Weekly Income Alert – January 30, 2026

Welcome everyone to Weekly Income Alert. I’m Marc Lichtenfeld. Glad you are with us. So great to see so many familiar names. We’ve got Scurby in sunny Mexico.

It’s sunny here in South Florida, but we’re going to getting down to thirty two degrees this weekend. So I know there are a lot of people who probably won’t feel too bad for me, like fifty nine Sprite drivers that it got up to zero in central Indiana. So thanks for staying indoors and doing weekly and come alert with us. We’ve also got Art P in cold Easton, Pennsylvania.

Easton, of course, the home of the Easton assassin, Larry Holmes, heavyweight champion from the 1980s, was one of my absolute favorites, I got to meet him a number of years ago. Some of you may know my side hustle. I’m a ring announcer, so I’ve met pretty much every boxer from the 80s on up. Met Sugar Ray, Leonard, Floyd Mayweather, Tyson. But Larry Holmes was the guy I kind of geeked out about because I used to have posters of him on my wall as a kid. And he couldn’t have been nicer about it.

RP, if you see Larry, tell him I said hello.

So good to see you today.

Just to give you a little heads up, I am kind of sick, so I’m going to hope that I don’t have to reach for a tissue, but if I do, I apologize. And if I look worse for wear and sound worse for wear, that’s what’s going on.

But interesting stuff happening in the markets right now.

So you’ll remember when I put on the Iron Condor a couple of weeks ago, I had said that there were some things I was a little concerned about. Just little cracks in the market that I thought it made sense to put on the iron condor. In my technical pattern profits, Friday forecast that I put out just about a half hour ago, I talked about a couple of those things and I’m not seeing those things right now anymore. A couple of the things that I was concerned about was the consumer discretionary stocks, the sector underperforming the consumer staples at that time.

And that’s usually a sign that that the market’s getting defensive. That has changed. It’s not drastically different, but we are seeing discretionary kind of bouncing instead of staples.

Consumer discretionary stocks are making higher lows relative to consumer staples. So that’s a positive. If that changes, if it makes a lower low, then it’s another reason to think about getting more defensive. The other thing though is that the about two thirds of S and P five hundred stocks are above their two hundred day moving average.

So a strong technical indicator that the market’s pretty healthy doesn’t mean that, you know, that these things are, you know, carved in stone and that they can’t change. But as of right now, I’m not seeing anything that really concerns me. I mean, obviously today we’re down a bit, not terribly. We’re down less than half a percent.

On the S and P and the NASDAQ. Russell’s down more. Russell’s down over one percent. So the Russell has just been interesting in that it is seemingly, you know, strongly out performing or underperforming on any given day. Really has not been consistent. So today it is underperforming.

So that’ll give us a chance to put on a put spread a little bit lower. And with the increased volatility, maybe get a little bit more on the on the put spread than we have been getting. We’ll have to see.

Right now, the VIX is at about seventeen. So certainly not crazy numbers, but a little bit elevated from where it was. So with that said, let’s get to today’s trade.

And let me share my screen.

Oh, before we do that, let me just say real briefly, for the trade that’s expiring today, we’re gonna let that expire. The iron condor that expires next week. As of right now, I have no plans to close it early. We’ll see how the market reacts next week. But right now, it’s in the money by just a little bit. I think last time I checked before we went on the air, it was trading at about three ninety at the midpoint.

So that’s a little bit below where we got in. We got in at four fifty.

So yeah, it’s doing fine. And the credit spread that expires on the thirteenth, That one is against us right now. Not terribly surprising with our strike price two thousand six hundred ten, two thousand six hundred and the market is down a little bit at Russell right now. Two thousand six hundred and twenty five.

So getting a little close to that, but we have two weeks to go. Like I said, I’m not particularly worried about the market. So we’re going to let this one play out at least for a little bit longer. See what happens next week.

All right. So now I’m going to share my screen.

We’ll get into today’s trade.

