Weekly Income Alert – January 16, 2026

To Weekly Income Alert. I’m Marc Lichtenfeld. Glad to be back with you guys. We have a lot to get to today, so I know you probably thought this was just going to be a sleepy Friday before the long weekend.

We grab our two hundred dollars and move on with it. But I hope you drank your coffee and I hope you packed a lunch because there’s a ton to get through. This is going to be a bit of a different session because of market conditions and certain things I want to go over. So strap in and let’s get ready.

So first of all, thank you very much to Anthony for filling in last week.

I want to talk about last week’s trade because many of you are saying that you did not get filled. We are showing it as filled in the portfolio. So let me just quickly explain kind of how we determine whether a position has been filled or not. So normally, as you know, when I’m here, I’m trading the position with you.

So if I get filled, we consider it filled. And as you know, I don’t hit send on my order until after I’ve discussed this with you live and sent the order to all members or, you know, sent the alert to all members. So if I get filled in my Schwab account, then we consider the trade fill. Last week I wasn’t here and so I did not place that trade.

So when that happens, we have a team that looks at the action in the market and looks to see if trades went off at that price, you know, within a, you know, after the alert has gone out. And we do this for all of our services. So, you know, if you’re involved with some other services like Technical Pattern Profits or maybe with like Alexander Green’s insider alert, when he recommends or if I recommend a stock and an option, there is a team that looks and says, Okay, well, the stock was recommended at fifty dollars at ten zero five in the morning and then at ten zero seven, it did trade at fifty dollars And there were, you know, a reasonable number of trades that went off.

So we will consider this build. So, that’s that’s what happened last week. There were some I know there weren’t a lot, but there were some that did get filled at two ten. So, that is why we are considering it filled in the portfolio.

Realize that not everybody got filled and a decent number of you didn’t.

So, when that happens, you know, it’s really up to you whether you’re going to lower your price or not. Generally speaking, if, you know, when I’m when I’m running things and I can see that I have not been filled in my portfolio, then I will either say, I’ll send you an alert if I think we need to change it and lower the limit or we’ll just let it run and see if we can get filled at that price. But if you don’t hear from us, that means, you know, just kind of let it go and let it expire at the end of the day.

So, that’s just a little bit of kind of how the sausage is made regarding how we consider things filled. But, you know, ninety, ninety five percent of the time when I’m here and placing that trade, if I get filled in my Schwab account again after I’ve sent the order to everyone and discussed it, then the order is filled. So that was a little housekeeping right there.

Really excited to be back. This was a really, really big week for Weekly Income Alert. You remember a few weeks ago I had the gold hat and that was because we had the best track record at the Oxford Club. So on Tuesday, we got even more good news.

Many of you may know that the Oxford Club is part of Agora. That’s our parent company. And Agora is really the the best in class in the financial publishing industry. We’re the largest by probably magnitudes and we’re simply the best.

That’s not a disputable fact, really. It’s, you know, we have the best tools, we have the best people, the best products, you name it. We are best in class in the financial publishing industry. If you are in the industry, basically you want to work for Agora.

We’re Major League Baseball. You could be a good baseball player and make a living playing in Mexico, playing in Japan, have some star power. You could be very talented. All that’s wonderful.

You want to get to the big leagues. You want to play Major League Baseball. That’s Agora. And the reason I bring that up is because Weekly Income Alert received the top track record award in all of Agora.

So, real, real big deal. So, you know, we were the best of the best in twenty twenty five. Obviously, I’m very happy about that, but really happy that you guys are part of this because that means you made the right decision to be part of Weekly Income Alert and be part of the best of the best. So really, really exciting news. Rachel Gerhardt, Oxford Club Publisher, who is moderating today, graciously accepted the award on my behalf and gave a rousing speech, I’m told.

So, just really, really exciting stuff. So, to celebrate, we’re doing a special pricing on anyone who wants to renew to continue to receive weekly income alerts. So, Rachel will put that up, put the link in there. Again, special pricing to celebrate this this big award. So really, really happy about that. All right. So, as I said, there’s a lot to talk about today.

And this is not going to be just your normal, like I said, grab the put spread, get our two hundred bucks and move on. What I want to do today, the first thing I want to do is I am suggesting that we close next week’s trade. Now, you might be saying we are so far away from the the strike prices. We’re ten percent away. Why in the world would you do that? Here’s what I’m thinking Right now, when I looked right before we went on the air, the debit was about zero two dollars So it’ll cost us zero two dollars per contract to close the trade. We’ll capture ninety eight point five percent to ninety nine percent of the full amount.

Ten percent is very, very far away. The chances of the market dropping ten percent in the next week are really, really slim, but they’re not nothing.

And I’m not someone who trades on headlines. I don’t worry about things like that. But we do have some stuff out there. There’s talk about attacking Iran and, you know, regime change in Iran and just who knows?

