Weekly Income Alert – February 20, 2026

Welcome everyone to Weekly Income Alert. I’m Marc Lichtenfeld. Great to see all of you. I see Jean in Los Angeles, Tib in Minnesota, PACS forty three in Southeast Alabama who said he loves the Income Alert.

Well, you, and we love having you all here with us today. So another good day in that if you remember, today being the third Friday of the month and we have the AM expiration. So at the open this morning, the opening trade of the Russell was the final trade for or the final price for our put spread. And it was at about twenty six point six zero.

Our put spread is where was our put spread? Twenty five point five zero, I believe.

Twenty five point five zero, twenty five point four zero. So that closed worthless and we kept the full premium of two point one zero dollars was our official price. So congratulations on another win.

Glad that one worked out. The remaining positions right now are two iron condors, the one expiring next week.

That’s the twenty five point five zero, twenty five point six zero puts and the twenty seven point two zero, twenty seven point three zero calls. Right before we went on the air, I took a look and the midpoint was at three point eight zero. So that one is in good shape.

And the following week, the March sixth iron condor, the strike prices are a little bit lower, twenty five, thirty five, twenty five, forty five on the puts and twenty seven tens, twenty seven hundred on the calls. And that strike price the midpoint, sorry, was at five seventy five. So just slightly below what we sold it for. So also in good shape, but there’s plenty of time left on both of those. So we got to see where the market goes.

So with that, I saw a couple of questions in the chat.

One person saying, you know, with potential strikes on Iran, do we take geopolitics into account?

And I really don’t.

And the reason is so often the market does the opposite of what you expect it to do. I mean, may shimmy and shake. I mean, if there’s all out war with Iran, you might see the market drop. But generally speaking, the market really does kind of shake things off like that. And if there is a move often, not always, but often it’ll rebound pretty quickly.

And I was talking about this yesterday in Oxford Income Weekly. So often the market does the opposite of what you expect it to do. So, you see a piece of news, whether it’s geopolitical, whether it is specific to a company and or a sector. And you say, okay, well, this is what should happen.

And then the opposite happens. And so whether that’s because the news is already baked in, I mean, we are if we do attack Iran, it’s not going to come as a total surprise. I mean, I think a lot of us are hoping that it doesn’t come to that, that we can reach a diplomatic solution. But if it happens, it’s not going to be a total shock.

Know, certain elements of the attack could be surprising.

Who knows? But really, for the most part, we don’t take geopolitics into account.

You know, when looking at something longer term, a dividend stock perhaps, if there’s, you know, tax policy, certain things like that, that may, you know, kind of flavor how we look at some things a little bit. But for the most part, no, we’re not looking at geopolitics because if you followed geopolitics and you got scared off by every time something scary happened, you really wouldn’t be in the market very often. And we know markets go up over the long term, and that includes all the bad things that have happened over the decades. You know, go back to the 70s. I mean, when Watergate happened, a president being accused of a crime and resigning, I mean, that was, you know, unheard of at the time.

You know, so we went through that. We went through Iran Contra. We went through the crash in ‘eighty seven, the dot com boom and bust, COVID. I mean, you could have looked at COVID and we certainly did have that crash, but look at how quickly that came back. There are so many times something happens in the world, whether it’s political or not, and it would be enough to keep any rational person out of the market were to sell.

And it’s almost always the wrong thing to do. So I don’t let geopolitics really color how I am trading for the most part. You know, every situation is a little bit different. So regarding the next few weeks here where we have a three week time horizon, I’m not going to focus or worry too much about what happens in Iran. If something happens and the market reacts, then we may react as well. But I’m not going to let that I’m not going to make that make me pick a side and say, because I think we may attack Iran, therefore I’m going to do this because we really don’t know what’s going to happen. So, it’s a useless exercise to try to do that.

So the other thing that, the other question that I did see was somebody saying, hey, who here thinks Marc is going to choose another iron condor? And if you said yes, then you are right. And here’s the reason.

