Weekly Income Alert – May 8, 2026

Welcome to Weekly Income Alert, my favorite part of the week. So glad you are all with us today. We’re back on the winning side of things, so that is really good news. So nice to see so many of you here, so many familiar names.

I see Douglas420 in Rhode Island. He’s always the first to sign on right at nine forty five, see if somebody can beat him next week.

MedGal13 in Orlando, Rich D in Reno, and everyone else. So good to see all of you.

So, I saw in the chat somebody said, I’m new here. When do we start making money? Right now, right today. That’s when we’re going to plan.

If you’re brand new, there’ll be money hitting your account in about fifteen minutes and then in three weeks from now, hopefully the trade is a winner and you get to keep all of it. That’s the plan. So as you know, this week we do have a winner, which is great and couldn’t have come at a better time because next week is actually the one year anniversary of Weekly Income Alert. We first launched on May sixteenth.

And so to celebrate Weekly Income Alert, we’re doing a giveaway and we need your help. So to celebrate, like I said, it’s going be a giveaway. We’re going to have one Weekly Income Alert member randomly selected to win a signed and personalized copy of one of my books. It could either be Get Rich With Dividends or You Don’t Have to Drive an Uber in Retirement, your choice.

I can sign it to you, to anybody that you want.

So in order to participate in the giveaway, just please shoot us an email and just let us know your experience with Weekly Income Alert. You know, everything that you’ve experienced, good, bad, ugly, the wins, losses, feel free to let us know how it’s all worked out for you and just send that to mailbagoxfordclub dot com. I know we’ve got the link. It should be posted any minute now.

And the thing is, need to get it by eleven fifty nine p. M. Tonight. So this is today only.

So give us an email. Let us know what you have thought about Weekly Income Alert since you’ve been in it. You don’t have to have been in it all year. You know, however long you’ve been in it, let us know.

And if you’re selected, you’ll win the personalized autographed copy of whichever book you choose.

So let’s talk about the market real quick. As you know, the market has been incredibly strong. So unless something goes terribly, terribly wrong, in the next few hours, today will be a win. Let me take a look at the portfolio real quick.

So next week’s position also, the two thousand hundred and eighty and two thousand six hundred and seventy puts. So we need about, I mean, we’d need about a two hundred point drop in the Russell for that position to not work out. So that would be, what, about a six, seven percent decline. It would be pretty significant.

So, hopefully that will work out. I want to remind you next week’s position, May fifteenth is the AM expiration, which means Thursday, the fourteenth is the last time to trade it. And the official closing price is the open on May fifteenth, but you can’t trade it on the open. It’s on Thursday’s close is the last chance to trade it. So, just keep that in mind and I’ll certainly let you know if we need to do anything.

And then our other position, the May twenty second, that’s the twenty seven point one five, twenty seven point zero five put spread right now looking pretty good. Again, we have two weeks to go, so I’m not going to count that chicken until it’s hatched, but everything’s looking really good right now. As far as the market, I sent an alert out to Technical Pattern Profits, my technical trading service today, talking about the market and you look at a price chart of the S and P, of the Russell, it’s just everything is incredibly strong right now. There are some things, and I mentioned this last week, kind of lurking under the surface that have me a little bit concerned. There’s a momentum indicator that I follow called stochastics. And while the market has been making new highs, this indicator has not been. It’s making lower highs.

That can be a divergent indicator, which can sometimes suggest that the move that you’re seeing in the market may not last short term.

Again, we’re looking at this on a daily chart, not a weekly chart.

Also, just seeing some things like when the market hit a new high earlier in the week, we had four percent of stocks hitting new lows.

That’s a little bit concerning. That happens extremely rarely and also not a great sign.

I’m going to take my lead from the price action of the indexes and certainly keeping my radars finely tuned, keeping those antenna twitching to see what else is happening. And I won’t be hesitant to make a change. But I feel like right now with the market so strong, having those other little things underneath the surface isn’t enough to make me change my stance and go back to the iron condors yet. So we’re going to stay bullish for now with the put spreads until the market gives me a real definitive reason to change.

