BA bull call spread, priced right now

Q: What does this BA call spread cost?

$618 per spread at the captured mids — $6.18 per share, which is also the maximum loss. Max profit is $882, reached above $230 at August 28, 2026.

Q: What happens if BA finishes between the strikes?

You keep the intrinsic value of the long call and the short expires worthless — a partial win somewhere between −$618 and $882, crossing into profit at $221.18.

Q: How much is BA expected to move by Aug 28?

The Aug 28 options imply a one-standard-deviation move of $20.15 — about 9.3% of the BA share price — over the 27 days to expiry. That is the market's estimate, not a forecast: roughly a third of the time the actual move is larger.

Q: How wide are BA option strikes?

About $5 apart near the money on the Aug 28 expiry — 2.31% of the share price per rung. That sets how precisely you can place a short strike, and how granular a spread's width can be.

$216.14Boeing Company · chain snapshot captured Aug 1, 2026

Headline-driven vol on an industrial balance sheet. IV stays elevated because the tail risk is genuinely fat — regulatory and safety news can reprice the stock 10% on a Tuesday with no earnings in sight.

A bull call spread buys the $215 call and sells the $230 call on the same Aug 28 expiry. On BA at $216.14 that costs $618 — versus paying full freight for the naked call — and pays a maximum of $882 if BA is above $230 in 27 days. Breakeven is $221.18.

The trade, priced from the chain

27d to August 28, 2026

Leg	Qty	Price	Δ	IV	Cash
BuyAug 28 $215 call	1	$9.30	0.55	35%	−$930
SellAug 28 $230 call	1	$3.12	0.27	33%	+$312

Net debit

$618

Max profit

$882

Max loss

$618

Chance of profit

39%

Breakeven

$221.18

+2.3%

$208.56 – $236.44 price rangespot $216.14breakeven $221.18P/L at expiration

Open this bull call spread in the builderLoads these exact legs and re-quotes them live. No account needed.

Every leg above is priced at the chain’s own quote — the identical number the builder will show you when you click through (last traded price), captured August 1, 2026 with a 15-minute delay. Only strikes whose print survives an implied-volatility check (within 20% of its own IV) and a no-arbitrage check across the ladder are priced here. Full methodology. Greeks, breakevens, max profit/loss and probability of profit are computed by OptionTracker’s engine at r = 4.2%. Educational analysis, not investment advice.

How a bull call spread works

You are financing the call you want with the call you're willing to give up. The short $230 strike caps your upside; in exchange it cuts the debit, which cuts the breakeven from where a naked call would sit down to $221.18.

The payoff is a ramp between the strikes. Below $215 you lose the full $618. Between the strikes P/L climbs linearly. Above $230 it is flat at $882, no matter how far BA runs.

Risk/reward is 1.4:1 — risk $618 to make $882 — with the engine's probability of finishing profitable at 39%. That trade-off is the entire argument for using a spread instead of a call: you are paid to give up the tail you probably weren't going to catch anyway.

Vega roughly cancels between the two legs, so a vol crush after delivery numbers hurts far less than it would on an outright call. That is often the real reason to spread.

When it makes sense

You have a target, not just a direction: you think BA reaches $230 but not much past it.
IV is high enough that an outright call feels expensive — the short leg recycles some of that premium.
You want the position to survive a vol crush. Spreads are close to vega-neutral; long calls are not.
You are prepared for the position to be worth nothing, because a defined-risk debit reaching zero is an ordinary outcome rather than a tail.

Where the risk actually is

Max loss is the full $618 debit, and it happens on any close below $215 — which includes "BA went nowhere". Time decay works against you from day one; the position needs the move AND needs it before August 28, 2026.

The short leg carries assignment risk if it goes deep ITM near expiry. Being assigned early leaves you short stock against a long call — recoverable, but not on a Friday afternoon.

Time is the cost you cannot hedge. A debit structure needs the move and needs it before expiry, and being early is indistinguishable from being wrong once the contract settles.

Reading the BA chain

Boeing's recovery thesis is a multi-year story being expressed in monthly options, which is the mismatch that has cost directional buyers the most. If the view is the order book and the delivery rate, the expiry needs to be measured in quarters and the structure needs to survive a headline that has nothing to do with the thesis.

