Weekly Income Alert – May 1, 2026

Welcome everyone to Weekly Income Alert. I’m Marc Lichtenfeld. Glad you are with us. Who do we have here?

We’ve got Douglas420 in Rhode Island. He was the first person to log on this morning. So welcome, Johnny C. In Silicon Valley, Boater Bob in Illinois.

Great to see so many of you here. Seeing some of the comments in the chat before we got started, some people saying they’re back to breakeven, even negative.

And one of the people said that they were negative even though they’ve been with us for a long time. So really the only way that that would be possible is if you’ve increased the number of contracts recently, you know, right into this losing streak. Let me go over the numbers with you based on the official track record. This does not include today’s loss because that is not officially closed out yet since we have the put portion still open that will expire worthless today.

But we did close the calls for a loss. So not including today’s loss, we have forty seven trades. We started in mid May of last year, so almost a year’s worth of trades. So forty seven closed positions, seventy nine percent win rate, and the average position returned six point four percent over three weeks, and that’s versus one point three percent on the S and P five hundred.

So if you were trading the same amount of contract every single week, didn’t miss a week, that would be your returns, you know, give or take a little bit. Not everybody’s prices are going to be exactly the same. Some people get better prices. Some people get a little bit worse.

But generally speaking, that would be the case.

Certainly, it’s possible that if you were having success, you increase the number of trades, I’m sorry, the number of contracts, you know, right at the wrong time when hit a rough patch, that’s certainly possible. If you didn’t start with us right at the beginning when we, you know, we ripped through fourteen wins in a row, your numbers are going to be a little bit different. But the point is the system works. We’re just in a rough patch right now.

Every trading system, and I mean every trading system, goes through these types of periods. The best trading systems in the world, the best traders in the world, they consistently make money, but there are periods where they don’t. And the reason they’ll continue to make money over the long term is because they stick to their discipline, they stick to their rules. And that’s basically what we’re doing.

This system works. It worked in the back test. The results were very strong in the back test, eighty six percent win rate. We were doing about eighty six percent until the last few weeks when we did, you know, hit this losing streak, really when the markets absolutely just hit a V bottom and spiked.

Really looking back, I was looking back saying, you know, what should I have done differently looking at the Russell two thousand? And the only thing that I would really say is on April tenth. So the trade that expired, let’s see, one, one.

Yeah, so April tenth was the day we put on today’s trade.

And by April tenth, the market was already coming back pretty well. And at that point, you could argue that I should have not been doing the iron condors and only been doing the put spreads, though we still weren’t back to all time highs. You could say there was resistance and that’s the way I was looking at it. Resistance was at about twenty seven point three zero dollars And on April tenth, we opened at twenty six point four six dollars So we’re still a little bit farther away from the top.

We were still coming into resistance, which is why I put on the iron condor. I wasn’t sold that this was absolutely for real yet. Prior to that, there was no reason to think this was anything other than just a little bit of a bounce off a bottom and that the market certainly had potential to go lower. So that was my thinking at that point.

The thing about it today, so markets are very strong and I have a report coming out in Technical Pattern Profits, which is my technical trading service. It’s coming out. I don’t think it’s hit inboxes yet. It should be coming out any minute.

I’m looking at the market and no doubt the market is very strong. I am seeing some things kind of lurking underneath that are concerning me a little bit. I’m seeing things like breadth isn’t great. It’s not terrible, but it’s not great.

We’re seeing some risk off type of moves such as consumer staples or outperforming consumer discretionary stocks. But then on the flip side, we’re seeing risk on signals like high yield bonds are outperforming treasuries. That’s a risk on signal. We’re seeing high beta stocks outperforming low volatility stocks.

That’s a risk on signal. Another risk off signal, and this one was a little bit startling. I came across this yesterday. On Monday, we hit a new all time high.

And on Tuesday, new lows were one percent higher than new highs. And that’s only the second time in history that that happened. The first time was in January of two thousand, which was just a couple of months before the top of the market. So that was something that caught my attention and I’ll certainly be keeping my eye on.

So as I was thinking about this last night and this morning about what do we do today, what I decided to do was just rely on the charts for now. The charts are strong, no doubt about it. There are, like I said, there are some things lurking. It’s kind of like when you’re lying in bed and you hear a noise, not necessarily a crash, but you just hear a little bit of a noise and you think, is that just the house settling or is that a boogeyman?

Does that mean you get out of bed and you get the baseball bat and you sleep in bed with the bat?

