Weekly Income Alert – June 18, 2026

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Weekly Income Alert. I’m Marc Lichtenfeld. Glad you are with us. We’ve got Douglas420 from Rhode Island was first. Again, you’re back in the position that you have been for weeks.

Mike H. In Arkansas. We’ve got JRD, cloudy day at the New Jersey Shore. So great to see everyone from all over the country, all over the world, really.

Happy that you’re with us. Happy that we did take the game, the seventh win in a row for us here at Weekly Income Alerts. So good job. Remember, today was a morning expiration, the AM expiration.

So with that opening tick, which was twenty nine point five two dollars on the Russell, we were free and clear and took it home. So congratulations. You know, it’s funny, yesterday when the markets sold off after the Fed meeting, I was a little bit concerned that we could have a big gap open. I wasn’t very concerned, but a little bit.

Kind of like when you’re watching the Knicks and they’re down by twenty five points at halftime, like you’re pretty sure it’s going to work out, but there’s a little bit of worry. So that’s kind of how I was last night and waiting for the market to open this morning.

But yeah, market bounced back pretty nicely.

We’re up, you know, not huge, but decent amount today. So that’s certainly a positive. I was actually hoping for a little bit of a down open, not enough where, you know, our position would run into trouble, but a little bit down with the VIX a little bit higher to give us a little bit more juice in the options and give us a little bit more of a lower strike that we entered today. It didn’t happen that way, but we’ll gladly take the win today.

And looking at the other positions that are looking great next week’s the June twenty sixth.

The strike is twenty seven point nine zero, twenty seven point eight zero right now looking fantastic.

The July second, remember that expires on Thursday, just like today because of the July fourth holiday, the market is closed on July third, July fourth Saturday. So the market’s taking the market holiday on July third. Markets are closed on July third. So the options expire July second in the afternoon, like a normal weekly option. So July second. So we will do weekly income alert on the morning of July second.

Just a housekeeping note, next week, June twenty sixth, Anthony will be running things. I’ll be on a plane, so he will handle things. And hopefully, I’m not saddling him with a loss like we’ve done in the past. Hopefully, he’ll get to celebrate with you guys that we got another win.

Before we get to today’s trade out, I want to mention briefly, last week, somebody brought up or a few people were talking about the idea that the options can actually trade until four fifteen. And there was some confusion about with expiration, the closing tick. So here is the situation. I confirmed it.

So options do trade until four fifteen, except for on expiration day. On expiration day, four o’clock is the cutoff. With that closing tick of the Russell, that is the last chance to trade the option. So it’s not like the closing price is at four and then you can continue to trade.

So again, options trade until four fifteen, except on the days that they expire and then the the last chance to trade it is at that closing bell on the expiration date.

Now, here is something interesting, though, because Russell two thousand options and there are a few other options can now trade what they call global market hours. So basically, the markets are open in Asia, if they’re open in Europe, those options can trade. And so that is from eight fifteen p. M.

To nine twenty five a. M. And then of course at nine thirty a. M.

US markets open. So you can start trading then. You can trade starting at eight fifteen p. M. Eastern Time these options. However, not every broker allows you to do that. So I checked today.

Schwab does not allow you to do that. You can only trade during market hours. Fidelity does. So every broker is going to be a little bit different. I have not really investigated volume and things like that, how easy it is to get filled if you wanted to trade at nine thirty at night. That I am not sure of.

I’m with Schwab and Schwab does not I don’t think they’ll even have live quotes at that point. So, the markets might be thin if wanted to trade that. Generally, I don’t recommend it unless you’re really, really comfortable doing something like that. Also interesting that when I was doing the homework on this, I went into ChatGPT and Claude and they both gave me the wrong information. They both said that you cannot trade options past four And I said, I don’t think that’s right.

I think you can trade options till four fifteen and came back and said, you’re right. And let me be clear, when I posed the question, I said Russell two thousand index options. I wasn’t being vague. I said, you know, when is the last, know, when is the last time you can trade Russell two thousand index options?

Gave me that answer four o’clock. I said, no, I think it’s four fifteen. Said, you’re right. So, you know, AI is a wonderful tool, but always double check for accuracy.

And it helps if you do know what you’re talking about. Ask it to provide sources and links to back up its claims because it makes a decent amount of mistakes. It’s really good for processing tasks, but for information, I find a lot of mistakes. So, do be careful if you are basing important decisions on information that you’re getting from AI.

