied volatility is priced below what RGTI has actually delivered, the debit structures lead this week and the credit structure carries a caveat. Every leg below expires September 4, safely ahead of any scheduled report on the calendar.

If you lean bearish (the base case): Sep 4 $15.50/$14.50 put debit spread

• Trade: Buy the Sep 4 $15.50 put, sell the Sep 4 $14.50 put
• Debit: $0.35 · Max profit: $65 per spread · Max loss: $35 per spread · Break-even: $15.15
• Why it fits: It buys the half of the expected-move range both technical models point at, at a moment when IV rank is 3/100 — you are paying near the cheapest premium of the past year for a directional bet, and the $15.50 strike sits just above the $15.38 swing shelf that has to break first. Risking $35 to make $65 is a favourable payoff for a thesis that only needs the stock to close under $15.15.
• Makes sense only if: you believe the five-day breakdown continues rather than mean-reverting toward the 20-day average at $17.25.
• Invalidated if: RGTI closes above $16.00.
• Managing it: With the near-term direction fighting a still-positive one-month trend read, take profits early — close at roughly 60–70% of max value rather than holding to expiration, and exit outright at Wednesday's checkpoint (September 2) if price has failed to trade below $15.35.
• Liquidity note: the $15.50 puts quoted 5¢ wide ($0.48/$0.53) and the $14.50 puts 2¢ wide ($0.15/$0.17). The absolute spreads are small but they are a double-digit percentage of these low premiums — work the order, don't pay the ask.
• Analyze this position →

If you expect the range to hold: Sep 4 $14.00/$14.50/$17.00/$17.50 iron condor

• Trade: Sell the $14.50 put and buy the $14.00 put; sell the $17.00 call and buy the $17.50 call — all September 4
• Credit: $0.14 · Max profit: $14 per condor · Max loss: $36 per condor · Break-evens: $14.36 and $17.14
• Why it fits: The short call sits right at the September 4 expiration's own gamma and max-pain zone and just above the upper expected-move rail; the short put sits above the thin nothing below $15.00 but inside the lower rail, which is the trade-off you accept for any collectible credit at this IV level.
• Health warning: you're selling premium that hasn't been rich lately — implied volatility is running about 16 vol points below RGTI's actual delivered movement, and IV rank is 3/100. That combination is the textbook environment for not being a net seller.
• Makes sense only if: you specifically expect the past week's 13% slide to stall into a quiet, rangebound week.
• Invalidated if: RGTI closes through either short strike ($14.50 or $17.00).
• Managing it: take it off at roughly 50% of max credit — $7 per condor — or by Wednesday, whichever comes first. With only $14 of cushion, holding through a gap is how a small win becomes a $36 loss.
• Liquidity note: the $14.50 puts quoted 2¢ wide, the $14.00 puts 2¢, the $17.00 calls 3¢ and the $17.50 calls 3¢. Four legs at penny prices means slippage can eat a third of the credit — use a limit on the whole package, never leg in.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bullish: Sep 4 $16.00/$17.00 call debit spread

• Trade: Buy the Sep 4 $16.00 call, sell the Sep 4 $17.00 call
• Debit: $0.22 · Max profit: $78 per spread · Max loss: $22 per spread · Break-even: $16.22
• Why it fits: If the bounce case plays out, it happens through $16.00 — the exact level that invalidates the bearish read — and stalls into the $17.00 max-pain and gamma zone, which is where the short strike sits. With premium this thin, buying that move outright costs less than selling the equivalent put spread would collect in risk terms: $22 at risk for $78 of upside.
• Makes sense only if: RGTI reclaims $16.00 early in the week — a spread bought and then left waiting is dead money at 7 days to expiry.
• Invalidated if: RGTI closes below $15.10.
• Managing it: this fights both the near-term trend and both technical models, so size it as a hedge, not a thesis. Close on a touch of $16.90 or by Wednesday's checkpoint if $16.00 hasn't been reclaimed.
• Liquidity note: the $16.00 calls quoted 7¢ wide ($0.34/$0.41) — the widest leg in this article at roughly 19% of the midpoint — and the $17.00 calls 3¢. Expect meaningful slippage on entry and price accordingly.
• Analyze this position →

If none of these: no trade

There is a respectable case for standing aside. Implied volatility at a 3/100 rank means credit structures pay almost nothing — the condor above collects $14 to risk $36, which is not a premium-selling edge, it's a coin flip with commissions. The debit spreads are the better expression, but they need real movement inside five trading days, and the stock has already delivered a 13% drop that could just as easily consolidate as extend. And the cheap-looking premium is not the free lunch it appears: the negative implied-versus-realized gap is partly a mechanical artifact of the August 6 earnings gap still sitting inside the 20-day realized-volatility window. When the honest read is "positioning leans lower but the signals genuinely disagree," a smaller position or no position is a legitimate answer.

6 · Quick FAQ

What is RGTI's expected move this week? About ±$1.38, or ±8.8%, into the September 4 expiration — a $14.22 to $16.97 range, derived from what straddles cost as of the August 28 close.

Is RGTI expected to go up or down over the next five days? Options positioning as of August 28 leans bearish-of-neutral — put open interest has jumped 35% in five sessions and the front-dated sentiment bucket has turned negative — but that's a read of what traders have already done, not a forecast. The actionable map is the $14.22–$16.97 range and the $15.38 / $17.50 levels, with $16.00 as the line that flips the read.

Are RGTI options expensive right now? No — unusually cheap on both lenses. IV rank of 3/100 says option prices are lower than 97% of the past year's readings, and on top of that they're running about 16 vol points below the movement RGTI has actually delivered, a gap thinner than roughly two-thirds of this stock's own recent readings. That favours owning premium over selling it — with the caveat that some of that thinness is the August 6 earnings gap still inside the realized-volatility window rather than a genuine bargain.

Where is RGTI's biggest options support and resistance? For the September 4 expiration, the call wall is $17.50 (2,818 contracts held open) and the put wall is $12.00 (1,474) — meaning the practical downside reference is the $15.38 swing shelf and the $15.00 put cluster, not the formal wall. Across the whole chain, the heaviest call strike is $18.00 and the heaviest put strike is $17.00.

What invalidates this week's read? A close above $16.00.

---

Methodology & disclosures. Data: end-of-day options-chain snapshot for RGTI, 2026-08-28, generated 2026-08-30T01:05:15Z. 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 2026-08-30T01:05:15Z; 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.