Even putting Iran to the side for a second, who knows what’s out there? The chance of a ten percent drop is extremely low, but it’s not zero. And if we can close out a trade for almost the maximum win, take our money off the table. So not only do we have the profit, but now that one thousand dollars per contract isn’t being used, that’s sitting in our account. We can do whatever we want with it.

Because the price is so, so tiny, I kind of like the idea of just cashing it in, taking our chips off the table on this one. Again, I think the chances of a ten percent drop in the market, mean, that’s you’re talking about crash within a week. I think it’s it’s almost nothing, but it’s not nothing. And if we can get out with so with, you know, pretty much all of our profit, I kind of want to do it and just not even have to worry about next week’s expiration.

So, you know, I’m usually someone who’s saying, let’s let’s try to keep every single dollar that we can. But in this case, I just think it’s worth it to take our thousand dollars back, put the money, you know, put the profit in the bank and just not have anything to worry about. Plus, you know, next week we’re off for Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday on Monday. Not just we, the market is closed. That’s another day that you wouldn’t be able to get out if something happened. So, now you only have four trading days.

So I really like the idea of let’s just get out of this trade now and just not have to worry about it. So I will show you how to close it in case you’ve never closed a trade before. We’re going to do that live as well. So let me bring up my account Okay, so you should be able to see that.

So, here in my account, remember, I was not in on last week’s trade, so I’ve got two trades in the account. We’ve got today’s that’s going to expire worthless, so congratulations on that. We’ll keep the, I think that one was one point nine zero And then next week’s, so you can see here the January twenty third, twenty four point one zero and twenty four point two zero puts. So we’re going to close that.

And on Schwab’s account, you click on the arrow, close positions, and you got to make sure you select both of them because otherwise you’ll only be selecting one of them.

Hit close selected.

And now it brings you to each trade.

But then the midpoint and actually the midpoint is zero. I don’t think you’re going to get zero for it. They’re not going to let you close it for nothing.

So before I saw zero two dollars I think I’m going to try to put in two cents, and let’s see if we can even do that.

All right. So that means it’ll cost us two dollars plus the commission.

All right.

So, yeah, let’s go ahead and see if we can get this closed. It remains to be seen if the market makers will do that, if they’re even going to bother filling a trade for that little. But let’s see. So, Mark is saying Fidelity won’t accept zero zero two dollars or even zero three dollars minimum is zero five dollars Coach T says my mid is zero two three dollars I don’t know why the mid would be zero two three dollars I tell you what, if so Schwab is allowing zero zero two dollars if it’s zero five dollars I mean, you know, we’re talking a dollar, two here, but I don’t like well, yeah, dollars zero five, I would say leave it Again, we’re kind of splitting hairs here, but I do want to try to get as much as possible. So let’s see if we can get zero two dollars Closed four on Schwab, close at zero five dollars zero four dollars So yeah, I’m going to see if I can get the zero two dollars here. Let me send out the order to everyone.

So Michael J. Is getting close to five cents.

I almost said limit price four dollars That would have been a mistake.

Okay, I just sent that to everyone. Now I’ll place the tray. Let’s see what happens here.

Alright, I have not been filled yet, but we’ll just leave it out there for a little bit and see what happens.

Let me just stop sharing my screen for a second, reset my Schwab account.

Yeah, so like I said, we’ll just leave it up there for a minute or maybe more minute. Just we’ll see if we get filled.

I’m just checking the order status, see if I got filled.

Yeah, I’ve not gotten filled yet. Like I said, I wouldn’t be shocked if the market makers wouldn’t waste their time for less than zero five dollars Maybe that’s why Fidelity does that.

But we’ll just see. We’ll put it out there, see what happens.

I’m just getting the options set up here to show you today’s trade.

Okay, so, All right. Now, today.

We are going to do something a little different.

Let me tell you why. So, right now, markets are looking really, really strong and the Russell’s hitting new highs. Things are looking pretty great.

I’m starting to see some things that I don’t want to say are concerning me, but are making my antenna kind of twitch just a little bit at this point.

And what I mean by that is I’m seeing sentiment at extreme levels in all kinds of different places.

I’m seeing So, for example, there’s something I follow. You might be familiar with the ProShares ETF family, and they have a lot of inverse funds and leveraged funds. So you can you can do 2x, 3x certain indexes. You can you can be short, you know, let’s say the Nasdaq or the S and P through their ETFs. And they have an indicator or a ratio where they measure every day the inflows and outflows into their leveraged ETFs. So people that are betting big, you know, they’re betting on, you know, trying to take advantage of two to three times the move of these indexes. And they measure the inflows and outflows of the money that’s coming into the long ETFs versus the short ETFs.

So, you know, for example, if one million dollars goes into a 2X NASDAQ one hundred ETF that’s long and the same million dollars goes into a NASDAQ 2X short ETF, those would balance each other out. And the scale of this indicator is zero to one hundred. And so if it’s in perfect balance, fifty, you know, right in the middle would be where it is. So right now, this scale is at ninety one and it’s been bouncing between like eighty seven and ninety two the last few days, which are five year highs. It’s extreme bullishness.