We are still kind of stuck in a trading range in the markets. I mean, the Russell is a little bit stronger than the S and P five hundred, which has really been stuck in a range since about October. The Russell really kind of in range only for the last few weeks. It hit a new high back around January. When was that high?

January twenty second. And it’s just kind of been treading water like the rest of the market since then. And iron condors are really excellent ways to play flat markets because you’re getting the premiums on both sides.

And also, I don’t have a real feel for which way the market is going to break when it eventually does. I’m seeing a lot of things kind of pulling in opposite directions when I’m looking at the market. So, you know, overall, we’re seeing, we’re just seeing strong breadth. So lots of stocks are still up, even though the index isn’t doing particularly well.

I’m talking about the S and P five hundred now, even though the S and P isn’t doing that great. And that’s a big part because the Mag seven isn’t doing great. We’re seeing rotation into different sectors. We’re seeing defensive sectors starting to outperform things like staples, energy, but we’re also seeing financials be pretty weak.

And it’s tough to have a real strong bull market without financials participating.

We’re seeing investor sentiment starting to skew towards bearish sentiment. I saw the AAII sentiment survey now has more bears than bulls for the first time since Thanksgiving.

So not an extreme level, not a level where we’d say, okay, now it’s time to back up the truck because everybody’s bearish. But, you know, it’s starting to skew bearish. We’re seeing put call ratio, another sentiment indicator. It’s the number of puts being bought versus calls. Excuse me.

That’s moving a little bit higher. So even though we’re not seeing anything too terrible and we are seeing some healthy things in the market like sector rotation and other sectors besides technology participating, I’m also seeing these other forces pulling in the opposite direction. And it’s kind of what I’ve been seeing for a few weeks now and why I’ve been doing the iron condors rather than just the bull put spread, because I’m not as bullish as I was. I’m not bearish, but I’m not as bullish as I was. And, you know, one thing to keep in mind with the iron condors, eventually the market is going to break in one of in one of two directions. It’s either going to move sharply higher or it’s going move sharply lower.

And when it does, you understand that the iron condor will be a losing trade if it breaks lower. So would the bull put spread, obviously. But, you know, if it breaks higher, then the iron condor would be a loser than when it wouldn’t have been if we just stuck with the bull put spread. But I still think the iron condor makes sense because we are kind of stuck in this trading range. We don’t have a good feel for where things are headed in the fairly short term.

And we can generate some really strong premiums. Last week we got over six dollars And as a result, it cuts our losses much, much smaller if we do take a loss. So, as explained last week, the disadvantage or the con, you know, in a pros and cons list of an iron condor is that if the market moves higher, strongly higher, then we would take a loss where we wouldn’t have with the bull put spread. The benefit is if it doesn’t, then we’re getting, you know, twice the premium.

And if the market goes lower, our maximum loss is going to be much, much smaller. It’ll be, you know, we’ll see where it is today, but it will probably be somewhere, around four hundred dollars five hundred dollars versus let’s say eight hundred dollars So, that’s the benefit of the iron condor. So, that’s what we’re going to do today. So, let me share my screen.

Let me just take a look at some prices real quick. Now, the Russell moved up since right before we went on the air. Market strong. Actually, when I saw the VIX this morning and that GDP number, I was a little concerned that we were going to have a little bit of a tough day.

Wasn’t expecting a terrible day, but thought it might be weak and kind of a risk off environment, especially with people worried about an Iran strike over the weekend. But right now, the market’s up. So let me recalculate some of these numbers real quick and then take a look at liquidity.

Yeah, because these numbers are a bit different than I had expected.

Yeah, because when I looked at the Russell before we went on the other Russell was at twenty six point five five dollars and now we’re at twenty six point seven three dollars so that’s a fairly decent move.

All right, and I’m sorry, I’m just checking open interest and things like that, make sure that there is some activity in those strike prices that I am looking at.

Okay, so let’s do this. So, let me share my screen.