So as usual, we’ll go to dollar sign RUT and we’ll change this to a vertical put.

Today, so three weeks from today is the third week of February, so we can either do the AM puts or the PM puts. Remember the AMs will expire at the open on Friday the twentieth. The last time to trade it is Thursday at the close. If we do PMs, which are also called the weeklies, then they just expire at the end of the day on Friday.

We’re going to do the AMs as we usually do because the volume and open interest is much higher on the monthly. So normally, you know, we’ll come down and we’ll have to we’ll have to choose R U T W in order to get that, that, the expiration date that we want. But because it’s the monthly option, the AMs are considered the monthly, we don’t have to change that. It it’s automatically defaulting here to February twentieth, twenty twenty six.

Now we need to change the strike price. Russell is trading at about twenty six point two nine dollars Let me do a little quick math.

We’re going to go down to the twenty five point five zero s and the twenty five point four zero s and that gives us a credit of about two ten, two zero five, two ten. So let me review that order.

Alright. So, oh, you know what? I did not put in a limit price. Oh, it defaulted to two zero five.

So I’m going to leave it at two zero five. Hopefully we can get to two ten. So you can go ahead and place that order.

I’m going to go ahead and send out the trade right now.

Alright. And my screen is not working. Let’s see. Why is this not working? Oh, I see why.

I’ve got too many keyboards here. Was typing on the wrong keyboard.

Alright.

So we’re doing the we’re selling the twenty five fifties, buying the twenty five forties, and limit price two zero five. And if you haven’t already, you can let me know if you’re getting filled.

So a lot of people getting filled at two zero five. I’m sorry, two ten. So I’m gonna go ahead and send that out. Remember, these are the AMs and I know I’m gonna get a lot of questions. These are the AMs, not the PMs.

Alright. I have sent that out, so I’m gonna go place my trade now.

And let me see if I got filled quickly.

Yep. I got filled at two ten. So good stuff. Good to see that happening.

So I’ll stop sharing my screen.

Martin says, what is the lookup in Merrill Lynch as I’m not getting these numbers? So I’m not sure on Merrill Lynch if it’s R U T, .R U T, dollar sign R U T. You’ll have to find out for sure what, how Merrill does it.

It’s, it’s one of the, one of the only downsides really of trading an index instead of a stock. When you trade a stock, you know, if you’re trading Nvidia, the ticker symbol is going be NVDA on Fidelity, Schwab, Merrill, everywhere you go. The indexes, they all seem to have a slightly different way of having that symbol for the index. So on Schwab, it’s dollar sign R U T on Fidelity, it’s dot R U T.

So I’m not sure what it is on Merrill.

So Don R says I can’t possibly get out of the Russell put that expires today only if I take the maximum loss.

That should not be the case because today’s put spread is twenty five thirty twenty five twenty and right now we’re trading at twenty six twenty eight. So this should expire worthless. So I’m not sure why you’re seeing a maximum loss here. But yeah, this this should expire worthless right now. It’s trading at next to nothing.

So I’m not sure what the issue is there on your, on your put spread.

Donnar says I’m taking the maximum loss on the Russell trade two thousand five hundred thirty two thousand five hundred twenty that again, that doesn’t make any sense if you sold a put spread.

That shouldn’t be the case. Let me.

Yeah, that shouldn’t happen.

I don’t know if you bought it instead.

If if you bought a call spread instead, I’m I’m not sure what’s going on here, but if you sold the twenty five thirty, twenty five twenty put spread that expires today, that will not be a maximum loss that will be that will expire worthless and we will collect and we will keep the entire premium. So that’s a, you know, a total win for us. I’m not sure what’s going on in your account.

What else we got here?

So Barry says I’m new to this. How does this trade work? Is it possible to get a sign taking a credit on the spread? Great question, Barry, and welcome.