So, you know, that’s something I took notice of. Some other things I’m noticing, consumer staples are starting to turn higher versus consumer discretionary. Consumer staples are typically more defensive. Consumer discretionary is, you know, I wouldn’t say super aggressive, but it kind of suggests that people are out there and they’re spending.

When consumer staples are outperforming, that often indicates that the market is getting a little more defensive. So I’m starting to see just little things like that, that sentiment indicators that are so strong, so strongly bullish that and then, like I said, consumer staples starting to, you know, which is not a sentiment indicator, but is really showing a rotation in the market towards maybe a little bit more defensive. And with the market just going straight higher, everybody is talking about the markets going higher. There’s no strategists out there that are bearish. Barron’s has a roundtable discussion in January. They had ten strategists this year. Nine of them were bullish.

Last year, two of them were bullish. And we know what happened last year. The market was on fire last year. So, you know, just anywhere you look, nobody’s bearish.

Nobody’s even saying a pause is coming. And I want to be clear, I’m not saying that either. I’m not saying it’s we’re I’m not saying it’s time to get bearish here. We’re putting on the call spread.

What I am saying though, is I think it makes sense to hedge a little bit. And so what I’m going to do is, and Anthony alluded to it last week and the timing is purely coincidental. I didn’t know he was going to talk about this last week. And then as I was looking at the markets on Wednesday, it kind of dawned on me. I think this makes sense that we should do something like this. So what we’re going to do is we are going to put on our normal put spread just like we always do. But I’m also going to put on a bear call spread at the same time.

That’s known as an iron condor. It’s a very scary name. Hate it. But all it is is a bull put spread and a bear call spread at the same time.

Different strikes, and I’ll walk you through it all. It’s not going to be as complicated as you think it is. If you can do a bear put spread, this is quite easy to do. But you do need to understand a couple of things because we are going to put the so we’re doing our bear put spread just like we always do, right?

Three percent away from the market. Then we’re going to put the bear call spread also three percent away from the market. So the, the downside is that if the market continues to rally and just keeps going strong and is three percent higher at expiration, what would have been one hundred percent gain for the put spread now becomes a loss if it exceeds the strike price.

So let’s let it’ll be easier, I think, if I show you. Let me let me see where the market is trading right at this moment and come up with our strike prices.

Okay, so here’s what we’re going to do. So let’s we’ll do our Russell, just like always.

Okay, so RUT.

So I’m going to show it to you two separate ways. So first, I’m just going to show you as a vertical put spread here, our normal vertical put spread, right? So choose RUTW, and then we’re going to go to February sixth.

Okay, so we are going to if we were just doing the put spread like normal, we would do the two thousand six hundred and the two thousand five hundred and ninety put spread, right?

And the credit would be two dollars Okay. So under if this is what we were doing, as you know, if the market does not come down to two thousand six hundred, we keep all the money. If it goes higher, we keep all the money. Anything below two thousand six hundred is where a loss could start.

Now, if we and let me back up. So that would be the vertical put spread. If we do the vertical call spread, okay, so vertical call spread is a bearish position. So we are selling the twenty seven point six zero, and we would buy the twenty seven point seven zero.

So, if we did that, why is that wrong? Why am I getting a debit here?

Selling the twenty seven. Oh, because it’s put. Got to change that to call. Okay. So, if we sell this bear spread, then our credit here is two sixty.

Now, the nice thing is we get both of those credits. So instead of our normal, let’s say roughly two hundred dollars that we’ve been collecting lately, now we’d be getting somewhere around four fifty dollars because we’d be getting both of them. The downside is, as I mentioned, if the market rallies and it goes above two thousand seven hundred sixty dollars now we end up in a potential loss situation. And the breakeven is your net credit plus the strike price.

So, let’s keep the math simple. If we collected four fifty as the net credit and our short strike is twenty seven sixty, our break even would be twenty seven sixty four and a half.

So anything above twenty seven sixty four and a half and we start losing money. So that’s the risk here that we there’s a greater chance or there’s greater chance that we do have a loss because if the market just continues to rally and goes three percent higher, then we could end up in a loss situation.

The benefit is we’re more than doubling the income that we are receiving. All right. We’ll receive, let’s say, roughly four fifty instead of two dollars. If the market tanks and our normal put spread would have been a loss situation, well, now our loss is less because we’re getting an extra two fifty. So, let’s look at a max loss situation. Market absolutely falls apart.

Our regular bear, our regular bull put spread would have had a max loss of eight hundred dollars because a thousand dollars minus the two dollar credit, two hundred dollar credit. So it’d be eight hundred. Now our max loss would be five fifty because we’d be getting a four fifty dollars credit. So that’s the benefit. And then anything in between this number, these two numbers, this roughly six percent range of where we are in the market means we have a max gain of four fifty. So, those are the benefits and the risks. So, the risk is market continues to go higher and we end up with a loss where we wouldn’t have had to take one.

