WMT Expected Move Into August 7: $107.50–$115, the $111 Pin, and Three Defined-Risk Trades

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The options market implies a $107.53–$115.09 range into the August 7 expiration; here's what's driving it, where the technical read pulls away, and three defined-risk ways to trade it.

Published Saturday, August 1, 2026 · Data as of 2026-07-31 close

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

Quick answer

Item	Answer
Market bias	Neutral
Options-implied range (into Aug 7)	$107.53 – $115.09 (±3.4%)
Major support	$107 — the Aug 7 expiration's put wall, sitting on a $107.02 swing shelf
Major resistance	$115 — top of the implied range and one of the chain's heaviest gamma strikes (the Aug 7 call wall itself is far overhead at $120)
Max pain (Aug 7)	$111
Dealer gamma regime (estimate)	Positive for the Aug 7 expiration — hedging tends to dampen moves; the all-expiration aggregate reads negative. Flip level not computable from today's chain
Volatility condition	Rising — IV rank 72/100 · premium rich: options priced ~9.9 vol points above delivered movement (earnings-inflated)
Next earnings	August 20 (before open) — after the Aug 14 expiration, before Aug 21
Technical check	Diverges (bearish, 3-day and 6-day models)
Best-fitting strategy	Iron condor, short the $107 put and $115 call for Aug 7
Analysis invalidated if	WMT closes below $107

1 · What matters today

Our read of WMT's options flow comes out genuinely neutral for the next six days — not as a hedge, but because the individual pieces cancel. Short-dated sentiment leans call-side, the price sits with plenty of room inside its wall corridor, and yet puts are unusually expensive relative to calls. The chain prices a move of roughly $3.78 either way through Friday, August 7: a $107.53–$115.09 band, with the strike where the most option value would expire worthless — max pain — sitting at $111, essentially where the stock closed ($111.20).

The level that changes the picture is $107. That's the strike with the biggest pile of open puts for the August 7 expiration, and it sits directly on a $107.02 swing shelf. Below it, the map gets thin fast. One note on timing: the July employment report lands at 8:30 a.m. Friday, August 7 — hours before this expiration settles. Both technical models we checked lean bearish into the same window, which is why the range trade below is sized to be wrong slowly.

2 · What the options market is pricing

What changed this week

Price went up and hedging went up with it. WMT gained 1.69% over the trailing five sessions to close at $111.20, yet at-the-money implied volatility — the market's estimate of how much WMT will move, baked into option prices — pushed to 32.0%, up 4.4% over five days and 28.6% over 30. That's roughly 19% above its own 30-day average of 26.9% and above the 90-day average of 27.9%: option buyers paid up into a rally.

Open interest tilted the other way from the day's flow. The put/call open-interest ratio — how many puts are held open for every call — went from 0.99 to 1.08 over five sessions, against a 14-day average of 1.02: for every call contract open there are now 1.08 puts, and the drift is toward more. Meanwhile the day's put/call volume ratio was 0.33 versus a 14-day average of 0.46, so Friday's trading itself was call-heavy. Traders bought upside for the day and kept adding downside protection for later.

The single biggest change in contracts held open came well out the curve: the September 18 $105 puts added 1,552 contracts to 13,655 open. Closer in, the August 21 $108 puts jumped from 486 to 1,604 and the August 14 $110 puts added 957. In the target week, the build was call-side: August 7 $113 calls added 538 contracts on 2,047 traded, and the $112 calls added 402 on 1,563. (Into Friday's expiration, the settled $112 calls churned 15,800 contracts and the $111 puts 3,621 — final-snapshot history, not a live level.)

One tension worth naming: the short- and long-term trend reads point different ways. Over the past week the tape improved (+1.7%); over roughly the past two months WMT is down 17.1% and still trades below its 50-day ($115.63) and 200-day ($118.00) averages. The bounce is real and small; the bigger structure is not.

Expected move

The move the options market is pricing in — derived from what straddles cost — is ±3.40% through August 7, or about $3.78 on a $111.31 chain-snapshot price. That frames a $107.53–$115.09 band.