All right, so as usual, we are trading the Russell on Schwab. It’s dollar sign R U T. And by the way, thanks to our moderator, James Ogletree, who did a great job compiling the list of ticker symbols for the Russell at the various brokers. And thanks to all of you, excuse me, thanks to all of you for contributing and letting us know what those are. And you can find that list in the FAQ section, because, you know, it’s really ridiculous how every broker has it a little bit different, Schwab dollar sign R U T. But if you’re on Schwab’s Thinkorswim, then it’s R U T, or perhaps dot R U T, E Trade is R U T or R U T W.

Know, we’ve got the Tasty Trade is R U T. So every one has a slightly different. So on Schwab’s website, have to go to dollar sign R U T.

And then We are going to three leg spreads iron condor.

And again, you can always do this individually, but I don’t recommend it because if you put the trade in as an iron condor, all the variables will change automatically when you change one of them.

The disadvantage, the slight disadvantage is that especially in iron condors, it takes a little bit longer to get filled because all, all four trades have to be able to be filled at your price, at your one limit price. Whereas if you’re just buying a put, just selling a call, you can just do that individually. However, if the market starts to move, you might not get the price that you are looking for.

So here’s what we’re going to do. So we need to change it to RUTW down here in the Dropbox because we are trading the March thirteenth, right? That’s three weeks from now.

And you can see when you change March thirteenth, that changes automatically. So let me see, how does it have a first? So we have the put. So we are going to buy the twenty six hundred puts.

And we are going to sell the twenty five point nine zero puts.

And on the call side, we are going to buy we’ve sell first, so we’re going to sell the twenty seven point four zero calls and buy the twenty seven fifties.

And that’s not right. Why is that not right?

That’s giving me a credit of sixty five cents, so that is clearly not correct.

What do I have wrong here? So we’re buying.

Let me Check one thing here.

Alright, so what is happening? Alright, we want to sell the seven.

Oh, we want to sell the 2600s and buy the 2590s. That’s the problem. Let’s see. There we go.

All right. Sorry about that. So we are buying the 2590s, selling the 2600s, and selling the 2740s, buying the 2750s. That changed our credit to over six dollars as you can see here.

So that’s good stuff. And one of the nice things about kind of the way these trades work is if you have a sense of what the price should be. So we’re selling an iron condor and you see that I made a mistake in the order and it said the credit was zero six five dollars So right away I know there’s a mistake in the order because we’re never going to make that trade for sixty five cents. It’s not worth it.

So, you know there’s an error and then you can go in and fix it. And then when the price comes back to what you think it should be, then you’ve got it correct. So yeah, so you can see it’s bouncing around over six dollars bouncing back and forth. I’m going to make my limit price, it’s moving quite a bit between five seventy five, six forty.

I’m going to try to get six zero five right where it has it now. May have to wait. Last week I did have to wait, I think it was a couple of hours if I remember correctly. So, it can take a little while, so don’t worry about that.

So, you can go ahead and place that order. I am going to now send out the trade. So, I got to change in what was originally written here. So we’re selling at twenty five point nine zero dollars And let us know if you do get filled.

Buying selling to open the twenty six hundred.

Buying to open the twenty five ninety.

Selling to open at twenty seven fifty.

Buying I’m sorry, twenty seven forty.

Buying to open the two thousand seven hundred fifty. All right, so I’m going to send that out. Let me just double check this since I made that mistake before. Buy to open the two thousand five and ninety, sell to open the two thousand six hundred, sell to open the two thousand seven hundred. Okay, so I am sending that out to everyone.

Let’s see, are people getting filled? Getting filled at six. I’m going to place my order at six zero five, see what happens.

So I placed my order, and somebody got filled at six fifty. Nice job, fill T12.

So as I said, you know, sometimes it takes a little while to get filled, and as always, if we don’t officially get filled, I need to lower the price, I will send an alert out at some point in the day. I’m going to, you know, probably give it until at least noontime to see if we can get filled because it can take a little longer, especially on the iron condors. Even the put spreads occasionally will take a little bit of time. But let me see. Let me just take a quick look. I didn’t hear it go off on Thinkorswim, so let me just see if I got filled.