But I do think right now, because of some of the things I’m seeing, I think it’s worth it to do this. Now, if you’re not comfortable with that, just do the put spread. That’s fine. And as you’ll notice, I’m not saying, Hey, it’s time to flip the switch and get bearish and put on a call spread.

I’m not doing that at all. What I’m saying is I’m seeing some things out there that are making me just get a little bit more defensive and just have a little less confidence that the market is going straight up. I could be wrong. You know, certainly don’t have a crystal ball, but some of those things out there have me just a little bit concerned.

And I think it’s worth it to take this chance, get the higher credit and you know, and hedge a little bit. So that’s what I am suggesting doing. Now, when you place the trade, you could do it two ways. You could do it as I showed you, where you place the vertical put spread, place the order, then put in a separate order as a call spread, place the order that will result in two commissions.

I get commissions are pretty low, but, you know, it’s still whatever it is.

Or you can put it all as one trade with one limit price. And that is called an iron condor. But all you’re doing is basically you’re building a put spread and then you’re building a credit spread.

So let’s do that. So here. So on Schwab, again, it’ll be different on other sites, but on Schwab, you can choose Iron Condor right here.

And again, I hate that name.

So, it’s already populated with the call spread that I had put in. So, sell to open the February sixth, two thousand seven hundred sixty call, buy to open the February six, two thousand seven hundred and seventy call. And then you have to add the put spread. So here you can see it says add a leg, so we are going to add that. So now we’re going to sell to open the two thousand six hundred and make sure you change this one to put because you want to have a call spread and a put spread. You got to make sure that you are changing to put. And then when you add a second one, it will automatically default to a put, but you got to change that one to a buy to open.

So what you can see here, we’ve got sell to open.

I’m to move this window a little bit.

Sell to open the February sixth, two thousand seven hundred sixty call. You’re buying to open the two thousand seven hundred seventy call. Again, the market goes above two thousand seven hundred sixty, roughly, We’ll see where we get filled roughly four fifty, twenty seven sixty four fifty would be our break even point. Below that, we’re making money. Above that, we’re losing money.

On the downside.

We’re selling to open the two thousand six hundred buying to open the two thousand five hundred ninety, just like our regular put spread.

The break even would be two thousand five hundred ninety five fifty because if it goes below two thousand six hundred, the spread is in the money, but we’ve collected four point five zero. So again, our break even’s at four point five zero. If we get filled to four point five zero, we’ll be two thousand seven hundred sixty four point five zero on the upside.

Above that, we lose money. Anything below that, we’re making money.

And on the downside, twenty five, ninety five, fifty. We want the market. So we want the market to stay between twenty five, ninety five, fifty and twenty seven, sixty four, five zero the next three weeks. So we’ve got a credit right here, it says four point five zero, four point five five, let’s review the order.

Why did not did not review my order? There we go.

And I just lost it. Okay, I got to rebuild this. Sorry.

Yeah, I have to rebuild this.

Let me go do that real quick. And that way, can actually show you again how it’s done. Iron Condor.

Let’s see. What did I say? We’re buying to open.

Let me do it the same way I did before.

So we’re selling to open the Russell. February sixth, that’s important.

So we’re selling the twenty seven point six zero call.

Going the wrong way.

Yeah, I don’t love Schwab’s technology in their site other than Thinkorswim.

All right, so we’re selling the 2760s.

We’re buying to open the 2770s.

That’s not right.

All right. That should be a call.

Then we’re going to sell to open.

Oh, I see what the problem is.

There we go. Okay, so it should say iron condor if you have that option.

And we’re selling the 2600s.

The puts, we gotta change that to put. That’s really, really important.

Why does this keep defaulting to custom four leg and not letting me do what I want to do?

I see. All right, now we’re cooking with gas. Okay, so let me just double check this. So we’ve the sell to open the February sixth, two thousand seven hundred sixty call, buy and open the two thousand seven hundred seventy call, selling to open the twenty sixth. Okay, so let me review my order.

And I’m having a Schwab is not working for me. Terrific. All right, so I’m going to go ahead and send this out. If you guys are on Schwab, Kathy is saying Thinkorswim is letting you do it. So, I may have to go back into Thinkorswim and try to do it.

I’m going to go ahead and send this order out so you guys can go ahead and place that order.

Let me just make sure I have the right numbers.

Okay, I’m going to put in a limit price of four point five zero dollars Let’s see if we get filled. If we don’t, then we’ll come back to it later in the day.

Okay, so the trade has been posted.

Yeah, really, I was just complaining about Schwab’s technology and that’s not really working. That’s not great.

All right. So the trade has been posted. You can go ahead and make that trade. Let me know if you’re getting filled.