So one thing today I’m very excited about to deliver on finally, and hopefully this will work, is I’m going to demonstrate on Thinkorswim how to place the trade. I’ll also go back to the website today as well because I know not everybody is on Thinkorswim. Now, when we tested this out, the Thinkorswim platform, the font is pretty small, and I was not able to get it to increase it in size while sharing the screen. So actually, you know what?

Let me just try. I actually just thought of one thing I might be able to try before I share that.

Was just looking to see where the font is, but I don’t see it.

Yeah, so it’s going to be a little bit small, but you’ll at least get to see exactly kind of what it looks like and how thinkorswim works. And then again, I will go back to Schwab for those of you who are trading on the web, even if it’s not with Schwab, it’ll be very similar.

Oh, wait, let me see.

All right, just increase the font, so hopefully that will be okay.

Okay, so I’m going to share my screen now.

And also, I have to thank, apologize, I forgot who made the suggestion of showing the paper trading account as a way to not be able to show all of my personal information because there was no way in thinkorswim, it shows some of the digits of your information. There’s no way to blur it out, no way to get rid of it. So the good news is this is the paper trade. So I won’t actually be placing the trade for real in thinkorswim, but you’ll see how it works.

So we’ve got the Russell right here and there’s a few different ways that we can do this. So I’ve already selected the May twenty ninth because that’s the expiration and a couple of things here. So if you’re on Thinkorswim, where here where it says strikes, the default says four.

Let me go back to so the default is just four strike prices and that won’t give us what we are looking for because it’s right around the current price. So you can change that to six to eight to ten to twelve.

I just do all so that I have all of them and then I can find the ones that I’m looking for because, you know, usually the ones that we’re looking for at three percent away are a decent distance away. So it’s not just going to be, you know, ten, twelve, fourteen. So we are looking at the twenty seven.

Okay, so now when you want to trade this on thinkorswim, right here it says spread. Okay, there’s so there’s two ways of doing this. It says single here, and this is the way I tend to do it myself.

So I’ll go back to that. But you can choose vertical right here and has all the different types of things. You can choose iron condor, you can choose vertical.

And then it gives you the default is a five point spread.

Now, I actually have not played around with this to see if you can change that. But it’s a five point, meaning to change what the default is.

So what I would do here is hang on, that’s not what I want to do.

All right, so what I would do here, let’s say, so we want to do the, I think we want to do the twenty seven 60s, twenty seven 50s. You can see here the default is twenty seven sixty, twenty seven fifty five.

So if you click on it, it automatically comes up, but you want to change the strike price. So we’re keeping the twenty seven point six zero and we want to change that to twenty seven point five zero. And you can see the credit, it’s putting it automatically at the midpoint.

Now, unlike on the Schwab website, you can’t you can’t see that midpoint with all the bids and the asks. You you’d have to be looking at the at each strike price.

And we don’t have that luxury right here, but it tells you what the midpoint is and you can change what your limit price is. And then you would hit confirm and send.

The other thing you can do instead of vertical, the default is single. You could right click on the twenty seven sixty strike sell and then go to vertical.

And then same thing, you would just change that to twenty seven point five zero and change the price.

And that’s basically how you would do that on Thinkorswim. You change the numbers, how many contracts you want, but that will do it.

So let me just, I can just do this, confirm and send.

This will show you exactly all your numbers.

And yeah, and then you would hit send and that would be it.

So that is how you do think or swim. It’s fairly easy. You just have to remember you’re going to change those strike prices.

So I will stop sharing that and now we’ll go to the Schwab account to place this for real. So again, for those of you who are new, in Schwab, it’s going to be dollar sign, R U T is the symbol.

On Fidelity, it’s dot R U T.

Now, on Schwab, you do have to, in order to get the weeklies, you have to choose R U T W. If you choose, if you just leave this right here at RUT, you’re only going to get the third Fridays of the month.

We are doing the May twenty ninth this week. So if change this to RUT in the dropdown, it’s either RUT or RUTW, then you have the ability to choose May twenty ninth.

Have to change this under strategy. Want to change that to vertical put.