Expiration	Implied move	Range around $111.31
Fri, Aug 7 (7 days)	±3.40%	$107.53 – $115.09
Fri, Aug 14 (14 days)	±5.04%	$105.70 – $116.92
Fri, Aug 21 (21 days)	±8.01%	$102.40 – $120.22
Fri, Aug 28 (28 days)	±8.80%	$101.52 – $121.10

The rungs step up smoothly for two weeks and then jump: the gap between ±5.04% at August 14 and ±8.01% at August 21 is far larger than an extra week of calendar time justifies. That step is where the earnings paragraph below points.

Volatility

At-the-money IV across the chain reads 32.0%. IV rank 72/100 means today's reading sits about 72% of the way up its past-year range; on a straight count of days, IV has been below today's level on roughly 92% of the past year's sessions. Direction is up on every window that matters: +0.5% on the day, +4.4% over five days, +28.6% over 30. The front-month read is unavailable today — Friday was an expiry day, so the nearest expiration was same-day and the front-month interpolation can't be computed. That also means no term-structure comparison across dates this session.

Two readings stand out against WMT's own recent norm — meaning unusual for this stock, not versus the broader market. First, the pace of movement is picking up: 5-day realized volatility is running about 1.34× the 20-day figure, well above its typical relationship, even though the 20-day level itself (22.1%) is a touch subdued for this name. Second, put-side sweeps dominated the unusual-flow set to an unusually lopsided degree for WMT — 4 puts against 3 calls clearing the peer-relative bar, which reads more extreme in context than the raw counts suggest.

Premium rich or cheap. The volatility risk premium — the gap between how much movement options are priced for and how much WMT has actually delivered — sits at about 9.9 vol points (32.0% implied against 22.1% delivered over 20 days). That's richer than roughly 89% of this stock's own recent readings, and it has been building fast: the gap was near +5 points a week ago and was outright negative through most of mid-July. Normally that combination — IV rank 72 and an 89th-percentile premium — argues loudly for collecting premium rather than owning it. Here it comes with a caveat: with the August 20 report 19 days out, some of that richness is the market pre-pricing that event, not free premium. And the front week is much less rich than the headline number: the August 7 contracts themselves are marked near 24.5%, only about 2.4 points above delivered movement. The fat premium lives in the expirations that span earnings, not in the one this article trades.

Earnings on the calendar

Walmart reports on Thursday, August 20, before the open, with a consensus estimate of $0.74 per share. That date falls between the August 14 and August 21 rungs, which is exactly why the implied move jumps from ±5.04% to ±8.01% between them — the chain is bracing for one report, not for three extra vol points of general uncertainty. For history in dollar terms: the last report landed exactly on its $0.66 estimate, and the one before it came in $0.17 light. Every structure below expires August 7, two weeks ahead of the print.

Skew and sentiment

Puts and calls the same distance from the stock price don't cost the same — and right now the gap is stretched. At 25-delta, put IV is 33.2% against 31.1% for calls: puts are running about 2.1 vol points over calls, against a 60-day median of 0.5 points for this name. That's roughly 1.6 points richer than usual, and it is one of the most extreme skew readings versus WMT's own history in the recent record. Translation: traders are paying up for downside protection, and paying up more than they normally do here.

Sentiment in short-dated options tells a friendlier story. The 0–7 day bucket scores +28 on the call side, driven by fresh call open interest (+1,338 calls against −2,011 puts in that bucket); the 7–30 day bucket is a near-flat +3, and the 30–60 day bucket is slightly negative at −4. The one-phrase summary from that spread is "Mixed" — no single expiration window dominates the read. Against 7-day averages of +13 and +11 for the two front buckets, today's front-week enthusiasm is a step up, not a regime change.

The key levels map

Level	Price	Why it matters
Call wall (Aug 7) / chain's heaviest call strike	$120	3,857 calls open for Aug 7 and 54,429 across the whole chain — a real ceiling, but far outside a ±3.4% week
200-day average	$118.00	Price sits 5.8% below it; still sloping down
Swing resistance	$116.78	Heuristic swing-pivot cluster (an estimate, not a guaranteed reaction zone)
50-day average	$115.63	3.8% overhead; the level that has capped every bounce for two months
Top of the 6-day implied range	$115.09	1σ upper rail through Aug 7
Heavy gamma strike	$115	26,123 calls and 25,150 puts open chain-wide; 2,566 Aug 7 calls — the nearest true magnet above spot
Unfilled gap zone	$111.61 – $114.22	July 30's −2.29% gap down never filled; overhead air pocket
Swing resistance / 20-day average	$112.73 / $112.14	First real friction on any push higher; also the technical models' invalidation line
Max pain (Aug 7 and Aug 14)	$111	Where the most option value expires worthless; expirations sometimes gravitate toward it
Heavy gamma strike	$110	33,601 puts and 13,574 calls open chain-wide — the pivot inside the range
Technical support band	$109.20 – $109.41	Both technical reports' downside objective
Bottom of the 6-day implied range	$107.53	1σ lower rail through Aug 7
Put wall (Aug 7) / swing support	$107 / $107.02	4,629 puts open at the strike, sitting on the only named swing shelf below spot — the week's line in the sand
Chain's heaviest put strike	$105	68,229 puts open and the single largest gamma strike in the file; the Sep 18 put wall too
52-week low	$95.42	Price sits about 40% of the way up its 52-week range, 17.7% below the $135.16 high