BA's Aug 28 strikes are $5 apart near the money (2.31% of spot). That is a coarse ladder: one rung is a large fraction of the implied move, so precision on the short strike is an illusion. 5.8k contracts of open interest on Aug 28 is thin, and a structure that needs four separate fills will pay for it. 15 strikes on that expiry — 36% of the board — carry prints that agree with their own implied volatility and hold up across the ladder, and those are the strikes priced here. Adequate but not deep; the usable ladder is short, and wide condors here are wider than the book really supports.

The surface is close to flat: only 1.1% between the 25-delta put and the 25-delta call. With so little skew, the wings on either side cost about the same in vol terms — unusual, and worth exploiting if your view is one-sided. The term structure is flat inside 1.5% between the two captured expiries, so there is no calendar edge to harvest and no event visibly priced into one month over the other.

At 34% ATM implied vol, the Aug 28 options are pricing a one-standard-deviation move of $20.15 over 27 days — roughly −9.3% to +9.3%, or $195.99 to $236.29. That band is the free part of the move. Anything your structure needs beyond it is the part you have to be right about.

The specific way people lose money on BA: Assuming the risk lives on the earnings date. On Boeing it lives on every date.

Picking the strike on BA

Two choices: where to buy, and how far to sell. On BA at $216.14, the long strike's delta sets how stock-like the position behaves and the short strike sets your ceiling.

Band	What it means	When it fits
Long ~0.60 – 0.70 Δ	ITM long leg, mostly intrinsic	Higher cost, higher probability, less time decay. The conservative construction.On BA: the Aug 28 $210 call at $11.50, 72% annualized
Long ~0.45 – 0.55 Δ	ATM, the default	Balanced. What the builder loads by default and where most spreads are traded.On BA: the Aug 28 $215 call at $9.30, 58% annualized
Long < 0.35 Δ	OTM, lottery construction	Cheap, low probability, big multiple. Requires the move to actually happen.On BA: the Aug 28 $225 call at $3.65, 23% annualized
Short leg placement	Wider = more upside, more debit	Put the short strike at your actual price target, not at a round number.

The Aug 28 call chain below shows real deltas and mids. A quick sanity test: if the debit is more than 60% of the spread width, the market is telling you the move is already priced.

From the far strike to the near one, the premium below moves by a factor of 23.7. Where you sit on that curve is the trade. Open interest concentrates at $230 on this expiry, which is usually where the fills are cleanest.

BA 2026-08-28 calls around the money: strike, distance from spot, mid price, delta, implied volatility and open interest.
Strike	vs spot	Mid	Δ	IV	% of spot	Ann.	OI
$205	−5.2%	$14.45	0.73	36%	6.7%	90%	55
$210	−2.8%	$11.50	0.64	36%	5.3%	72%	53
$215	−0.5%	$9.30	0.55	35%	4.3%	58%	208
$220	+1.8%	$6.55	0.45	33%	3.0%	41%	468
$225	+4.1%	$3.65	0.35	33%	1.7%	23%	116
$230used	+6.4%	$3.12	0.27	33%	1.4%	20%	1.4k
$235	+8.7%	$2.15	0.19	33%	1.0%	13%	262
$245	+13.4%	$0.88	0.10	34%	0.4%	6%	169
$250	+15.7%	$0.61	0.07	35%	0.3%	4%	410

BA calls expiring August 28, 2026· 15-min delayed capture · “Ann.” annualizes the mid as a percentage of spot over 27 days.

Managing the position

Close both legs together. Legging out of a spread that's working is how a defined-risk trade turns into an open-ended one.
If BA stalls with two weeks left, the spread rarely recovers — theta on a debit spread past 21 DTE is working against the leg you own.
Re-check the breakeven, not the strike. The stock reaching your target and the trade making money are different events separated by the premium you paid.
Roll a winner out rather than up. Adding strikes to a working directional trade compounds the same view; extending the clock keeps the risk you already sized.

Common mistakes

Spreading a thesis that needs the tail

If your view on BA is a re-rating rather than a drift to $230, capping upside at $882 defeats the point. Spread when you have a target; buy the call when you have a tail.

Buying spreads into a known event

delivery numbers inflates both legs. The structure survives the crush better than a naked call, but you still paid event-priced premium for the leg you own.

Buying premium into a known event

The event is in the price. Owning options through a scheduled catalyst means you need the move to beat the consensus estimate of the move, not merely to happen.

BA bull call spread FAQ

What does this BA call spread cost?