I know some people were asking what’s the maximum loss. The maximum loss would be five fifty dollars if you got filled at four fifty dollars It’s one thousand dollars minus the credit, which would be four fifty People are not getting filled at four fifty, got four forty six.

So, Nick has a great question. If an iron condor is placed, do you have to exit the position as an iron condor or can you close the spreads? You can close the spreads. You could close one leg of it if you wanted to.

I wouldn’t recommend that. But you can you can close whatever part of it you want. And you would do it exactly the way I showed you when we closed the other when we tried to close the other position, which was, you know, you’d want to make sure you select each leg of the trade. But yeah, it’s totally up to you as to whether you could do that.

Actually, I’m going to see if I ever got filled on that closed position, the zero two dollars No, I did not.

So we’re still open on the zero two dollars one. I wonder if if the market makers just don’t do it for less than zero five dollars I’m not sure.

That’s something I could look into. We’ll see.

Maybe once we get off the air, I’ll reach out to Schwab and see if that’s even something that’s possible and let you guys know.

All right. A lot of questions here. Can you explain what we gain lose depending on how the Russell moves? Sure. So, if the Russell moves to a high, the Russell keeps going.

So, our short strike on the high side is twenty seven point six zero. So, anything above twenty seven point six zero is not good for us. Now, that we get a four point five zero credit, that means our break even is twenty seven, sixty four, fifty above twenty seven, sixty four, fifty and we’re losing money.

Anything below that up to all the way down to two thousand six hundred basically or two thousand five hundred and ninety five.

So let me back up between two thousand five hundred and ninety five point five zero and two thousand seven hundred sixty four point five zero is a maximum gain. Anything above two thousand seven hundred and sixty four fifty, we start losing money. Anything below twenty five, ninety five, fifty, we start losing money. And again, that’s at expiration. You know, obviously there’s still juice in the option premium before that.

So those numbers will will change a little bit. But I’m talking about at expiration. So we want the Russell to stay between twenty five, ninety five, fifty and twenty seven, sixty four, fifty. That’s that’s our sweet spot. So a nice six percent range over the next three weeks.

So that’s that’s the very, very simple answer where we need the market to stay. And we can, you know, we can trade out of things if we need to. As somebody brought up, we can close a certain leg of the spread if we want to.

Hopefully we don’t. Hopefully we just keep the maximum amount. But that’s the plan.

Slivner Gru says being so far out of the money on closing trade, it’s usually no volume trading. Therefore, zero five gets the market makers to enter the trade. That’s what I was thinking may be the case, but I thought maybe I’ll just take a shot at zero two dollars see if it happens.

Gordon says if we do only the put, I just lost it. What should the strike price be? Same thing. So so if you’re only doing the put, then it’s still the two thousand six hundred.

We’re selling the two thousand six hundred, buying the two thousand five hundred and ninety. So all an iron condor is, is you’re taking the put spreads that you know and love and then you’re laying on a bear call spread three percent above the market. It doesn’t have to be, but for our purposes, that’s how we do it. So, it’s the same put spread that you know, but we just are putting on a call spread above the market as a hedge in case the market falls down.

That’s all an iron condor is. It’s such a scary, complicated term, but it’s really just a bear put spread and a bull call spread for our purposes. There’s other ways of doing it. But all we’re doing is a bear put spread, a bull put spread and a bear call spread.

So, Mike has a great question. On November twenty first, we did a bear put spread that made us four twenty dollars because the market was more volatile then. Could we therefore get much more than four fifty if we do iron condors when the market is more volatile? Absolutely.

You would expect to. If the markets are really tanking, volatility is higher, then yeah, certainly the puts will certainly be worth more for sure. Calls may come down in price, but I would imagine the puts would increase more than the calls would decrease. So, yeah, I think we could generate some very significant numbers there.

Although, of course, then, you know, when volatility increases, so does your risk. So, you know, as I always say, you get paid, you get compensated in the markets based on risk. When the risk is low, then the compensation is low when the risk is higher. So, yeah, well, we would make more money in that kind of environment, but our risk is higher.

But it doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. Mean, if we could make six hundred or seven hundred dollars on a credit spread in really scary environment or on a condor, as you’re saying, it could totally be worth So obviously every market situation will be a little different.

GOLTN says, puts got filled at two, still waiting for the calls, can’t do iron Condor on Robinhood U. K. So, Okay, so that’s a really interesting point. So, if you can’t get filled on a condor for some reason, you have to do it separately, make sure you’re doing the put spread first. I don’t want anybody just having the call spread. Okay, so I’m very comfortable having the put spread.

If, you know, if I wasn’t starting to see some of these little things out there, it would just be business as usual. And I would just put the put spread on.

You know, I was still kind of wrestling with this late Wednesday afternoon, early yesterday as to whether we were going to do this or not and really had zero problem at all with just having a put spread on.

So just make sure you’re not only in a bear call spread. That I don’t want because I’m not bearish. I’m just getting a little bit careful.