Positioning and unusual flow

Market makers hedge the options they've sold, and the direction of that hedging depends on the regime. One rough estimate scoped to the August 7 expiration alone puts dealers in positive gamma — hedging that tends to dampen moves and reinforce a drift toward max pain. Aggregated across all ten covered expirations, the same estimate flips negative, driven overwhelmingly by the 46,834 puts open at the $105 strike for August 21. So for this week's expiration, the positioning estimate leans pinning; for the broader chain, it leans amplifying. The gamma-flip level — the price below which that hedging tends to accelerate selling rather than cushion it — can't be computed from today's chain, so we won't quote one.

Three non-expired flow items are worth naming. The August 7 $111 calls traded 1,235 contracts against 558 open — roughly $207,000 of premium, the largest single front-week ticket in the file, and 308 contracts of that stuck as new open interest. The August 7 $114 calls turned over 1,638 against 892 open. Further out, the September 4 $122 calls traded 348 contracts against just 55 open — a 6.3× turnover for about $37,000 of premium, small money but a lottery-ticket footprint well above every wall.

3 · Technical check

Both technical models are bearish, and both are fresh (dated August 1 against an options snapshot of July 31, with a reference price of $111.21 versus the chain's $111.31 — a rounding difference, not a data problem). The 3-day model targets $110.20 by August 4 with a $108.80–$112.60 band, support at $109.40 and resistance at $112.50. The 6-day model targets $109.75 by August 7 with a $107.50–$113.50 band, support at $109.20 and resistance at $113.00. The reasoning is consistent across both: a fresh bearish EMA13/34 crossover, a negative and widening MACD histogram, and — the most decisive read — ADX at 27.1 with −DI (27.6) clearly above +DI (14.4), which classifies this as a strengthening downtrend rather than a chop. Chaikin Money Flow at −0.159 has stayed negative through the entire recent leg down, confirming distribution rather than diverging from it.

Classification: diverges. The direction contradicts our neutral options read. The magnitude does not: a $109.75 target sits comfortably inside the $107.53–$115.09 the chain is pricing, and the 6-day technical range ($107.50–$113.50) is narrower than the options band on the upside and nearly identical at the bottom. In other words, the technical model isn't calling for anything the options market would consider a surprise — it is calling for the lower half of an already-priced range. Both reports put their own invalidation at a close back above $112.50.

Model vs. Market: The options market implies $107.53–$115.09 into August 7; the 6-day technical model targets $109.75. The gap isn't about magnitude — it's about which half of the same range gets used, and a close above $112.50 would settle it in the market's favor.

What that did to strike selection: it shaded the condor's short call down to $115 rather than reaching for $116–$117, and it is the reason the bullish structure below runs last in our own preference order despite the rich premium.

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

4 · Three ways the next six days can go

If WMT pushes above $115 (and toward the $120 call wall): the first real obstacle is the $115 strike itself, where 26,123 calls and 25,150 puts sit open across the chain and 2,566 calls sit open for this expiration specifically — heavy near-money open interest tends to slow rallies as hedging flows lean against them. Above that, the July 30 gap ($111.61–$114.22) is already filled and the 50-day average at $115.63 and swing resistance at $116.78 are next. The expiration's own call wall at $120 is roughly 8% away, which is well outside a ±3.4% week; positioning has no meaningful footprint up there.