So I was mentioning one of the few downsides of trading indexes is that the symbols are a little bit different. One of the big, big advantages of trading the indexes rather than an ETF or the stock is that you cannot get assigned. You definitely can’t get assigned early like you can with a stock, but there is nothing tangible to assign to you at maturity All right. At expiration.

So with an ETF or a stock, if you are to get if you were to get assigned, let’s say you’re you’re short of put and you’re going to get assigned, you now own that ETF or that stock with an index that cannot happen. The only thing that happens is you have to make a cash settlement. So if the trade was, let’s say, three points against us at expiration, you would have to pay three hundred dollars If it was a maximum loss, you would have to pay a thousand dollars per contract. So a thousand dollars would come out of your account.

Now you’ve already collected in this case will be two ten.

So the maximum loss in this case would be seven ninety dollars because you’ve already collected the two ten dollars per contract that’s in your account today.

And if we have maximum loss situation, a thousand dollars comes out, but there’s nothing, no physical stock or ETF. It’s all cash that would get assigned at expiration. And it can only happen at expiration. It cannot happen early.

So that’s one of the reasons that we also often are waiting to see what happens. You know, I’ll give it some time because we’re in no danger of being assigned early. It can only happen at expiration. So one of the one of the reasons that we are trading the index options rather than let’s say IWM, which is the Russell ETF.

So Rowan says, How is our iron condor doing? As I mentioned before, right before I went on the air, took a look at the price and it was trading. The midpoint was three ninety.

So so far so good. We got in at four fifty. So we want to see that continue to go lower, hopefully all the way to zero. But right now it’s looking pretty good.

We’re we’re getting a little closer to the put the put spread that I would like the put spreads at two thousand six hundred and twenty five ninety. So that’s not great. We’ll see what happens next week. Russell now two thousand six hundred twenty five.

So I would like to see it.

I would like to see it bounce, obviously. Me.

But right now we’re in okay shape, but we’ll give it some time.

Obviously the calls that we sold higher generate more income for us. And if we do have a loss situation, it makes that loss a lot smaller. So, you know, basically the reason we put it on was at the time I was seeing some things I was concerned about. If that comes to fruition and I ended up being right, then that call spread, you know, really acts as a hedge and lowers our exposure there.

If I just sell the short put, if I get assigned, do I have to pay two hundred and fifty five thousand dollars to buy the shares?

Let me see. So the Russell’s trading at twenty six point two seven.

Would you have to If you’re short the put Sorry, my brain’s a little foggy from this.

I may have the flu, so if you just sold the Russell put short, is that going to cost you two hundred and fifty five thousand dollars I don’t believe so, but sorry, I’m a little spacey. I’m not even on any medication this morning, but I’m having a hard time just doing the math right now because like I said, I am sick.

So feel really dumb saying this, but I would say talk to the broker.

I don’t think it’s going to be that much, but talk to the broker. Because also, you’d have to have If that’s the case, you would have to have that much cash and or marginal securities in your account in order to be able to make that trade.

Slivner grew thanks to twenty five thousand five hundred. That’s what I was thinking, but again, my brain’s a little foggy here.

So Carol AB, expiration date list AM or PM. As I mentioned, it’s AM. We’re doing the AM trades.

We’re usually going to do that on these third Fridays of the month because that is where the liquidity is in the option. The weekly really only on on the third Friday especially, but on the weekly, they tend not to have a ton of volume and open interest whereas the monthlies do, the AMs do, have tons of open interest and volume. So that’s usually where I’m gonna make that trade. I think we’ve only done the PM trade once since we’ve started.

Andre said, Do we have an official trade tracker to reference? So if you go to menu at the top of this page and then portfolio, you’ll see all the open trades.

I don’t believe we have something that shows all the closed trades.

Frank C says, Marc, can you explain the tax advantages for trading the Russell two thousand? Yeah, so when you trade the index, another advantage of trading the index versus a stock or an ETF. When you trade a stock or ETF, these are short term gains. So your short term gains would be taxed at your ordinary income tax rate. Figure for most people it’s going be somewhere between let’s say twenty five and forty or even more percent depending on what state you live in. If you’re trade Excuse me.