JBJ says, are we risking a thousand dollars or two thousand less the four fifty? You’re risking a thousand dollars minus the four fifty. So the max loss here at four if you get filled to four fifty is five hundred fifty dollars Walters, what’s the max loss with the Condor? It will be the thousand dollars minus your net credit. So again, in this case would be five fifty if you get four if you get filled at four fifty. A lot of people saying they have to go down to four fifty to get filled on tasty trade.

So once I get off the air, I’m going to try to get filled again at four fifty. If I don’t get filled quickly, then I may take the limit price down to four forty. So keep an eye on your inboxes and your phones. Just annoying that having some technical problems here.

JR14 says what’s the order type when closing a trade? Great question. So just like how we tried to close the put spread, you know, you’re going to buy to open the on the on the the put side of things. It’ll be exactly the same.

You’ll buy to open, anything that is that you had sold. So on the put, you would buy to open the higher strike put. You would I’m sorry, you would buy to close buy to close the higher strike put. You would sell to close the lower strike put.

And then on the call side of things, you would sell to close the higher strike call and buy to close the lower strike call. So whatever you’re basically just flipping whatever is currently open.

So if you’re short something, you’d buy to close it. And if you’re long something, you would sell to close it.

And again, this would be if we close out early and it’s not on camera, then I would certainly walk you through it, you know, in an alert and tell you exactly what to do. Sonia says with the order be debit. No, no, no, no. It should never be debit.

We are weekly income alert is all about credit spreads. We generate income every week unless you’re talking about closing a trade. If you’re closing a trade, it’ll be a debit. But when we’re opening a trade like we just did with this iron condor, it will always, always, always be a credit.

If you are seeing a debit in your account or debit on your screen for the price, that means something is wrong. One of the variables is wrong. And don’t feel bad about it. You’ve seen me do that all the time where I’m looking and saying, why is this showing a debit of four dollars when it should be a credit of two?

And I’m like, oh, I have the wrong strike price. I have the wrong date. I have a call instead of a put.

But any time you see you’re trying to open a credit spread or one of our iron condors, if we continue to do this, if you see a debit, one of your variables is wrong. So double check against what I’ve posted and and what do you have, because it will always, always, always be a credit. It’ll only be a debit when we’re closing a position early.

Red Rock says I have to put in a negative number to get a net credit. Okay. I’m not sure what that means by you have to put in a negative number.

Blue Sky got filled at five thirty four. Wow. Amazing.

Frank C. Says, Can you explain why the ten point difference in the spread? Sure. It goes back to our back testing.

So kind of the same way that we are choosing strike prices that are about three percent away from the current market and that our expirations are about three weeks. Ten points was what we found had the best risk and return. So, you know, we could do it. We could increase our chance, probably increase our win rate significantly if we widened that that spread number of points in between the two strikes.

But we’re also going to significantly increase our risk if things go against us. We can also tighten it to make it five points, which would decrease our risk, but it’s also going to decrease the amount of income. So we found in the back test, ten points was the sweet spot and had the best return for the risk.

JRCA says, Can you show on Schwab how you closed the January twenty third? Sure. So, it did not close yet.

So, tell you what, let me do this again. Let me try this.

Okay, so I just canceled my order for zero two dollars just for the purpose so that I can show you how to how to do it again.

Let’s see.

Just gotta get to that count here.

Okay, so this was the trade I was trying to close earlier, the January twenty third.

So if you go to close positions and you want to make sure you’re selecting both both parts of the spread because only one of them was selected, so you need to make sure you do both of them. Close selected and now it’s showing again that debit of zero, which obviously is not going to get filled.

So then I would just put in again, I’m just going to try it. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen, but let’s try it anyway. Two cents.

I could have sworn yesterday. I thought I saw a trade go off at two cents. I could be wrong, but I thought I saw it.

Or maybe I just saw the midpoint. I could be wrong.

So, yeah, so then I’ll put in two cents.

Review order. Oh, by the way, before I send this, this is exactly how you would do a close the condor. It would be the same thing. So when you go to close positions and it showed the two open positions. If you were trying to close one of the iron condors, it should show all four positions. And then you would just select each one if you were going to close the whole thing.

All right, so just sent the order again, see if that stays open. I mean, see if it gets filled.

All right.

RKR said got filled at zero five dollars immediately. Yeah, it sounds like a lot of people are getting filled at zero five dollars So I’ll send you guys an alert later if I decide to boost it up to zero five dollars Waylon says, How many trades does it take to make up for one loss if prices are the same?

I’m not sure what you mean by if prices are the same, but if you if let’s say on a put spread we made two hundred dollars if we took a maximum loss, which would be eight hundred dollars then it would take four positive trades to make up for the one negative. If like in today, if we do the iron condor and we’re getting four fifty, then, you know, it really only takes slightly more than one positive trade to make up for a loss. If we if we took a five fifty dollars loss, that would be the maximum loss if we get filled at four fifty. So it would be, you know, one point two trades.

