Archer Aviation (ACHR) Wheel Strategy Research

Where Archer trades right now

As of July 24, 2026, Archer Aviation (ACHR) trades at $4.77, sitting at a fresh 52-week low, the bottom of a wide $4.54 to $14.62 one-year range. 100 shares cost about $457, so it's one of the cheapest names retail traders wheel. That affordability, plus high implied volatility and fat premium, is exactly what makes it tempting, and exactly why the risk framing above this line matters.

The bull and bear case, honestly

Bull case: Archer is building electric air taxis and has real backers, Stellantis for manufacturing, United Airlines for orders, plus momentum from the FAA's eVTOL Integration Pilot Program and partnerships tied to onboard compute and telemetry. It reports roughly $1.8 billion of liquidity, and several Wall Street analysts carry buy or overweight ratings with price targets above the current price. If it reaches commercial passenger operations, the upside is real.

Bear case: it is pre-revenue relative to its costs. Q1 2026 revenue was about $1.6 million against a net loss of roughly $217.7 million and an adjusted EBITDA loss of about $172.5 million, and Archer used roughly $149 million of operating cash in the quarter. Its ~$1.8B of liquidity is a multi-year cushion, but sustained losses at that rate keep dilutive capital raises a real possibility, and any FAA delay or manufacturing bottleneck could deepen the losses. This is a company that could keep falling, the wheel keeps you holding while it does.

Support levels and a speculator's put strike

The stock is at support, the current price is essentially the 52-week low. Reference levels below here are round numbers: ~$4.00 and ~$3.50. For someone who has already decided to take a small speculative position, a cash-secured put near the $4 strike ($400 collateral) would let you get paid to potentially buy lower, while accepting that you may be assigned into a still-falling, pre-revenue company. The premium will look rich; remember it's compensation for real risk. Size it tiny, and verify the live premium and delta on your chain. Run the numbers with the wheel calculator.

Update, July 24: the pop is fading, and the score followed it down

We score every name we follow on three inputs, each minus one, zero or plus one: price relative to its recent averages, momentum, and volume today against a normal day. Minus two or lower favours selling cash-secured puts. Plus two or higher favours selling covered calls against shares you own. In between means do nothing.

A week ago Archer was the exception on our list. It had just jumped nearly twenty percent on the Anduril news and was the one name trading above its short-term average, so it scored plus two and the honest call was to wait rather than chase. This week it has given back about half that jump and closed below its ten-day average, and the score has dropped to zero, the do-nothing middle. Nothing changed about the business in those few sessions. The excitement simply started to drain, and the framework tracked it down in real time. That is the whole case for a rule you do not override: it never told you to buy the spike.

What happened on 20 July

Archer closed up 19.6% on 99.25 million shares, 3.88 times its normal volume, after unveiling Thunder and Halo, a new generation of autonomous aircraft developed in partnership with Anduril, the defence technology company, with Marubeni Aerospace named as launch partner. The stock has held most of that gain while volume faded from 99 million to 52, then 37, then 30 million.

Here is the contrast that made it useful at the time. In every other company we looked at, the sharp declines came on below-average volume, which reads as an absence of buyers rather than real selling. Archer was the mirror image: a large move on four times normal participation, in the other direction. That is why the score read high, and why we said wait rather than buy. Four sessions later, with half the move given back, that caution reads well.

If there is one habit to take from this page, it is that volume is the input that carries the information and almost nobody checks it. The price tells you what happened. The volume tells you whether anyone meant it.

Why the defence pivot matters

For years the eVTOL story depended on regulators certifying an entirely new category of aircraft for carrying passengers, a process with no precedent and no guaranteed timeline. The Anduril partnership changes the shape of that risk. Military procurement does not require the same civil passenger certification, defence budgets are larger and less price-sensitive, and a defence contract can arrive years before an air-taxi network is legal.

Anduril choosing to partner is also a technical endorsement from a company with no particular reason to be generous. That is a real argument. It is also an argument that became public three days ago and has already moved the stock about 15%.

Where a put would sit, if the score turned

The score is neutral, not negative, so this is not yet a put-selling setup. If it keeps cooling and turns properly negative, the $4.00 strike is the one to watch: it now sits below Archer's $4.30 fifty-two-week low, which is about as much cushion as this name offers, at roughly a 0.20 to 0.26 delta depending on expiry. The catch is earnings on 10 August, which fall inside every expiry worth using, so selling one today means selling into the print. The patient move is to let the score do its job.

The business, for completeness

A $3.6 billion market capitalisation on $300,000 of FY2025 revenue. Every line above grows, and accumulated losses total about $2.3 billion. It does hold $1.96 billion of cash, roughly 45% of the share price, but that cash exists because the company issued $1.86 billion of stock in 2025 alone. The runway was bought from shareholders.

Additional risks worth stating: 16.4% of the float is sold short, beta is 3.19 so it typically moves three times as much as the market in both directions, and the 52-week range of $4.30 to $14.62 tells the same story.

What to watch for

• An actual defence contract with a dollar value attached, following the Anduril partnership. This would convert an announcement into revenue and is the single most important possible event.
• FAA certification milestones for the Midnight aircraft.
• Price falling back below its 20-day average on quiet volume. That is when the score turns negative and this becomes a put-selling candidate rather than a call-selling one.
• Burn rising above $600M a year, or another large raise. A 3.5-year runway shortens quickly, and the burn has accelerated every year so far.

Quarterly results are expected around 10 August, inside the August expiry.