Yeah, NSO says the LLMs get a lot wrong. Good thing you corrected. Yeah. So it really does help when you know what you’re talking about.

Have made this analogy before. To me, AI is like a really smart, really lazy employee. It just wants to like, you know, give you an answer and get you on your way and it can go back to texting with its friends or playing solitaire or whatever. So, you kind of have to press it.

And I’ve had situations where I’ve had to press it over and over and said, no, this is not right. And then it gives me an answer that said, no, you’re still not right. This is what it is. Show me the math behind this.

And it’s certainly getting better, but definitely double check its work when if you’re looking at important decisions.

All right. So let’s get to today’s trade. Let me just take a look real quick where the market is still where it was when I checked. So I’m going to share my screen and we will get to the trade.

Alright. As usual, we are selecting dollar sign RUT on Schwab, Fidelity. RUT. Other brokers are a bit different. If you’re new and are not sure which symbol your broker uses, ask in the chat. Also, James has a link that he can post that has a list of those.

So just give a yell in the chat if you don’t know the ticker. So again, if you’re new, if you’re trading a stock, ticker is always the same across all the brokers. Indexes can be a little bit different depending on the broker. It’s an annoying thing, but that’s the way it is.

So Schwab dollar sign R U T, Fidelity. R U T and some of the others will be a little bit different. Now, in Schwab, you can see R U T, you go to the expirations, it’s only giving you the monthly expirations, which is the third Friday of the month. We don’t want that.

Today, we want to trade the July tenth strike prices. So to get to July tenth, we have to change RUT to RUTW in this dropdown. If you put RUTW here in the symbol, you’ll get an error message. So RUTW here in this dropdown menu, And then we’ve got all the different expirations.

So we are going to go to July tenth.

And we are going to trade the let me just double check my math. I just want to be one hundred percent sure of something here.

Oh, yeah, because it is down a little bit from where I first looked.

Okay, so yeah. All right, so we are going to select the twenty eight point six zero puts. We’re selling to open. I didn’t.

Only had a call here. That’s not what I want. I want a vertical put because we’re doing a spread.

And that is not giving me let’s see.

Let me let me go back.

Alright. Starting from scratch here because it was not filling in what I wanted to do. Okay. So now we go to vertical puts, and now it gives me both of those. RUTW, July tenth.

And we’re going to go to the twenty eight sixty. So we’re selling to open the twenty eight sixties.

Excuse me. And we are buying to open the twenty eight fifties.

And that’s giving us a credit of seven seventy five dollars which does not make sense.

That’s because it says two thousand eight hundred and eighty dollars All right, so that makes much more sense. So two thirty dollars So if you’ve been with us for a little while, you start to get a feel of where these options should be trading. So when I saw that that was seven something, right away I knew there was a mistake because right now with a low VIX, market’s strong. We’ve been getting, generally speaking, in the twos for our put spreads.

When things are really, really strong, the VIX is exceptionally low. It’s actually been below two a couple of times. But, you know, once you’ve been doing this for a little while, you’ll get a feel for where this midpoint on the credit should be. And you’ll see if there’s an error because a lot of times, you know, you’re kind of looking at this and you don’t see the error right away.

But when you see the price, there’s a mistake on the price and it’s not what you’re expecting. That’s when you go, okay, what am I missing here? What did I get wrong? So, we’ve got a credit of bouncing between two thirty to forty.

I see a lot of people getting filled at two thirty five.

I’m going to put my limit price at, let me see, a lot of you getting filled two thirty, two thirty five.

I’m going to go for two thirty five, see if we can get filled here. Might have to wait a little bit. I know sometimes when I try to get that extra nickel, sometimes we have to wait a little bit, but we very often get filled.

Now remember, if you’re new, we’re always putting in the order around the midpoint. The credit here is one point eight zero versus two point four zero dollars for the midpoint. It’s a big difference. So, you never want to trade these at the market.

The midpoint is a more accurate representation of where the market is. Never ever, ever trade at the bid because you’re going to get ripped off by the brokers, not the broker, sorry, the market makers. So always put it at the midpoint. So go ahead.

I know a lot of you are placing that trade.

You can fill it at two thirty five. Let me send the trade out to everyone. That way I can then place my trade.

Alright. Twenty eight sixties, twenty eight fifties, two thirty five.