So every every trade is going to be different. The thing to remember when we’re trading the put spreads, and especially keep in mind right now, markets are very, very strong. So volatility is very low. And as a result, the value of the put spreads are quite low.

You know, I mean, the VIX is extremely, extremely low right now, abnormally low. So in a, I don’t know, maybe more normal market environment, the market’s not quite as strong. I’m not talking about a bear market, but just, you know, maybe a kind of a meandering upward market versus kind of how strong it is now.

I think our put spreads are generally going to generate more income.

We should be getting somewhere close to to three or higher in it, I think in a more normal environment rather than two and some weeks even below two. But the other thing to remember as well is, you know, this is and I’ve used the baseball analogy before. You know, we’re hitting singles every week. We’re not home run hitters in this service.

That’s not what we’re trying to do. We’re just trying to get on base every single week. And sometimes sometimes it’s not going to work out. We’re going to get a loss.

And sometimes that that loss will be a maximum loss. You know, we’ll try to trade our way out of that, but sometimes that will happen.

So the key thing is to make sure that we are getting those winners week after week after week by doing it intelligently, by managing our risk, not taking on too much risk and just kind of sticking with what works. And right now in a market that has been strong, it has worked for sure. You know, again, eighty six percent win rate in the back test. We are right around that number now in real life since we started in May, won that award for best track record at all of Agora.

So this is working. You know, this is not this is not just theoretical in a in a spreadsheet somewhere. This is working in real time. People are making really, really good money.

I know a few, you know, some people who joined very recently. We had a couple of losses in the last couple of months. So, that’s, you know, that’s going to affect your own track record. But over the long term, this has been working exactly according to plan.

And that’s with the numbers actually being smaller than we had anticipated in the backtest. You know, the backtest, again, the volatility was a little bit higher and our generally speaking, our weekly numbers were a little bit higher. So we’re actually collecting a little bit less income than we expected in the backtest, and it’s still working pretty well. So as things maybe get a little more volatile and again, I’m not talking about bear markets, crashes, corrections, but just as things kind of get a little more normal in the volatility arena, we should generate more and more income.

So that’s kind of how that works.

Let’s see.

So a couple of weeks ago, you mentioned you’d show the overall net income loss for this service. This is not the win rate.

Correct. So I do need to get that information for you. What I can tell you, I’ll tell you from my own account. Now, there were some weeks that I missed, so this is not every single week.

But my account, so risking one thousand dollars every week, right, that’s the amount that is at stake every week minus the net credit. So my account is up twenty four hundred dollars So that’s since May. So, you know, if you started with, let’s say, dollars four thousand, which is really the minimum if you’re trading one account per week, I’m sorry, one contract per week. So that comes out to about a sixty percent total return over.

I think we launched in May. So that’s pretty darn good. Again, my numbers are going be slightly different because I did miss a few weeks. I don’t know if I missed any of the losers, though.

I think I only missed winners. I’m not one hundred percent sure of that. But that’s my total return just trading.

And I’m not doing anything other than what you see on the screen where I place the trade live.

So, you’re seeing exactly. One exception will be when we get off today, I will have to replace this order because I’m having a problem with Schwab. And I will let you know if things change and I don’t get filled. We need to change the limit price, what have you. I’m just curious, has anybody been filled at four fifty? I know a lot of people were getting filled at four forty.

IRS says you’re not getting rich, but still making money.

True.

And again, I’m just doing it with one contract here just to show you guys the example.

But if you’re earning if you can earn sixty percent on your money in seven, eight months, that’s pretty darn good. So Schwab filled at four seventy. Looks like most people are not getting filled at four fifty, but maybe a few are.

All right. Let me just see if there are any remaining questions.

Can you list the range again? We want Russell to end up for max profit. Absolutely. So we want the Russell to be above twenty five, ninety five, fifty and below twenty seven, sixty four, fifty.

That’s our range. And again, that’s if you got filled at four fifty.

It’ll differ slightly. You know, if you got filled at four forty, then it’ll just be very slightly different. But that’s the range we want.

We want twenty five ninety five fifty is our our bottom. That’s our floor, which would be the same as if we were just doing the put spread.

And then twenty seven, I’m sorry, twenty seven, sixty four, fifty is our ceiling. Anything above that and then we’re in the red. But as long as it’s below twenty seven, sixty four, fifty, we’re in good shape. All right. Edward just got filled at four fifty. Great.

Yes, as Mark points out, max profit is between the short strikes. Breakeven is the short strikes offset by the received credit. Absolutely. Good summary.

J. Sip. J. Sip says been since the start doing much better than sixty percent annualized. Very, very happy to hear that.

Randy says I’m unable to enter the trade. No information found for dollar sign RUT. I’m not sure what broker you’re on. Try RUTW, try .RUT and if that doesn’t help, contact your broker and find out what’s going on because that it should be not a problem to place that trade.

Can you comment on what to do if one enters the wrong date?