All right.

And that did not take.

Not sure what happened there.

Let’s see.

Okay, there we go. Back in business. So we got the vertical put and everything went back to the way it was. We have to change it to May twenty ninth. And remember, when you’re trading it as a spread, if you change one variable, it will change it on the other side. So you want to make sure that you have it set up this way. That way you don’t make a mistake and have one expiration date, you know, for one side of the trade and another for the second side of the trade.

So we are selling to open. We’re going to sell to open the 2860s by the 2850s. I’m sorry, not the 2860s, 2760s. And as you get used to this, you’ll get a sense of if you’ve made a mistake. So for example, let me go back.

So when I went to twenty eight sixty, I saw that the credit was four forty five. Now, if you’ve been doing this a while, you’ll know that that’s too high. That doesn’t make sense in a current market. When market’s not volatile and the market’s very strong, our credits tend to be much lower, about half that price. When we’re selling put spreads, we’re generally getting about two dollars and change, not four dollars So, as soon as I saw that four dollars like, oh, I made a mistake here and quickly saw that it was the twenty eight point six zero dollars So, I want to change that to two thousand seven hundred and sixty, two thousand seven fifty. And now we have a credit. The midpoint is two twenty.

I’m going to leave that as my limit price, two twenty. So you can go ahead and place that order. It just dipped a little bit. But again, sometimes it takes a little bit longer. Looks like people are getting filled at two twenty. I’m going to go ahead and post the trade before I send it out my self.

All right. I am sending it out.

It is sent. I will place the order.

And let’s see. Did I get filled?

Not sure that I did. Let’s take a look real quick.

Where’s my order status?

Nope, I’m still open at two twenty. That’s okay. Like I said, sometimes it takes a little while. And if I have to lower the price limit, I will and we’ll let you know if that has to happen. That happened, Tim, if it was last week or the week before. But I send out alerts and let you know if we need to change. Looks like a lot of you are getting filled at two twenty.

Dave said he went a little lower, at two thousand seven hundred fifty, two thousand seven hundred forty got filled at two.

Michael J.

Oh, I see. Okay, so Samantha asked a question, why are we placing a put trade? Let’s see.

That’s already in the money. So what we’re doing, so that put trade is out of the money because the put is lower than the current price. So it only becomes in the money if the Russell falls down to that price. So we’re basically selling insurance.

That’s the analogy I always give. We’re selling somebody insurance at two thousand seven hundred fifty. They’re concerned that the market’s going to drop, so they’re buying insurance from us at two thousand seven hundred and fifty. If the market falls that far, then we have to pay them, you know, their claims.

On the other hand, we bought insurance at two thousand seven hundred forty to limit our risk. So that’s basically how you can think of it when we’re placing put spreads. We’re selling insurance and then just like insurance companies who buy reinsurance, that’s kind of what we’re doing at two thousand seven hundred and forty. So we have a ten point strike.

So that’s where we’re limiting our risk to ten points minus what the credit is. And just like insurance companies make a lot of money on premiums and claims that never happen, that’s what we’re banking on and has pretty much happened over the past year. We have assuming today’s trade closes out as a winner, seventy eight percent win rate. So that’s just like an insurance company.

I don’t know what their win rates are, probably even higher, but it’s the exact same concepts. You know, somebody is concerned the market’s going to fall. They buy a put to manage their risk. We sell them that put.

And then we buy a put lower than that to manage our risk. Really, really apropos analogy there.

Abel says, how come it’s going directly to debit? I changed to credit, but not sure what will happen here in Charles Schwab.

If it’s going to debit, that means you have something is wrong, that maybe your strike price is wrong. So you’re selling the higher strike price and buying the lower strike price. So we’re selling the 27.60s, buying the 27.50s.

So that’s another way to know if you’re doing something wrong. If you see a debit, then automatically we know that that’s wrong. If we’re opening the trade, if we’re closing the trade, it’ll be a debit. But when we’re opening a trade, it’s always going be a credit.

So if you see a debit there, then check your strike prices, make sure that you’re selling the higher strike price and buying the lower strike price.