If you’re trading the index options, it’s a little bit different.

Sixty percent of the gain is taxed at the long term gain tax rate. Forty percent is still taxed at the short term gain, but sixty percent at the long term gain, which is fifteen percent or twenty percent if you’re in a high tax bracket. So you actually do save on taxes trading the index options over the ETF because again, the ETF or stock you’re going be trading, you’re going to be taxed at your ordinary income tax rate. Whereas here sixty percent is traded at the short at the long term gain tax rate versus, short term. So, that’s that’s really really, another really nice advantage.

Art one hundred forty four says I got filled at three twenty. How come? Maybe afternoon trade.

I don’t know. I would check the strike prices. Maybe you have a wider a wider spread than ten points, But you should not have gotten filled at three twenty certainly on the AMs and I don’t think on the PMs either. That’s not going to that drastic of a difference. So check to make sure you place the right trade.

And seventy one says if I miss the trade on Friday, can I trade it Monday with the same criteria? No, I don’t recommend that. I really only recommend trading it on Friday.

And the reason is if I have a limit price of let’s say two zero five, that’s based on the price today.

If the market moves and let’s say the market moves in our favor and you put in a limit price of two zero five, well maybe now the market, the real value is two fifty and the market maker sees your order at two zero five and then will possibly not definitely possibly fill you at a much lower price than you should be getting.

You know, conditions change. And when you’re trading options, you should really never trade an option price or trade an option based on, you know, a previous day’s criteria. So I don’t recommend that at all.

Excuse me.

So if you are if you were going trade it on Monday and the price, you know, had risen but again, then we don’t necessarily want to let’s say the Russell goes higher, We don’t necessarily want to keep the same strike price because then you’re not going to get enough premium.

If it goes against us, and you’re trading the same strike price, you’re not getting enough of a buffer. You know, there’s not a whole lot of wiggle room, so I I would not place the trade on Monday. I would I would only do it on Friday.

See, trade several platforms. It was filled at two zero five on the first, but filled at two seventy five on another two seventy seven.

Did the market just run against us? No, that’s fascinating.

I don’t know. I’ve never seen that kind of a difference.

Interesting.

That’s Boat Trader. Boat Trader, which I’m just curious which platforms you got filled the lower and the higher prices.

I don’t know if it’s that’s kind of a consistent thing for that broker that they get to better prices. I’ve never heard that.

So art one hundred forty four says here’s the trade that he took. This is the one that he got filled over three.

Selt open the Russell February twentieth two thousand five hundred forty.

And the RUTW two thousand five hundred fifty. So it looks like you sold the AM put bought the PM put.

So there might be a little difference there, but I don’t know why that would be such a drastic difference.

Aurelia says, where can you see the AM on Schwab? So it won’t say AM, it will say RUT. So RUT February twentieth, twenty sixth means the AM puts. If you go down to RUTW and chose February twentieth, R U T W would be the PM. So normally when we’re trading the weekly options, like when we, you know, we have the ones that are expiring this week, next week, next week’s trade when which will expire on February twenty seventh. Those are all weekly options.

It’s the only way you can trade it And those will all expire in PM, but it’s the third Friday of the month, which historically was the only options expiration date. A number of years ago, you could only buy or trade options that expired on the third Friday of the month.

That’s obviously different now.

So when you’re trading options on the third Friday of the month, do have to make that decision on whether it’s going to be the monthly, which are considered the AM options or the weekly, which are the PM options. But that’s only for that third Friday of the month.

I did not buy the AM, but the PM. Should I sell the PM and rebuy the AM? That’s a great question, Wes. See, normally when somebody makes the wrong trade, if it’s if it’s, you know, drastically wrong, I will say absolutely get out of that trade and get into the new one.

If you if you did a debit spread instead of a credit spread, if the strike prices were way different, something like that. But for AM versus PM, it’s not going to be that big of a difference. The only difference is your option will expire on Friday afternoon at the close rather than Friday morning. So, that’s really the only difference.