Or do you kind of wait and see what happens? So right now we’re going to wait and see what happens because the market is so strong. But I am paying attention to some of these things that I see percolating. If some of those other risk on measures move to risk off, then we’ll have to at least think about going back to iron condors. So we’ll see what happens there. But for right now, we’re going with risk on the market strong and we’ll go back to our we’ll continue with our put sells.

So what else can I say? So if you’re new to Weekly Income Alert, welcome. And, you know, if you came in right as we hit this rough patch, again, stick with it. It works out over the long run. It has for the past year it did in the back test. So I’m not concerned at all other than I hate to lose just like everybody else does. And I take it very seriously.

But it’s not something I’m overly worried about because these things do happen. Anybody who’s been trading the markets for any period of time knows that there are times where you’re just running cold. And when that happens, you reduce the number of contracts you’re trading, you reduce your position size until things kind of get back on track. And then you can go kind of back to normal.

That’s usually the way people do it. That’s kind of how poker players do it. When they’re running bad, they reduce the size of the games that they’re playing that, you know, they play for less money and get back on track. They go back to their normal position.

So you can do that too in trading if you’re not feeling particularly confident. But a way to stay in the game, but to reduce your risk if you’re not feeling confident. I’m not particularly worried, but that’s an option for you. So let’s talk about today’s trade.

Let me see where the market is right now. It’s kind of been bouncing a little bit above and under two thousand eight hundred today. So while we’re doing that, the two put positions that we’ve got right now are looking really strong.

So nothing to worry about there. We’ll see what happens, you know, the next week or so, but those are looking great.

Again, so to clear up, before we get to the trade, let me go back to what happened this week. So on Wednesday afternoon, I put out the alert to sell the call side of the iron condor. We’re going to let the put side expire worthless because it was so far away from the market. No reason to incur the commission and any extra little bit of cost that would cost you to close that out. So we’re going to let that expire worthless. If you’ve closed the call position and you saw the puts and you’re new, they just expire worthless. Nothing happens.

You don’t have to worry about anything after today regarding those puts. Just they clear out of your account and the cash that is securing that position is freed up. Regarding the calls, so I did get a lot of questions saying, hey, I missed the alert and this was Thursday morning, what should I do? So please remember, I’m not allowed to give personal advice.

So I can’t say, well, I recommended closing the position, but now you should do this. Can’t do that. I’m only allowed to talk about positions that, you know, recommendations I have made. What I have said and, you know, what I will say in the future is if I have made a recommendation that you miss and you’re wondering if you should do it the next day or at some other time, if the thinking behind that recommendation is still valid, then you can go ahead and make that trade if it makes sense to you.

So what I mean by that is we closed out the trade on Wednesday, the call side, because we could take a much smaller loss rather than the maximum loss if the market went against us. So, on Thursday morning, if that was the case, if you could take a smaller loss than the maximum loss, then that thinking would still be valid. If the market had rebounded and it did, but if it rebounded to the point where you’re now looking at a max loss or close to the maximum loss, then there might not be a reason to close that out at that point because it’s not going to benefit you. But if you could get out where with a smaller loss than the maximum loss, then yes, that would be the case.

Same thing with the opening trades. Now, opening trades a little bit different in that conditions are very different. So people say, hey, I missed Friday. Should I just make the trade on Monday?

In that case, I don’t necessarily recommend you make the exact same trade because conditions are going to be different. The market will be in a different spot. So if you’re trading the same strikes that I recommended, then it’s not going to be, you’re not going have the same risk. The reward is going to be different.

So I don’t recommend doing that. If you’ve been with us for a while and you understand the idea that we’re generally doing, we’re always doing three weeks out and we’re generally doing percent away from the current price. So the strike price is three percent away from the current price.

And you want to do that on Monday morning and you adjust the numbers. I don’t have a problem with that. Make sure that that is the case. Is, you know, watch the recording, make sure that I haven’t changed anything. I usually don’t, but you never know. I wouldn’t really do that on past Monday morning, you know, Monday afternoon, Tuesday and later in the week because at that point, you know, the numbers are changing.

The options are starting to decay. We’re only three weeks out. So I really would only make that trade Monday morning if you missed Friday. I wouldn’t do it after that.