SC0007 says I still want to know how everyone else got the trade when it wasn’t listed here. So I think I saw somebody say we anticipated.

And I was talking about what it was in the thinkorswim demonstration that that’s what it was. Also, the basic idea is that we are doing the put spreads about three percent away from the current strike price. I’m giving you the secret sauce right here.

Generally speaking, occasionally we’ll waver from that, but not very often. So three percent. So you look at where the market is and you can see that it’s going to be about three percent. Now I do sometimes make adjustments for liquidity. If the strike that we’re looking at doesn’t have much liquidity, I will often choose a different strike just to make sure that we can have a better opportunity of getting filled.

So, you know, many people who’ve been here for a while have started to anticipate what that trade is going to be. And especially, like I said, when I was showing it on Thinkorswim, you know, those numbers matched up with what that three percent number would be. So, you know, people were anticipating that and jumping on it. Now, to be clear, it’s not like with a stock where if people are piling in, especially like on a penny stock, it’s going to drive the price higher. That doesn’t really occur with these spreads because there’s multiple components here that we’re talking about.

And the market makers aren’t, you know, they’re not jacking the price up on these options. They’re also index options which are extremely liquid.

And the index is moving all the time. So don’t worry about it if you’re a couple of minutes behind everybody else. It really doesn’t make a difference as far as getting filled. So, you know, pretty much get filled along with everybody else, even though I’m putting in my order just a little bit later, checking to see if I got filled yet. So I haven’t, of course, as soon as I said that I haven’t gotten filled, that occurred. But I mean, as soon as I said that I tend to get filled, you know, along with everybody else, We didn’t get filled yet, but I’m not too worried.

Let’s see what else.

So, Brian DT, I have three thousand dollars in cash and Schwab is telling me that I don’t have enough cash for this trade. Why? So, if you have the other open positions, if you’ve been doing this every week and you have three open positions, then you need four thousand dollars because today’s trade or today’s expiration has not closed yet. That closes at the end of the day.

So you need one thousand dollars per week. And on, you know, days that were on Fridays, we have an expiring trade and a new open trade. And so those overlap for, one trading session. So you do need one thousand dollars per contract per trade.

So that comes out to four thousand dollars if you’re trading one contract that you would need available. Now, if you don’t have all three trades on from the past three weeks, then you need to call Schwab and ask what’s going on. But that should be why. So you need four thousand dollars generally speaking, to be able to trade one contract every week.

Now on the Thursday, I’m sorry, on the AM trades like next week, that trade will expire on Friday’s open before we put in our new trade. So I’m not sure exactly when things clear with the brokers, if it will be that quick that at ten fifteen the money will have cleared and you’ll be able to do it without having that extra thousand dollars or not. Think so. But if that’s a concern, talk to Schwab and find out or talk to your broker and find out if that will clear by ten fifteen.

But generally speaking, four thousand per, you know, to trade one contract every week.

Stephen B. Says, how do you close an iron condor and think or swim just two legs? Say the calls.

That’s a good question. And I haven’t done that.

I mean, there should be a way to when you put in a closing order to change the number of contracts and you should be able to bring that down to zero for the ones that you don’t want to close. But I haven’t tried to do that yet. But I would assume that’s the way to do it. Thinkorswim also has a really good support, you know, technical support thing.

You just go to support on upper right hand corner, ask your question. They sometimes take a little bit of time to get back to you, meaning like ten, fifteen minutes, but they’re pretty good.

Let’s see.

What else we got?

Not a ton of questions here.

Yes, SM Trader says it is, so the mark, not meaning me, but the price that you’re seeing is the midpoint, is not a guarantee that you’ll get filled there. It’s a pretty good indication of where the market is and where you should get filled at that time. But again, there’s no guarantee that you will get filled at that price point.

So but again, sometimes you just have to be a little bit patient. You know, these things do fluctuate quite a bit. You know, the Russell dips two points. It rises three points.

It’s going to change. So like right now I’m seeing that the midpoint is two ten. I still have my order out of two twenty. And like I said, we just wait.