Alright. I submitted mine.

I’m sorry, I placed the order now. I sent the order now. I will place my trade.

Alright.

I believe I just got Phil. Let me check real quick.

Yep, I got filled right away at two thirty five. Some of you are getting filled at two forty.

Nice to see.

Jack says, what is the Fidelity symbol? I believe it’s .RUT.

But again, you need to be able to make sure that you’re trading those July tenth options. So you may have to add a W to it, or if it’s like Schwab, you have to put the dropdown. There might be a dropdown menu. I’m not sure.

So Doctor. Lu, it’s a great question. What is the difference on Schwab between the limit credit and walk credit? So a walk credit and you can have a walk limit also on another kind of trade, even if you’re just buying a stock.

A walk means if you don’t get filled right away, you’ll automatically adjust your price. So you can tell, you know, Schwab or the broker, if I’m not filled in five minutes, lower the price by zero five dollars every five minutes until, let’s say, you know, the minimum you’d accept is two twenty five, for example, if that’s what you wanted to do. So if you put in your order at two thirty five and didn’t get filled five minutes later, it would automatically change the order to two thirty. Five minutes later, would automatically change to two twenty five.

If you still didn’t get filled, it’s just open at two twenty five dollars But it will automatically change your price. So, you could do the same for a stock. Let’s say a stock was trading at fifty dollars and you wanted to buy it and weren’t getting filled. You could say, okay, in two minutes lower to forty nine point seven five dollars and in twenty five cent increments down to forty nine dollars So that’s what a walk trade is.

And it’s kind of useful, especially if you are not going to be in front of your computer, you’re leaving for the day, you can say, okay, this is the minimum price I’m willing to accept and I’ll do it in the timeframe that I determine. So it’s kind of a useful thing if you’re going to get up and walk away.

Limit credit is just the limit price, the minimum that you will accept.

So, you know, we’re trying to sell it for two thirty five. That’s the minimum. If we get filled for two forty, that’s great. But we will not sell for less than two thirty five. That is a limit price.

Some of you folks can fill the two forty five. Very nice.

Okay, so Andy G says, for AM expiration options like today, what happens if that first morning tick is in the money, but the close the day before was out of the money? Can we still have money taken out of our account if that happens?

Can the European trading you were talking about affect this? Yes. So the official price that determines whether a position is in the money or out of the money on the AM options like we had today is that opening price of the Russell. So we opened at two thousand nine fifty two.

Where did we close yesterday? Let me just see.

We closed yesterday at twenty nine point one seven dollars So kind of the opposite of what this example is. All right, so let me back up. So yes, it would affect it. So let’s say you had the twenty nine point six zero puts expiring today and yesterday the market closed at twenty nine point six five.

That would be the last chance for you to have gotten out of the trade. And then today it opened at twenty nine point five two dollars Yes, that trade would now be in the money. Even though, you know, yesterday at the close, it looked like it was going be a winning trade. Today’s open would have meant that you were then in the money and that would have been a losing trade.

So that is one of the risks with an AM trade that things could change overnight. So it hasn’t happened yet in the over the year that we’ve been doing this. But if we were really close heading into an AM trade, an AM expiration, you know, the night before, chances are I’m going to close that out because I don’t want to risk this exact scenario. Hasn’t happened yet.

We haven’t been that close to finishing at or in the money heading into an AM expiration that’s out of our control. But that absolutely can happen for sure. The market could gap lower and that could result in in the money option at the open. And remember, it’s that opening print.

So it doesn’t matter what happens the next millisecond. It’s that opening print is the official price for determining whether that option is in or out of the money. So again, if we’re close heading into expiration on a late Thursday afternoon, chances are I would send out an alert in the afternoon saying, hey, let’s take our position off the table just to be sure that don’t run into trouble tomorrow morning.

Michael J. Says seven wins builds the war chest. Absolutely.

So John B. Says if one does a twenty eight point six zero sell to open and twenty eight point two zero dollars buy to open, the net credit is a very large amount. Why not go with the lower buy to open? So I’m glad you think two point three five dollars is a very large amount. To me, that’s not a huge number.

If you go with the lower buy to open, so basically you are exposing yourself to more risk. So you would have a higher credit because the put that you’re buying would be cheaper.