So that’s kind of my thinking on if you miss the trade. And that does sometimes happen when I send out an alert to close something early, you’re not in front of your computer, you know, and I understand that, but I still have to make the recommendation when I see the opportunity. And it turns out for anybody who was able to get out Wednesday afternoon, the timing could not have been better. We got out with a fairly small loss and then the markets bounced hard Thursday Thursday.

And I guess we’re bouncing a little bit today, but really yesterday was a very strong day. So getting out on Wednesday was a really positive way to lower our loss. So a loss is never a good thing, but this was a much smaller loss than the maximum loss. So, you know, I’ll take it.

You know, we at least manage that loss. All right. So now let’s get to today’s trade. Let me just check one more time the markets.

Sorry. Let me just look. I want to make sure I’m getting the right numbers here.

Alright, so we are going to let me share my screen.

By the way, one of my projects this weekend is to figure out how to do thinkorswim on these broadcasts where I can blur out some of my information.

So, I will be working on that this weekend, I promise. I know a lot of you would like to do that.

So, if you’re new here, we’re showing, I always show it on Schwab. That’s my broker. Your broker might show things a little bit differently, but you’re going to go to trade and then options. And then on Schwab, this is what comes up.

So RUT is the symbol, dollar sign RUT is the symbol here.

If you’re with a different broker, symbol could be a little bit different. Believe Fidelity is .RUT if I remember correctly. If you’re not sure, James, I think we have a link to that information. So if you wouldn’t mind just putting that up, that would be helpful for anybody who’s new.

And then the strategy is called a vertical put. Again, your broker might say something different. It might say credit spread or put spreads, but it’s going be vertical put or put spread. Again, if you’re new, we always are doing a credit.

You will always on the opening trade, it’s a credit, not a debit. Really, really important. Okay, so now we need to because this is the May twenty second, if you see here, RUT is the symbol. And on Schwab, if you look at the expirations, it’s only each month.

It’s not showing you the weeklies. We want the May twenty second. That’s because these are what are called monthly options. To get the weeklies, you have to go to this part right here and select RUTW.

Now, if you put RUTW here in the symbol, it doesn’t work. I don’t know why Schwab does it this way. But you need to put dollar sign RUT here, and then select RUTW right here. Then that gives you all the expiration dates for every Friday.

So we’re choosing the May twenty second. That’s three weeks from today.

And we are going to go with the twenty seven-15s. We are selling the twenty seven-15s, and we are buying the twenty seven five.

That is wrong, so let me Okay. So yeah, we’re down to one point nine dollars So again, this is what happens when we’re in strong markets. The VIX is low, so volatility is low. And as a result, get low credits. So it’s kind of bouncing one point nine five dollars one point nine two dollars I’m going to put my I’d love to get two dollars but I’m going to put one point nine five dollars as my limit and hope that we get filled at least there.

So you can put one point nine five dollars If you want it to go for two dollars go for it. You can always bring it down, you know, shortly after if you don’t get filled.

Last week, it took me a while to get filled. I think last week was the week that we kept having to lower it.

We just weren’t getting filled. Now it’s dipping down to one dollar I’m going to leave it at one point nine five dollars right here. Leave it open for a little while, see if we can get that fill at one point nine five dollars All right. So again, we’re selling to open the May twenty second, two thousand seven hundred and fifteen, to open the 27.05s at one point nine five dollars Okay. So I’m just reading some of the chat. I wanted to make sure that there wasn’t a mistake.

All right. So go ahead and place that order. I am going to send this out to everyone.

And let me know if you do get filled and where you get filled.

Alright, I sent it out. I’m going to place my order.

And I heard it get filled right away. Let’s see. Where did I get filled? I got filled at a dollar ninety let me see what that was.

I did get filled, looked like one point nine six so that is good news.

Let me just double check something there.

Yep. So it looks like dollar ninety six is where I got filled.

So I’ll stop sharing the screen. Let’s see.

And we can get to some of your questions.

I saw somebody said, how about you can do paper trade on thinkorswim?

So I’ll take a look at that. Haven’t used the paper trade platform in a very long time. So I’ll go in and just make sure that that makes sense. That could be a really good solution. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.

John, EP, great question. Why did we use the five strike versus the ten strike, which we normally trade? So I was thinking about that today and the reason was the open interest on the zero numbers wasn’t that much higher than on the fives, but there was actually more volume today in the five numbers when I looked. It wasn’t tremendous, but there was a little bit more. So since the five numbers would give us a slightly better credit and the liquidity was roughly the same, I figured let’s go with the five.

