The company is trying to shed its cyclical past, and the options market is pricing a vast range of outcomes for whether it will succeed.

For decades, the memory chip industry has been a story of boom and bust. SanDisk (SNDK) is now making a bold attempt to escape that cycle with a new business model built on long-term customer contracts, but whether this reinvention will stick remains an open question. The options market, our cleanest gauge of risk, is pricing an answer with a very wide range.

If you hold SanDisk shares, you are exposed to that full range, whether you ever trade an option or not. The market is pricing an implied volatility of 109% over the coming year. For a stock trading around $1214.83, this isn’t just an abstract…