However, your exposure is higher. So let’s say you instead of buying the oh, I see what you’re saying. If one does a two thousand eight and sixty and a two thousand eight hundred twenty buy to open, I was reading as two thousand eight hundred fifty. So yes, that would be a very large credit. But now your exposure is four thousand dollars per credit minus per contract minus whatever that credit is going to be.

So let me take a look real quick at what that would be.

I’m just going to take a look and see if we were trading the twenty eight.

So, you know, really what we’re talking about is risk versus reward. How much risk are you willing to take? So if you were selling to open the two thousand eight sixty dollars s buying to open the two thousand eight hundred twenty dollars s, yeah, you would have a credit of eight point zero five dollars So that is a really nice sized credit. However, your maximum loss is now three thousand two hundred dollars per contract because if this position finishes in the money, you’ve got four thousand dollars coming out of your account minus the eight dollars that you’ve already collected, the eight hundred dollars So the max loss is three thousand two hundred dollars So it’s about managing that risk.

So if you’re comfortable with that kind of risk in order to get that large of a credit, then that’s up to you. But, you know, I always want to try to make sure that if the market falls and falls hard, you know, we’re not blowing ourselves up because there’s an expression the market takes the stairs higher and the elevator lower. So, you know, when things go down, they can go down quickly.

And even if you didn’t finish in the money, let’s say the market tanked and was at like twenty eight point four zero, twenty eight point three zero, the VIX would be so much higher. So the credit is or the debit that you would have to pay it back if you wanted to close early is going to be high. So, it’s not like you’re probably going to get out with a smaller debit unless it’s the day of expiration or something and it’s not quite at two thousand eight hundred sixty. But if the market really fell, let’s say it got down to two thousand eight seventy in a hurry, the VIX is going be higher.

That debit is going to be quite high. So, it’s not like you’re going be able to get out, let’s say, a debit of four dollars or even eight dollars Chances are you’re looking at a max loss or even higher. We’ve seen times where the debit is higher than what the maximum loss would be. So, there’d be no reason to close it out.

So, if you’re comfortable with that risk in order for the compensation, that higher credit, that’s up to you. You know, I always talk about the market pays you for the risk that you’re willing to take. This is a perfect example. If you’re willing to accept more risk, you’ll get paid more.

But the risk is certainly higher. Lower the risk, the less you’ll get paid. That’s why, you know, treasuries and investment grade corporate bonds pay three, four, maybe five percent if you’re lucky.

And, you know, speculative stocks can go up one hundred, two hundred percent in a year because that risk is much, much higher. So you get paid a lot more. Not always. Sometimes you lose money on speculative stock.

But that’s where that’s that’s the rationale why I’m keeping the the limits.

I’m sorry, I’m keeping the spreads so low ten points because that risk is going to be fairly low if the market tanks and if we have a few losses in a row, it’s not going to blow up our accounts. We’ve had some losing streaks, as you know, and it did not blow up our accounts because the risk was limited. And once we got back to winning, you know, accounts are in great shape if you’ve been trading, you know, a while with us now. So, it’s really about limiting the risk.

The other reason also is in the backtest, this is what worked the best. Having that ten point strike is what worked the best. We tried various different spread widths and the ten points was what worked the best. I assume because the risk was fairly limited when we were wrong.

Oh, John, thank you very much for posting the symbols on the different brokers. So if you are not sure, you can scroll up just a little bit, you’ll see moderator John, and he’s got all those ticker symbols based on brokers. Some of these brokers I never even heard of, Moomoo. I’m not familiar with that one.

Thank you for doing that, John.

Morris K, please post or repeat the numbers. No problem. So we are selling to open the July tenth, two thousand eight and sixty puts and buying to open the two thousand eight and fifty puts. You can also the alert went out, so you can also check your email That should be in your inboxes. It hit at ten thirteen a. M. You can always if you’re a visual learner, you need to see it in writing, you can check your inbox as well.

Knapper says I forgot to change how to change the limit credit on Schwab. Let me show you.

I’ll share my screen again.

Let me just get back to the right spread.

Okay, so the limit price is down here. So here is where you can change it.

If the order is already placed, then you need to go to order status.

I’m pretty sure every broker calls it order status.

So on Schwab, it’s up here or you could go to trade and you should be able to find order status. And then there should be a place where you can change the order. Sometimes it might be with like the three bars. You click on that or you might see a button to push, but there should be a way to change that order.