No data found. That’s strange. All right. Well, I didn’t hear it go off, so I’m going to assume that I did not get filled.

Like I said, I will let you know if I don’t get filled. We’re seeing people are getting filled at six ten, six zero five.

JBJ says, How are folks getting filled over seven? That’s a good question. I guess it’s just a matter of how the broker is able to cobble together the different trades. And, you know, it’s happening electronically. It’s not like there’s some guy out there doing that, obviously. But last week too, I think somebody got over seven, if I remember correctly. Somebody got a great fill.

So, really nice to see that when that happens.

Yeah, and you know, we do see the somebody said that we’re seeing the price jump around from five eighty to six fifty. And remember, you know, this midpoint is not an actual price. It’s just the midpoint of four separate trades, of four separate bids and asks. That’s what that is.

So it’s not like there is a market maker out there, you know, offering a trade of an iron condor at this mid price. It’s the mid price of the bid and ask of four separate trades. So that’s why it’s jumping around quite a bit. And that’s why it does take a little bit longer to get filled on these iron condors than it does on a put spread and longer certainly than it would just if you’re buying individual put or call.

But the reason it can jump around so much is, you know, if that happens where somehow the spread widens and there’s a market maker willing to fill something at a slightly higher price, one leg of the spread and the trade goes off, then you get a higher price. So, you know, that’s why it’s important to especially on the iron condors, but on the put spreads too, to have that limit price. Because just like you could get filled, let’s say, seven instead of six, if you don’t have a limit price, you could get screwed and end up getting filled at four or five instead of six. So really, really important.

Franklin said I did not give a price on my alert. That would have been helpful. Wouldn’t it depend? Thank you for letting me know that. Let me redo that.

Let me do that real quick.

All right, sent that out. So thank you for bringing that to my attention.

Yeah, thanks for everyone who let me know that. How’s the maximum loss calculated on the iron condor? It’s DCM seventy nine asking that question. Just the same as we do with the put spread, whatever the credit is, subtract that from one thousand because the width of our trades is ten points each. So the maximum that could come out of your account is a thousand dollars, but you’ve already collected a credit. So let’s assume that you collected the six zero five today.

The maximum loss then would be three ninety five dollars because you’ve collected six zero five today, dollars six zero five. If we have a maximum loss, a thousand comes out of your account. So the net would be a loss of three ninety five dollars When we do the put spreads, if we’ve collected two dollars and we have a max loss, then the net loss, the max net loss would be eight hundred dollars another one of the reasons we like the iron condors when it makes sense is because that maximum loss is much, much lower. And when it works, then that credit is much higher as well.

So Sam says, what about our February twentieth Russell trade? So as I mentioned at the beginning, that trade expired this morning at the open. So when trades expire on the third Friday of the month, they’re either AM trades or PM trades. And when I issue that trade, I let you know. So that trade happened on what February or I guess that would have been January thirtieth. So when we put that trade on in the instructions of of, you know, we’re opening this trade, the put spread February twentieth. I’m clear that’s the AM trade.

So, for example, if you’re trading on Schwab and you’re trading the PMs, you would have to select the RUTW to get the PM trade. If it RUTW, RUT is the default on Schwab for the monthly trades, which are the AM trades. So the third Friday of the month, we’re typically not hasn’t happened every time, but typically we are choosing the AM trades because they are a lot more liquid than the PM trades. Lot more open interest, a lot more volume.

So the AM trade, it only happens on the third Friday of the month. Every other trade, the trade we put on today, that expires at the end of the day on Friday. The AM trades expire at the open on Friday. That’s the final price when you look at your strike and determine whether it’s been a winner or a loser.

It’s the open on Friday, but important, you can’t trade it on Friday. You can’t trade that opening price. The last chance to trade it is Thursday at the close.

So at the open on Friday on these AM trades like today, market opened, Russell opened at twenty six point six zero. Our put spread was at twenty five point five zero. So as soon as it opened, boom, trade is over, expired worthless and we keep the full credit and it goes down as a winner. So that’s what happened on February twentieth.