Because usually what happens if I move it to the zero number, I move it a little bit further away from the strike. I’m just a little bit more conservative that way. So that would result in a slightly different credit, slightly lower. When I checked the credits this morning, as the market was opening, you know, those midpoints kind of fly around a little bit, but it looked like it was going be about zero one zero dollars lower.

So I chose the five since the liquidity was roughly the same. And like I said, volume was actually a little bit higher in the five. So that’s why I did the five. Usually we’re doing the zeros.

Patrick says in Fidelity, are we doing AM or PM? That should not be a choice if you’re trading the May twenty second expiration. The May fifteenth, that would be an option because those are the monthly options. Make sure you’re trading the May twenty second expiration.

And the only time we’re ever considering an AM is on those monthly options. There is no AM choice on the weekly option. So it’s only that third Friday of the month where there’s an AM possibility. We’re usually choosing actually, we’ve been kind of going back and forth between the AMs and PMs lately.

But on the weekly options, so any week that is not the third Friday of the month, it’s automatically a PM option. And what this means is PM means the trade settles on the closing price at the end of the day on that Friday. The AM options on that third Friday means it closes on the opening price on Friday morning. So it’s not the closing price, the opening price on Friday morning.

And the last chance to trade that is on Thursday afternoon. But again, that’s only the third Friday of the month. I make it very clear when we are trading that on every whenever we’re making a trade that expires the third Friday of the month, I’m very clear about whether we’re doing AM or PM.

OBX Dave says a macro process question when evaluating stocks Oh, this is about stocks, not weekly income alert.

I’ve already started, so I’ll just answer the question even though we’re not talking about weekly income alert. Do you use multiple AI systems to triangulate your research?

Generally not. Generally, I am not.

Basically have a watch list of stocks that I am looking at. I’m looking at the charts. I do feed it into AI to see what it says.

Generally, I’m looking to confirm my thoughts on it. If it doesn’t confirm, then I will take a very hard look at the stock and what I’m looking at and what my reasons are. But yeah, generally, I’m not looking at multiple AI systems. I’m looking at one.

Does opening price mean first offered or first sold?

So that’s a great question. So opening price and closing price too, that’s on the Russell, not the option. It’s on the Russell. So it’s that first tick on Friday morning where it opens, the first print.

So again, you can’t physically buy the index.

However the index is calculated, the things that go into it, that first print and same thing with the closing price, that last print is the price that the options settle at.

Could you demonstrate how to close down the call side? I was not able to do so.

So we don’t have any open call positions right now, but let me show you. I can show you with on a put side, and it’d be the same idea.

So let me just get this set up. Hang on one second.

And I got some questions yesterday about folks having trouble placing that trade.

And if you ever are having trouble, you can’t do it online for whatever reason, you’ll call the broker, chat with the broker or call them and, you know, have them explain to you what the issue is, why, you know, perhaps you’re doing something wrong, perhaps there’s something to do with the account. But it’s always a good idea to understand why you can’t get out of a trade or what’s not making sense.

Because typically the online brokers, they make it pretty easy to trade. They want you to be trading.

So, they make it fairly easy. So, if you’re not able to do it, definitely reach out to them and ask them to explain what the issue is. All right, so these are the existing positions right now.

So, can see, so in mine, the May first, I only have the puts because we did sell the calls. And then we have the May fifteenth and May twenty second position. So, let’s say that I want to close out the May fifteenth position.

So, you’d click on close positions And then it comes and it shows you the different positions that are available to close out. So you would click on both of them.

And again, this is puts. If it’s called, it’s going to be the same thing. But when you click on it and hit close selected, it’s automatically going to populate the trade for you the right way.

So, here you can see it’s already loaded the trade, so you’d be selling to close the twenty six point seven zero puts, buying to close the twenty six point eight zero puts. Here’s what the showing would be the debit. So when you’re closing one of these trades, it’s a debit.

You’re paying money because you collected money when you started the trade. Now you’re paying money to close it. This would be the midpoint. You would put your price in here, hit review and then submit it. So they make it pretty easy to close the trades.

When I closed the call side of the trade, it was exactly the same as what I just showed you here on the puts. So again, close position.

And then this is just a put spread, so it only shows these two puts. But when it was the iron condor, it also showed the two calls, the two call legs of the trade. So all you had to do was click on the calls and not click on that put position. So, click on the calls and then take care of it that way. So, they do make it easy for you to close position. That’s true whether you’re just trading a stock.