If WMT drifts between the walls: this is the case the chain is built for. Max pain sits at $111 for both August 7 and August 14, the stock closed at $111.20, and the dealer-gamma estimate scoped to this expiration reads positive — a regime in which hedging tends to dampen moves rather than extend them. Add the $110 and $115 gamma clusters bracketing spot, and the mechanical pull into Friday's settlement is toward the middle. Note the calendar rubbing against this: with ISM Manufacturing PMI at 10:00 a.m. Monday, ISM Services PMI at 10:00 a.m. Wednesday and the July employment report at 8:30 a.m. Friday, August 7, the drift case requires those prints to pass without moving the tape more than about $2 in either direction. The chain shows no special bulge for payrolls — the August 7 rung's own ATM IV (24.5%) is actually below the August 14 rung's (25.7%) — so if the market is worried about Friday morning, it isn't paying extra for it.

If WMT breaks below the $107 put wall: this is the acceleration branch. Below the 4,629 puts at $107 and the $107.02 swing shelf, the next dense positioning is the $105 strike, where 68,229 puts are open chain-wide and the largest single-strike gamma concentration in the file sits. The all-expiration dealer-gamma estimate is negative — the regime in which market-maker hedging tends to amplify selling rather than cushion it — so a decisive break of $107 would be trading into the least friendly structure on the board. We can't quote a flip level today, so treat that as a directional description of positioning, not a trigger price.

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.

If you expect the range to hold: iron condor, $105/$107 – $115/$117 (Aug 7)

• Trade: Sell the Aug 7 $107 put / buy the $105 put, and sell the Aug 7 $115 call / buy the $117 call
• Credit: $0.395 ($39.50 per condor) · Max profit: $39.50 · Max loss: $160.50 · Break-evens: $106.61 and $115.40
• Mechanics reminder: you collect the credit up front and keep it if WMT finishes between $107 and $115; you lose the width of whichever spread goes in the money, minus that credit.
• Why it fits: the short strikes are the two levels the data actually names — $107 is this expiration's put wall, $115 is the upper implied-move rail and one of the chain's heaviest gamma strikes. Max pain at $111 sits dead center, the per-expiration gamma estimate leans pinning, and the break-evens ($106.61/$115.40) sit outside the full ±3.4% implied range.
• Makes sense only if: you think this week's macro slate — ISM Monday and Wednesday, payrolls Friday morning — gets absorbed inside a $2 band, which is what the chain is pricing.
• Invalidated if: WMT closes below $107 or above $115.09.
• Earnings exposure: expires 13 days before the August 20 report — no earnings-gap risk.
• Managing it: close at ~50% of max credit; with a short-term bounce fighting a two-month downtrend, take profits early rather than holding for the last few cents. Because the July employment report prints at 8:30 a.m. on expiration day, consider closing Thursday's session rather than carrying four short strikes through an 8:30 macro print. If either short strike trades through, close rather than hope — $160.50 of max loss against $39.50 of credit does not tolerate a hero hold.
• Liquidity note: the $115 calls quote 5¢ wide against a 42.5¢ mid and the $117 calls 3¢ wide — fine. The weak leg is the $105 put at 7¢ wide against an 11.5¢ mid (over 60% of mark); expect to give up a couple of cents on that wing, and don't chase it with a market order.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bearish: $111/$108 put debit spread (Aug 7)

• Trade: Buy the Aug 7 $111 put / sell the Aug 7 $108 put
• Debit: $0.945 ($94.50) · Max profit: $205.50 · Max loss: $94.50 · Break-even: $110.06
• Mechanics reminder: you pay for the spread up front, and it pays out as WMT falls, maxing out at or below $108.
• Why it fits: this is the structure that expresses the technical divergence with money instead of prose. Both models target $109.20–$109.75, which sits between the break-even ($110.06) and the max-profit strike ($108). It also sidesteps the premium problem: the front week's implied volatility (24.5%) is only about 2.4 points above what WMT has actually delivered, so this isn't the expensive part of the chain — the expirations spanning earnings are.
• Makes sense only if: you weight the trend structure — price below the 50- and 200-day averages, ADX confirming a downtrend — above the neutral flow read.
• Invalidated if: WMT closes above $112.50, both technical models' own invalidation line and the nearest swing resistance.
• Earnings exposure: expires 13 days before the August 20 report — no earnings-gap risk.
• Managing it: a debit spread with six days of life is a short-fuse trade; take profit at $109.20–$109.40, the technical support band, rather than pressing for the $107 put wall. If WMT is above $112 by Wednesday's close, the thesis is stale — cut it.
• Liquidity note: the $111 puts trade 12¢ wide on a $1.35 mid (about 9%); the $108 puts are 11¢ wide on a 40.5¢ mid, which is over 25% — work the combined spread as a single limit order at the mid rather than legging in.
• Analyze this position →