And it will likely happen again on March twentieth. That’s the third Friday of March. But again, we’ll determine that. That would be next week.

When we put on the trade next week, we’ll be looking at liquidity and open interest. And I will let you know whether it’s the AM trade or the PM trade. Really important.

So Clint511 says assuming the trade moves out of the winning territory, how far does it typically have to move to create a total loss?

So by total, I assume you mean the maximum.

So basically, once it is ten points, then ten points beyond the strike or at the higher strike price on the calls or the lower strike price on the puts. So at that strike that we have bought is where it becomes a maximum loss.

And again, that’s one thousand dollars minus the credit. And I saw somebody put in here Supreme Court strikes down the tariff as why the market took off.

So I’ve been here, so I haven’t seen that news.

I would kind of assume the market would be up even more. It’s not even up full percent, but I guess we’ll have to digest that if that is what happened. So Chris62 says, what happens if it goes beyond that? Great question.

Doesn’t matter. That’s the beauty of put spreads and call spreads and iron condors is that we know what our maximum loss is. So the market could crash, the market could literally go to zero and you cannot lose more than thousand dollars minus your net credit or the the Russell could rip to five thousand would not matter. Anything beyond the upper limit of your spread.

It doesn’t matter. You are absolutely capped. So it’s one of the benefits of trading this way is you know exactly what your maximum loss is going to be no matter what scenario. I mean, like I said, literally the market could go to zero.

It could be the worst crash in history and the most you could lose is one thousand dollars minus the credit. And that’s per spread. Obviously, if you’re trading five contracts and five thousand dollars minus your credit. But that’s the beauty of trading this way is your risk is capped and it doesn’t matter what happens beyond that parameter.

So what we want is the market to stay within those parameters.

So, Esmarsh giving us some details on the Supreme Court here. But yeah, market’s not really reacting, kind of like what I was talking about before about Iran. Just, you know, you’d think this would be a big deal.

And I’m sure there were some investors and traders that were betting on something happening with the Supreme Court and it making a big move.

And so far, hasn’t done much. Really, really interesting.

Know, NASDAQ’s up half a percent.

Dow is up a quarter of a percent.

The VIX has turned negative.

But yeah, not a whole lot going on. So again, whatever you’re worried about out there geopolitically, try not to let it affect your investing. Other than I would say if there are certain things that you’re really, really worried about and you cannot handle the downturn if that were to happen, then you need to make some adjustments in your portfolio or your trading or how you’re handling that. But that’s more about handling a downturn based on anything, not just Iran or just a Supreme Court ruling or anything political.

It’s, basically you need to assess your own tolerance for risk. And what happens if the market does this, regardless of the reason. Doesn’t matter the reason. Market can move for any reason.

So look at it that way. What’s the maximum risk I can tolerate? And then adjust your portfolio, you’re investing, you’re trading that way. But don’t do it based on I think we might invade Iran.

Therefore, the market will go down and therefore I can’t handle that. So forget Iran. Just if you can’t handle the market going down, make those adjustments. I think that’s really important.

Ron says, yeah, it’s been widely expected. Supreme Court would rule this way. True. I think a lot of people did expect that.

Nevertheless, there might have been people setting up their portfolio for some kind of a move.

So Vinny has a good question. Mark, would it be more strategic to initiate the bull put spread when the market is moving down to give you the best price and strike level, then initiate the call spread half of the iron condor when the market is in an upward move. So to give the best price and strike window, sure.

But you need to be pretty fluid, pretty active.

And it’s just not something here in weekly income alert that we’re really doing. It’s not kind of part of how we do it. You know, we try to put on this single trade every Friday morning. Doesn’t mean that I can’t do it that way, that if we had a bull put spread and I saw some things, you know, saw the market moving in a certain direction, I couldn’t put on a bear call spread.