And then you would change the limit price that way. If you can’t figure that out with your broker, definitely reach out to the broker and find out. Or you can probably Google it. That might be even faster because sometimes it takes a little while to get through to customer service.

Although a lot of the brokers now have AI chatbots. So, for simple things like that, it might be able to give you the answer quickly too. But, you know, if you’re with Fidelity or something, you could probably Google that pretty quickly and say, hey, how do I change an open order in Fidelity? And it should be able to tell you that.

Let’s see.

Could I do this trade at Vanguard? That’s from Fred. You should be able to as long as you are approved for options. So I don’t see why not.

But you definitely need to reach out to Vanguard. Anything specific to your broker, I would reach out to them. But as long as you’re approved for options trading and specifically for trading credit spreads, then you should be able to. If you’re not, then if you’re not approved, if you haven’t tried yet, then you need to apply for that. That will be level three options trading approval. Or if you are with Schwab, it’s level two because Schwab for some reason starts with level zero where everybody else starts with level one. But you do need approval to trade those options.

What else we got? Let’s say let’s get to one more question.

William B. Says I’ve been going four percent lower rather than your standard three percent lower for less commission. And I’ve noticed that the last seven weeks have not even been close to one percent cushion did not protect me. Yeah, I mean, market’s been very strong right now.

So that one percent wouldn’t matter. Had we hit a downturn, then you would have had that extra one percent buffer. But the market has been strong. Again, the reason we have gone with three percent consistently is because it’s worked in the backtest.

That’s what showed us. So we tried all different kinds of distances from the strike at the time that replacing the trade. Three percent was what had the best results in the backtest. And so far in the, how long have we been doing this now?

It’s June. So in the thirteen months that we’ve been trading this, it’s worked out really, really well. So basically, we’re sticking with the plan. We’re not deviating from it, except for when the market changes.

Then, you know, as you know, then we’ve gone to some iron condors. We could go to bear call spreads also for in a bear market. But, you know, really, you guys know me by now, for those of you who’ve been with me for a while, know that I am pretty disciplined and I stick with what works. And if it’s not working, you know, then we’ll certainly change things up.

And I do that in other services, too. But for the most part, I’m very disciplined when it comes to trading, whether that’s sticking with stops, whether that is getting rid of stocks that have stopped growing their dividend. Whatever discipline of that strategy is, I stick with it. And that’s because I’ve got thirty years in the market and I have made every mistake along the way, believe me.

And for a very long time, I was not a disciplined trader at all.

And there were reasons why I was not as successful as I wanted to be. And it was because I’d let emotions take over. I did not stick with strategies that I knew should be working.

And interestingly, it was when I got into poker about getting on twenty years now, I guess.

And I really learned to be disciplined playing poker and generally only playing good hands, except for when I’m bluffing, but not playing hands because I was bored or, you know, because I had a feeling about something that, you know, a six was going to hit the board or something on the flop.

So poker actually helped me become a more disciplined investor. As I got disciplined playing poker, so I was getting my head handed to me because I was playing garbage cards.

Once I started doing that, it transferred over to my investing. So, it’s about twenty years ago and it’s made all the difference.

That’s why a very long winded answer to why I’m sticking with three percent. But that is why, because that’s what worked and I’m sticking with the discipline. So Johnny P says enjoy the Knicks parade virtually. I won’t be there.

Unfortunately, the last time I was in New York for ticker tape parades in when the Yankees won in the nineties. And I had the most New York moment. And I’ll leave you with this. We were all congregating on the sidewalks and it was an hour before the parade was going to start.

And it’s my favorite New York story. And, you know, we’re on two different sides of the sidewalk, you know, separated by the street. And suddenly, on my side of the street, they started chanting, that side sucks, that side sucks. And I just thought this is the perfect New York moment right there.

I just thought that was absolutely hilarious. So, if you are in New York, enjoy the ticker tape parade.

New York is a very special place, has its problems, but it’s an amazing place. So, I’m thrilled that the Knicks won. Thrilled that we have our seventh winner in a row here at Weekly Income Alert. Have a great long weekend. And remember, Anthony will be with you next Friday as I’ll be on a plane. I’ll be back with you on July second, that Thursday, with the expiration in the afternoon, not the morning, but we’ll have a ten a. M.

Weekly income alert as usual. So, will see you on July second. I’ll send you any alerts if necessary in between. Have a great long weekend, everyone.