- UNH options imply a ±8.5% move for UnitedHealth's Oct 13, 2026 earnings report (before market open), as of September 29, 2026.
- UnitedHealth has moved ±5.9% on average at the peak of earnings day over the last 10 years; the median is ±4.6% and the 95th percentile ±10.6%.
- UNH's actual earnings move exceeded what options had priced in 14 of its last 16 reports (88%).
- Last report (Jul 16, 2026): options priced ±6.2%, the stock closed +1.2%.
Timeline: what happens when
| When | What | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Tue Oct 6 | IV ramp window opens | The five sessions before a report are where UNH's implied volatility has historically climbed; the ramp chart below shows the last one. |
| Tue Oct 13 | UNH reports before market open | before the 9:30 am ET open. The implied move on this page is frozen at the last pre-print reading. |
| Tue Oct 13 | Reaction session | The move that counts against the implied is measured at this session's close, off the pre-report close. |
| Tue Oct 13 | This page updates with the result | Only after the session has closed — a realised move is not published before it is real. |
| Fri Oct 16 | +3 sessions | First drift checkpoint: has the reaction held, faded or extended? |
| Thu Oct 22 | +7 sessions | Second checkpoint; the drift chart below shows how the last two reports travelled. |
Dates are NYSE sessions; a market holiday shifts the post-print rows by a day. Report timing is the company's scheduled slot and can change — this page refreshes daily.
What options price vs what UNH has done
UNH's last five reports: priced vs happened
| Report | Options priced | Close move | Peak move |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 16, 2026 | ±6.2% | +1.2% | +10.3% |
| Apr 21, 2026 | ±6.0% | +7.0% | +10.6% |
| Jan 27, 2026 | ±6.0% | -19.6% | -20.3% |
| Oct 28, 2025 | ±6.2% | +0.5% | +4.1% |
| Jul 29, 2025 | ±8.1% | -7.5% | -7.6% |
Full 10-year table and the live number all season: UNH implied-move page · season-wide scoreboard: Q3 implied-vs-actual tracker.
The EarningsWatcher Lens on UNH
Where the priced move sits. Options price ±8.5%. Against UNH's own ten-year record of earnings-day peak moves, that is larger than roughly four in five of UNH's earnings-day peaks over ten years (80th percentile ±7.6%), short of the ±10.6% tail.
Recent versus long history. For UNH, the recent regime is louder than the long one: ±11.6% over the last two years against ±5.9% over ten. Today's priced move is between the two — under the two-year figure, over the ten-year one.
The base rate. In the 16 UNH reports with a recorded implied move, the realised peak exceeded what options had priced 14 times (88%) — history here has favoured the buyers of movement. That is a description of the past, not a forecast of this print.
The last print. Jul 16, 2026: options priced ±6.2%; the stock closed +1.2% with an intraday peak of +10.3% — outside the priced range.
What this does not say. None of the above carries a direction. The implied move is the size of the move options are pricing, in either direction, and the history is how big past moves were — not which way the next one goes.
Free to quote with attribution: EarningsWatcher, September 29, 2026 · earnings-watcher.com/wiki/unh-earnings-october-2026
The week before: UNH's IV rush
That climb is tradeable — and it ends at the print. How members play it: the IV Rush Radar draws UNH's live IV against its typical ramp with three entry signals and a projected straddle. Free breakdown: UNH before earnings.
The weeks after: does the move hold?
The reaction close is the start, not the story — DriftLab scores UNH's follow-through, gap-fill odds and drift strength for members. Free breakdown: UNH after earnings.
- Simulator — build the exact UNH position and see its likelihood of success and risk/reward against ten years of reactions, with real IV crush modelled
- IV Rush Radar — UNH's live pre-earnings IV curve, three snapshot signals, projected straddle
- DriftLab — follow-through, gap-fill and drift scores for the days after
- Data Picks — the week's scored ideas across five strategies, UNH week included
Sources and method
- Implied move — EarningsWatcher's live options data for UNH: the move the at-the-money straddle prices into the report, read daily and frozen at the last pre-print reading. As of September 29, 2026.
- Historical moves — the Moves Analyzer's per-release record for UNH: 40 reports over ten years, measured as the peak intraday move on earnings day (the app's default view) and the reaction-session close, both off the pre-report close.
- Implied-vs-actual history — 16 reports with a recorded implied move, from the same dataset; the "beat the implied" count compares the realised peak with the priced move.
- Report date and timing — UnitedHealth's scheduled release slot as tracked by EarningsWatcher; confirmed with the company's investor-relations materials where available.
- Method — how EarningsWatcher measures implied and realised moves · how the implied move is calculated.
Updates
- Sep 29, 2026 — Published ahead of the report; implied move and history refresh daily until the print.
- Pending — the result is added the session after UNH reports, once the reaction close is recorded.
Frequently asked questions
When is UNH's October 2026 earnings report?
UnitedHealth reports on Oct 13, 2026, before market open — before the 9:30 am ET open. Dates can change; this page refreshes daily.
What is the expected move for UNH earnings?
Options currently price a ±8.5% move (the implied move) for the Oct 13, 2026 report. For context, UNH's 10-year average peak move is ±5.9%, the median ±4.6% and the 95th-percentile tail ±10.6%.
Will UNH beat earnings — can this page predict the move?
No page can predict direction, and this one does not try. What is measurable: how big a move options price, how that compared with what actually happened in each past report (14 of 16 beat the implied), and how the stock has behaved before and after prints. Decision tools — the simulator's likelihood of success, the IV Rush signals, DriftLab's follow-through scores — are for EarningsWatcher members.
What usually happens to UNH stock after earnings?
Over its tracked reports UNH's earnings-day close averaged ±6.4% with the biggest single-day close at -22.4%. The day-by-day record — and whether moves follow through or fade — is on the UNH after-earnings page and in DriftLab.