Options Trade Setup: Week of 8/3/26
Will be posting these manually for a bit while I'm still building out the flow platform!
NN - Grade: A Setup
Signal fired 07/23/26 · Published 07/31/26
What’s happening
The flow
Eight bull sessions, 70% premium dominance ($4.4M bull vs $1.9M bear). Two floor prints anchor it: July 16, 7,100x — “BUY 7100x $25C 2026-12-18 @$1.7” and “BUY 7100x $18C 2026-12-18 @$3.09,” $2.19M walked to the floor; then July 21, another floor vertical — “SELL 5000x $25C 2027-01-15 @$1.45 / BUY 5000x $19C 2027-01-15 @$2.45,” $1.23M. Add a July 14 $12 put sale, $120K, fills kept rising. Stacks of $20 calls throughout. IV basically flat — this is accumulation, not a vol chase. Caveat: nearly all of it expires through earnings, so weight it as event-tied more than clean swing size.
The setup
Our buy signal fired 2026-07-23 with NN basing near $12.67 after a long grind lower. Spot’s back to $12.73; the institutional floor is $12, right where they sold puts. Mixed broad tape — half size, let entries come. Expect a -6 to -8% shake before it works.
Context: 444x sales, “the flow IS the thesis here”; 16% short float — squeeze fuel.
Invalidation
Thesis is wrong on a daily close below $11.27.
Full desk notes
The story
Institutions have spent July laddering up the call side of NextNav (NN), and the fingerprints are unusually clean: a $2.19M multileg on the $18/25 December line, a $1.23M call vertical the following week, and repeated $20-strike buying in between. Our buy signal fired on 2026-07-23 with the stock closing at $12.67; it now sits at $12.73, so the setup is essentially still at the trigger — the first leg has not run, and that means you can work orders patiently rather than chase. One piece of context you must hold in your head the whole time: NN is priced at 444x sales with revenue down 35% year-over-year, so this is a spectrum-optionality story where the flow is the thesis, not a valuation call. That framing matters for sizing more than direction.
The company & the calendar
NextNav Inc. provides positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) solutions in the United States — a would-be terrestrial complement to GPS, with the equity trading on spectrum upside rather than current fundamentals. The numbers are extreme: forward P/E of -17.9, price-to-sales of 444x, gross margin negative, and “16% of the float is short — squeeze fuel, and a crowd that fights rallies.” Coverage is thin but loud: 3 analysts, strong_buy rating, targets from $22 low to $33.67 mean to $50 high against a $12.73 tape — the street is well ahead of price, which cuts both ways here. Next earnings land 2026-08-11, inside the window. The news rhymes with the flow: Zacks upgraded NN to Strong Buy on 2026-07-23 and separately flagged a “buy the dip” after a 24.6% four-week drop, while Simply Wall St. noted spectrum upside on 2026-07-21 — but note the biggest prints (July 16, July 21) preceded the loudest headlines. Quiet accumulation into the tape, then the upgrade. That ordering is the better tell.
The tape, day by day
The pattern is escalation, not a one-off: small $20-call probes early, then two heavyweight structured entries ($2.19M and $1.23M) that reset the whole complex. Bull premium totals $4.39M against $1.87M bearish, roughly 70% dominance across 8 bullish sessions. The same call ladder — $18, $19, $20, $25 — keeps reappearing under different expiries.
The receipts
Open-interest confirmation separates real positioning from noise. The anchor print — $18C 2026-12-18, 7,100 contracts, $2.19M — verified clean: OI went from 57 to 7,171, an oi_delta of 7,114. New money. The $19C 2027-01-15 vertical, 5,000 lots, $1.23M also confirmed: OI 7,502 to 12,505. The $25C 2027-01-15, 1,142 lots, $176,993 confirmed too (OI 3,533 to 4,543). And the $12P sale that builds the floor — 998 contracts, $119,790 — confirmed 746 to 1,444. What did not confirm: the heavy $20C 2027-01-15 cluster from July 17 (alert size 1,289) actually saw OI fall 14,658 to 8,740 — those did not register as new longs, and the bear-structure note lists $20C 2027-01-15 call sales totaling over $950K. Read the $20 line as contested; read $18, $19, and $25 as accumulation.
The levels
The defended map is narrow and specific: institutions sold the $12 put for $119,790 — they are paid to defend $12. That is the floor with money behind it. Our invalidation sits at $11.27. Between here and there is normal noise; on a name this volatile, expect a -6% to -8% shake-out toward the $11.70s before any move — that is typical, not thesis failure. Below $11.27 on a daily close, the floor logic breaks.
Three ways to play it
All prices below are Black-Scholes estimates for sizing — check the chain before entry. IV is estimated near 108% from this name’s own prints.
Call debit spread $13/15 (2026-12-18)
Legs: BUY 1x $13C / SELL 1x $15C, 2026-12-18
Est. cost $65/contract; max loss $65; max gain $135; breakeven $13.65; R:R 2.08; estimated chance of profit 0.34
Why: mirrors the institutional call strikes ($13 bought, $15 the next level up).
Warning: exit by ~20 sessions; don’t ride the last two weeks of theta.
Put credit spread $11.5/10.5 (2026-09-18)
Legs: SELL 1x $11.5P / BUY 1x $10.5P, 2026-09-18
Est. credit $45/contract; max loss $55; max gain $45; breakeven $11.05; estimated chance of profit 0.57; prob-touch 0.94
Why: same floor, hard-capped risk — max loss $55 vs $45 collected.
Warning: runs through earnings (2026-08-11) — size for the gap or close before. Exit at 50% of credit or 21 days to expiry.
Risk reversal — sell 2x $11.5P (2026-09-18) / own $18C (2026-12-18)
Legs: SELL 2x $11.5P 2026-09-18, BUY 1x $18C 2026-12-18
Est. net credit $55/contract; max loss $2,245; max gain uncapped; breakeven $11.50; estimated chance of profit 0.53
Why: date-skewed — the short 49-day puts decay fast at their floor while you own the SAME $18 2026-12-18 call line institutions bought, for ~$55 net credit; if the puts expire worthless, roll and sell again.
Warnings: assignment on 2x puts below $11.5 — only size what you’d happily own there; margin account required. Close short puts at 80% capture, ride the calls while the floor holds.
Exit discipline across all three: sell into the first +5-8% move, out by ~20 sessions. Advanced hands can look at the bench — a $11.5 cash-secured put or the aggressive $25 calls (the tape’s most-bought line at $3,596K premium) — for the two tails of this trade.
This is what a weekly setup post will look like but will all be auto-generated within the flow app.
I’m really spending all of my limited time making sure this is perfect and useful (forward testing the plays the app has produced so far) - the goal is to identify swing trades based on my indicators that are confirmed in the options market. The app will have all flow as well in the flow tape section so will be able to see all flow in the database but really trying to curate it as much as possible, as I know a lot of people would love to have solid setups that they don’t need to actively monitor each day.