Microsoft shares might be rangebound. Here's how you can still make money

The beauty of trading options is you can make money if a stock goes up, down or nothing at all. Shares of Microsoft are presenting such an opportunity right now. Microsoft's volatility, a measure of how expensive its options are, has been building over the last several days. That increase is presenting an interesting opportunity for options traders well before earnings. Rising Treasury yields and oil prices have kept implied volatility elevated across the Magnificent Seven. However, Microsoft has been subject to its own unique catalysts, such as last Friday's announcement of a significant Copilot overhaul. Microsoft's overhaul, seeking to compete with Anthropic's Claude by unifying chat, coding, and autonomous agent tools into a single app, sent shares surging nearly 3.7% on the news and pushed Microsoft to the highest close of this year. Stock Chart IconStock chart iconMicrosoft, YTDThis continued to drive up Microsoft's implied volatility, which now sits in the upper 60thpercentile of its annual range, meaningfully elevated and higher than the majority of the Magnificent Seven. This elevated volatility is notable because it's building well ahead of the company's next earnings rep...