If you lean bullish: $109/$106 put credit spread (Aug 7)

• Trade: Sell the Aug 7 $109 put / buy the Aug 7 $106 put
• Credit: $0.48 ($48) · Max profit: $48 · Max loss: $252 · Break-even: $108.52
• Mechanics reminder: you collect $48 now and keep it if WMT holds above $109 through Friday; you're betting on "not much lower," not on "higher."
• Why it fits: it monetizes the steep put skew — puts running 2.1 vol points over calls against a 0.5-point norm means the market is paying unusually well for exactly this risk. Short-dated sentiment leans call-side (+28 in the 0–7 day bucket), and the long $106 leg sits just under the $107 put wall.
• Makes sense only if: you actively disagree with both technical models, because their targets ($109.20–$109.75) sit uncomfortably close to the short strike and just below the $108.52 break-even. That is precisely why this structure ranks third here.
• Invalidated if: WMT closes below $107.
• Earnings exposure: expires 13 days before the August 20 report — no earnings-gap risk.
• Managing it: close at ~50% of max credit, and set a hard exit if $109 trades through intraday — collecting $48 against $252 of risk means one un-managed loss erases five wins. Given payrolls on expiration morning, flatten Thursday rather than carrying a 35-delta short put through the print.
• Liquidity note: the $109 puts quote 7¢ wide against a 63.5¢ mid (about 11%) and the $106 puts 3¢ wide against a 15.5¢ mid — tradeable, but the 3¢ on a 15.5¢ option is real slippage on the protective leg.
• Analyze this position →

If none of these: no trade

There is a defensible case for standing aside, and it isn't laziness. The headline argument for selling premium here — a 9.9-point volatility risk premium at the 89th percentile of this stock's own readings — is largely an artifact of the August 20 earnings report inflating the expirations that span it. Strip that out and the August 7 rung you'd actually be selling is priced at 24.5% against 22.1% of delivered movement: about two and a half vol points of edge, before spreads that run 3–7¢ on options worth 12–43¢. On a four-leg condor, that friction can eat a meaningful slice of a $39.50 credit before the trade has done anything. Add a fresh macro slate every single day of the window, capped by payrolls hours before settlement, and "the range holds" is a thinner bet than the percentile suggests. If you want to be paid for this skew, the honest alternative is to wait for the post-earnings expirations to come into range with premium you're being compensated for a knowable reason — not to force a six-day structure with two and a half points of edge.

6 · Quick FAQ

What is WMT's expected move this week? ±$3.78 (±3.4%) into the August 7 expiration — a $107.53–$115.09 range, per the options market's straddle pricing as of the 2026-07-31 close.

Is WMT expected to go up or down over the next six days? Options positioning as of July 31 reads neutral — call-heavy short-dated sentiment and plenty of room inside the wall corridor, offset by unusually rich put skew — but that's a read of what traders have done, not a forecast. The actionable map is the $107.53–$115.09 range and the $107/$115 levels. Both technical models we checked lean bearish toward $109–$110, inside that same range.

Are WMT options expensive right now? IV rank 72/100 says option prices sit near the upper end of the past year's range, and they're running about 9.9 vol points above the movement WMT has actually delivered — richer than roughly 89% of this stock's own recent readings. But with earnings on August 20, most of that richness is concentrated in the expirations that span the report; the August 7 contracts themselves are only about 2.4 points above delivered movement.

When is WMT's next earnings report? August 20, before the open — after the August 14 expiration but before August 21, which is exactly why the implied move jumps from ±5.04% to ±8.01% between those two rungs.

Where is WMT's biggest options support and resistance? For the August 7 expiration: put wall at $107 (4,629 contracts open), call wall at $120 (3,857). The nearest meaningful resistance inside the implied range is the $115 gamma strike.

What invalidates this week's read? A close below $107.

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Methodology & disclosures. Data: end-of-day options-chain snapshot for WMT, 2026-07-31, generated 2026-08-01T18:13:36.873Z. 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 2026-08-01T18:13:36.873Z; 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.