It certainly could happen, you know. And so I guess the short answer is yes, that would be a great way to do it. It’s not an easy thing to do because the market doesn’t always go in that direction. And so, you know, so far when we’ve put on iron condors, perhaps we could have gotten a slightly better price by legging into it in two separate times.

But had we waited to add that second leg, maybe we wouldn’t have ended up adding it based on market conditions. And so it would just have ended up as a put spread and would have collected less of a credit plus would have been concerned that we weren’t hedged. Because keep in mind, when I am putting on the iron condor, it’s not so much, well, the market’s doing this right now, so I want to take advantage of this leg. And then, you know, it’s about basically being either unsure of where the market is headed, which is kind of how I explained it this morning, earlier this morning where I said, you know, until the market breaks in one direction, I’m not sure which way it’s going to break.

And we’re seeing the market pulling, you know, different factors pulling in different directions. So that’s kind of why, as we’re range bound, I like the idea of having the call spread on at the same time in case the market does drop.

And, you know, I don’t have to wait until later on. You know, we’re hedged already. So, it’s I like the simplicity. Those of you who’ve been with me for a while know that I really like to simplify my trading and the way that I deliver trades for you.

I try not to keep it too complicated. I don’t want people to have to be in front of their computers all day long like I am. I really want to keep things as simple as possible. So, long answer to your question.

I won’t say I’ll never do it the way you described because it does make sense and there may be occasions where I do add that second leg to make it an iron condor at some point. But think for the most part, I’m going stick to the way I’m doing it. Keep it simple. You know, we’re hedged.

The market’s trading in a range right now and we want to take advantage of that right now rather than trying to wait for the market to dip or to go higher and try to capture that at the exact moment.

That’s a tough game to play. Not impossible, but it’s a tough game to play. All right, let’s get to one more question.

Brookby says, are you concerned about the sold on the March sixth, Are you concerned about the sold call on the two thousand seven hundred strike?

Am I concerned about it?

Am I concerned about it? You know, so right now, Russell’s at twenty six point six four, so not too far away.

We still have a week to go. So, you know, we’re starting to get a little close. But as I’ve said, you know, the market is kind of stuck in a range. And the way we back tested it, we know that, you know, that roughly three percent area from the strike price is generally worked out really, really well.

So I’m willing to give it a little bit more time. If the market goes higher, then we may make some adjustments next week. We’ll have to see how it all works out. As you guys know, I’d like to see the market, you know, I’d to try to let as many days go by as possible to let these options decay and lose their value as quickly or as much as possible so that we keep more of the credit.

So but yeah, if the market is strong early next week, then then certainly that two thousand seven hundred will probably be reached. But even if it let’s say the market opens strong on Monday and Tuesday, there’s no guarantee that it stays that way. So like I said, we’re you know, we really haven’t seen a breakout yet in the market. Doesn’t mean it can’t happen.

Eventually it will happen. But will it be next week? I’m not sure yet. So obviously I will be keeping a very close eye on everything and we’ll let you know if we need to make any changes. So with that said, I do want to mention that we have I to bring this up earlier. I forgot, James, apologize.

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The things that he does, I’ve talked about this before, you know, he gets you into things that you typically can’t do on your own. We went to France last year, line around the corner at the Louvre, we walked right in. He got us into the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican by ourselves at six thirty in the morning, took all the pictures we wanted. And we had these grand banquets at palaces.

I promise you, if you go on one of these Oxford Voyager Club trips, even if you go to some of the same places that perhaps some of your friends have gone to, they will not have experienced the things that you’ve experienced because Fritz can open doors that really nobody else can. Unbelievable.

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Know, first Prosecco is on me. So click the link and get the information. These Oxford Voyager Club trips do sell out because they’re so incredible and the word has gotten out. This one still has plenty of slots left that we haven’t sold out yet because we’ve only really started marketing it in the last few weeks. But please do check it out if you have any interest because it will sell out and it will be absolutely incredible. So I hope to see you in Sicily and I look forward to seeing you next week and hopefully we’ll be cashing in another winner. So have a great weekend everyone and I will talk to you on Friday.