February twentieth versus February second. So, were doing the February sixth, by the way, not February second. But if you enter the wrong date, generally speaking, when someone and I do this too, if I make the wrong trade by mistake and it’s something significant like that, not something very, very tiny.

I’ll just close the trade and put the trade that I want in. You never want to be in a trade that you did not intend to make and then just hope that it works out. That usually doesn’t end well, almost never. So any time I make a mistake like that and it happens, it happens to everybody.

You just put the wrong expiration date to put put instead of call. There’s lots of ways to make a mistake like that. Just exit the trade. It’ll cost you a little bit of money if you realize it very shortly after it happened.

Chances are the market hasn’t moved against you too much. You know, it will cost you something, no doubt about it, but it shouldn’t be too much. But I would not hold on to a trade that you did not intend to make. So I would close it and then put the put the correct information in.

Mark says I made a mistake one time a weekly that closed out a few days earlier. Worked out. Awesome.

Once in a while. Once in a while, you’ll make a mistake and the market does go in your favor. That has happened, but usually not too often.

Kenneth T says if I put the trade in separately, is it two contracts at one thousand dollars a piece? Yes, it will be.

And yeah, that will be the case. The other thing, too, I know commissions aren’t a big factor for for most people because they are so low. But at least on Schwab, the commissions will be the same if you do it separately versus an iron condor. If you do it separately, two separate trades, you’ll pay two commissions. If do an iron condor, you’ll just pay double the commission. So, you know, on that one contract, it was like two dollars and change versus, you know, two separate one dollar and change commissions.

Okay. Would you repeat the floor and ceiling range again, please? Absolutely.

So we want the Russell to stay below twenty seven, sixty four, fifty.

That’s the ceiling. Twenty seven, sixty four, fifty is the ceiling and the floor is twenty five ninety five fifty. So we don’t want it to go below that. So we want the Russell to be between twenty five ninety five fifty and twenty seven sixty four fifty.

So, Moisher says he had to change from zero two dollars to zero five dollars Yeah, I think that’s going to be the case.

Like I said, I was I was wondering if the market makers would get out of bed for zero two dollars to fill a zero two dollars order, although not that zero five dollars is a huge moneymaker. But yeah, it appears that zero five dollars I’ve never tried actually in all my years tried to close a trade for zero two dollars an option. So this was first time for me. I’m pretty sure I’ve tried to actually I don’t even know if I’ve ever bought one that low. My zero five dollars might have been. So I’m a little surprised because someone said Fidelity wouldn’t even allow you to. I’m a little surprised Schwab would let you, but I guess maybe they figure if the market makers are willing to do it.

Beth says, why twenty seven, sixty four, fifty? That’s not any of the strikes. I’m confused. So the reason is because the short strike is twenty seven, sixty. Right. So anything above twenty seven sixty and the trade is now now starting to lose, except we’ve collected that four fifty credit.

So we have a buffer, right? So at twenty seven sixty one, the trade is is a, you know, a dollar loser, except we’ve collected four fifty dollars for four dollars fifty cents. Right. So twenty seven sixty one, we’re down one hundred dollars except we’re already up four fifty from selling the credit.

So we’re actually our net is three fifty. If it goes up to twenty seven sixty two, now the trade is down by two hundred dollars But again, we’ve already collected the four fifty. They can’t take that away from us. Right.

So if we lose, we have a maximum loss situation. Dollars one thousand comes out of our account.

But that’s not one thousand dollars plus the credit. It’s one thousand dollars And whatever we’ve collected in the credit stays in that account. So if we have a max loss, market rips higher, goes to two thousand eight hundred. We’re going to be we’re going to lose one thousand dollars in the commodity account, but we’ve collected four fifty already that stays.

So then the net loss would be five fifty. So that’s why the twenty seven sixty four fifty would be the break even. So even though we may the trade may be losing up until that point, we’re already four fifty dollars ahead. So until the trade goes four fifty against us, then we don’t lose money until it’s four fifty against us.

So that’s it.

All right. So with that said, this is a long session, a lot to get into heading into a long weekend. I will send an update regarding the the limit price. I’ll tell you what, if I get filled, I’ll let you know.

If I don’t get filled, I’ll let you know. I’ll put in so you have it in writing what are what the parameters are for this trade as far as the top and the bottom where we want the Russell to be so that you have it all in one place. I’ll let you know if I got filled on that zero two dollars So, look for something from me this afternoon just so you have all that information and we’re all on the same page. So great session, everyone.

Thank you for sticking with us. And again, if you want to take advantage of that special pricing to renew weekly income alert and make sure you’re with us for another year and hopefully enjoying sixty percent annual returns or better. Or heck, even if you can get thirty percent, no one would complain about that. But whatever your number is, hopefully it’s a good one and you’ll want to stick with us.

So, please do click on that link and get that special pricing. So, have a great long weekend, everyone, and I will send out an alert to you this afternoon.