So I would not worry about it. The now the one thing is when we are talking about the trade, let’s say on February twentieth, assuming the trade is still open, I’ll be, you know, here on camera talking about it and basically saying our trade has expired.

Hopefully it’s for a win. We’ve collected the income.

But if you have that PM trade, that will not be the case for you. You’ll have to wait until the close for the trade to expire. But that’s kind of a small thing. So I wouldn’t close out that trade and redo it.

Yes, Steven B51 says think or swim shows AM and PM nicely. And as I mentioned, I do want to try to show you how to make the trade on think or swim, but I wasn’t in the office all day today, all week this week because I’ve been sick.

So, I wasn’t able to play around with figuring how to, how to get it to work where I can share my screen, but not where you see, all my information.

Would it be possible to add the tickers for the individual broker platforms?

Sure though, I would need your help to tell me what it is. So what I know is TD Ameritrade, I’m sorry Schwab is R U T and Fidelity is dot R U T. So if you’re using some other ones, please let me know and I can I can make sure that we we talk about it next time?

Rutherford says, why are we doing these trades with the Russell instead of the S and P five hundred? So we’re doing it for two important reasons. One, the backtest showed the best results. That’s the number one reason.

But I think one of the reasons that showed the best results was because the Russell is a little bit more volatile, so that extra volatility, generates higher premiums. But you know, the really the backtest is is basically fueling everything. It fuels why we’re doing it three weeks out, why we’re doing it about three percent away from the current price. When we did this backtest, we tested all kinds of variables, all different indexes, And what was the overwhelming favorite was basically the way we have been doing it since May.

And it’s hard to argue with the results. They’ve been doing really, really well.

So Ron S1 says, what are your thoughts on a calendar spread?

So I That’s a great question.

A calendar spread is when you have two legs of the option but are different dates. So for example, you know, we could have the February twenty, sell let’s say selling the twenty February twentieth twenty five fifty puts and buying the February twenty seventh twenty five forty puts. That would be a calendar spread. I don’t love it.

I you know, depending on how you structure it, you could you could generate more income, you could lower your risk.

You know, it’ll have its advantages and disadvantages.

But I I like everything to be in a neat package and to have it all expiring the same day and just be able to have one less thing to think about if I want to close it. Well, this other, you know, one leg has an extra two weeks versus, you know, one leg expiring next week.

So I just like to keep it pretty simple and I don’t expect to do calendar spreads anytime soon.

Hey, Ramirez says this is quickly becoming the highlight of my week. I feel a sense of connection with you all. Love the Q and A following the trade. I’m continually learning.

Thank you very much, Ramirez. That’s exactly we’re going for. I do love this community too. People helping each other out, asking good questions.

So yeah, thank you for that. That means a lot to me.

All right, let’s try to get to one last question. Then I’m going to go to my voice is starting to, starting to fade on me.

Yeah. Rich W says, any problem with the trade? Call your broker. Absolutely.

I had two trades set up with two with different strike prices. I didn’t know it, but they both got filled. It looks like a mess. What to do?

So they should have different strike prices. The date is going be the same, but they should have different strike where you sold the two thousand five hundred fifty and bought the two thousand five and forty. So those will be different. That’s that’s how this works. The way we make money is the difference between those spreads because we’re we’re selling a put and then we’re buying a cheaper put below it. So if the market doesn’t fall down to our strike price, we keep the difference.

So a spread, know, the way that we’re doing this is exactly that, different strike prices. We just want the same date.

Alright, so I am going to wrap it up here because I’m I’m fading fast. I’m I’m hoping to just spend the weekend. It’s gonna be freezing here, as I said. Just sitting on the couch with a blanket on rewatching The Sopranos. That’s my big plan for the weekend.

But thank you all for being here, and I hope wherever you are, it’s not too cold, and we will talk to you next week.