You have one hundred shares of stock, you want to close it rather than going in down here to the quote and typing in the stock and then filling out a thing. You usually can go right into your account, click on any position, hit close, and it’ll populate that trade for you. So that’s how you would do that.

Alright. Let’s see what else we got.

So Russ Warhol wants us tried to close the calls last Wednesday, but would have taken a larger loss than if I just let the entire position expire. So I just let it go. So last Wednesday was what was the date last Wednesday? So that was what? Like the twenty first?

Yeah, market was pretty high then. So, yeah, that you would have taken a bigger loss. So, yeah, that makes sense. So, you wouldn’t, you you never want to close early if you’re already taking the maximum loss or really close to it because there’s no reason to.

And actually, it’ll cost you, you know, couple of dollars in commission. There’s no reason to you might as well at that point, just hold on to it. It’s a lottery ticket and hope that the market reverses. But yeah, there’s never a reason to do that.

Let’s see.

If the maximum loss is one thousand, how come my cash account is down this week by three thousand six hundred and sixty five dollars I’ve closed out the calls on Thursday, too late. It depends on where you closed out the calls. If you did not take the maximum loss, then no, it wasn’t too late.

As far as your cash account, if you have these other open positions, then there’s less cash in the account because they are holding the cash aside because the position has to be secured by cash or marginal securities. So the cash is being held until you either have closed out the position or it expires worthless and then the cash is released.

But yeah, any questions like that about, you know, what’s going on with your account? Definitely call the broker and ask them what’s happening.

Let’s see.

Mag, I don’t know if mag is asking me what broker I use. I use Schwab. But any of the big brokers are fine. Fidelity, Vanguard, Interactive Brokers, any of are fine.

Let’s see.

Why is Schwab not showing RUT?

I’m not sure what you mean because in Schwab, so it’s dollar sign RUT. Maybe that’s the problem When you load up on Schwab, load the tickets, it’s got to be dollar sign R U T. And then like I said, think on Fidelity, it’s dot R U T.

Larry SRQ, I use tastytrade.

Yeah, what do you think of tastytrade? I don’t know how many of you are on there. I’ve actually done some media for them last month or so. I’ve been on their programming lately.

And it’s kind of cool because the hosts are actually options traders. They’re not just, you know, talking heads. So that’s kind of cool to be able to talk to people who, you know, really not just know what they’re doing, and talking about but have experienced and are active traders. That’s kind of cool.

Robert Seven says love TastyTrade, have used it for two years. TastyTrade is a great platform, but fees are steep. That’s good to know.

All right, let’s take one more question. We’re getting past ten thirty.

Yeah, a lot of people are really liking Tastytrade. That’s great.

SM Trader says, last week you mentioned negotiating with the broker for a better fee contract. I called yesterday. I’m awaiting an answer on my offer. Great. Hope hope it works out. Let us know next week if you get an answer.

Because if you’re a very active trader, they want to keep you and they know that there’s, you know, a ton of competition out there and there’s not a lot of things that kind of separate Schwab from Fidelity from E*TRADE. I mean, it’s kind of all the same things. They all have pretty rich trading platforms. They’re all pretty good. You know, each one might have a little bit different bells and whistles, but they’re all generally, you know, very similar, very good. Their fees are going to be quite similar, you know, for the most part.

You know, if you’re using a full service broker, that’s totally different. Although if you’re using a full service broker, absolutely negotiate those fees because those are much higher. Even with the Schwab’s and the Fidelity’s, now if you’re paying, you know, dollars one point two zero a trade and you’re trading, you know, once or twice a week, it might not really be worth your time to negotiate that. But if you’re a very active trader and your fees and commissions add up, the worst they can say is no.

And best thing they can do is reduce you by ten percent, twenty percent, fifty percent, what have you. So money that you can put in your pocket instead of Charles Schwab’s or Fidelity’s or whatever, the better. So I hope that you get a reduction. I would love to know about it.

So let us know what happens.

All right. So I think we’ll wrap it up there.

So thanks for joining us this week. Hopefully we’ll be back next week on the winning side of things. As always, you can always shoot me an email with questions if we didn’t get them today. But again, if it’s your experience with your broker, where something is, why something’s not working, I recommend talking to the broker themselves because they’ll be able to look at account and explain exactly what’s going on. That’s not something I can necessarily do.

That’s something that they’ll be able to help you with. So have a fantastic weekend and I will talk to you next week.