Can be very patient.

Generally speaking, I’ll wait an hour or so. If I haven’t gotten filled by then, then I’ll put in a new order, let’s say, you know, sometime in the afternoon. And then I think there was one week where at two in the afternoon, I had to change it again. But generally speaking, we’re going to get filled somewhere around that midpoint. You know, if you’re anxious, you could always lower it by a nickel. And actually, sometimes I do that. I was a little greedy today.

Usually, I’ll look at the midpoint and I’ll put my order in a nickel below just to try to increase the chances of getting filled. I didn’t do that today, but we’ll see what happens. If I have to change it, I will and I will certainly send an alert out to everybody.

Do you use Thinkorswim’s analyze feature for the spreads? I generally don’t.

I don’t use a lot of their features for analyzing options.

Taking a look real quick.

I mean, once in a while, I’ll add some simulated trades just to get a sense of what my likely profit is going to be in especially on speculative trade or I guess I do once in a while on a spread just to make sure I understand what the risk is and all that and what the likely. But I mean, but with a spread, you can figure that out pretty quickly once you’ve been doing this a while. So generally, no, except for once in a while on more speculative trades.

Let’s get to one more question. Let’s see.

Fifty nine says, Sprite driver, he uses the analyze or she uses the analyze tab all the time, Thinkorswim. So yeah, Thinkorswim does have some good tools. Neil L. Says, Can we get text alerts when you change price late in the day?

I believe if you’re signed up for text alerts, that will occur. Perhaps, James, if you know, if you could confirm that. But I believe if you are set up for text alerts, that anytime I send an alert, it hit your phone as a text. So make sure you’re signed up for text alerts and that will definitely or it should happen. Yeah, James confirming that text alerts includes open close recommendations and updates like changes to limit price. Thank you, James.

Alright, let’s get to one more question.

PP12, I’m new to this. So for all loss, not optimistic.

I did also not get the text alert to sell this week. That’s because there was no text alert to sell this week. We’re letting it expire worthless. The trade is going to expire worthless and so we don’t have to do anything.

That’s the beauty of this. When it works out and we get the maximum gain, you don’t do anything. It just expires worthless. You don’t have to place the trade.

As far as having all losses, since you’re new, you did come in right as we hit a losing streak. We were in iron condors, which is when you have put spreads, which are bullish, but you also have call spreads, which are bearish. And as you know, the market’s been incredibly strong. So as a result, that call spread ended up being a loser for us and ended up, you know, we ended up having some losses.

We did have some winners with the iron condors when the market was weak, but the market turned on a dime in April and hasn’t looked back. And, you know, for at least a couple of weeks, there was no reason to believe that things had changed that dramatically and that, you know, there was a new bull market and that this the concerns over the past couple of months that was causing stocks to go down, that that was suddenly over. Obviously, that ended up being the case. But, you know, certainly for two weeks, that was not the case.

And, you know, and for that third week, certainly, I was still not convinced. I was still being cautious based on what had happened. And also with the iron condors, you know, you certainly never want to lose money, obviously. But with iron condors, when you lose, you lose less.

So it’s a little bit easier to stomach.

The losses are half of what they are on a put spread. So I can be a little bit more comfortable taking a chance that on an iron condor because if we lose, it’s going to be a much, much smaller especially in a period of high volatility when prices are quite high.

But hopefully, you know, we’re winning today. Hopefully, we’re back on our winning ways. Next week looks great too unless the markets really melt down next week.

So we should be back to winning. Again, seventy eight percent win rate over the past year. So again, let us know your experiences. Hit that link at the top that James posted and shoot us an email.

Let us know your experience and one of you will win a personalized copy of one of my books. Just let us know which one and that’ll be that. So really great session today. Glad everyone was here.

Me just take a look real quick to see if I got filled yet.

Nope, didn’t get filled yet.

Midpoint is right at two twenty. So hopefully that will happen soon. And again, I will let you know if we need to change the price limit, but hopefully that will not occur. So have a great week, everyone. Congrats for getting back on the winning side of things, and I will talk to you next week. Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there.