It was another holiday-shortened trading week and another week of gains for the market. The S&P 500 hit a new intraday high on Friday before closing lower on the day. Still, the index advanced 1.7% for the week as investors shifted their focus to what the new administration has in store.
We closed 13 trades across all of our services last week, booking more than $3,600 in cash. Here are all of the closed trades from the week of Jan. 21-24:
The highest-earning single trade was once again a VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) diagonal call spread from the 5K Challenge program. If you’ll recall, in the previous Weekly Income Report, we noted that members banked $940 on four contracts of the previous SMH diagonal call spread for a roughly 10% return in eight days.
Less than one hour after we closed that trade, we put on a new one using the same strategy during the 5K Challenge live trading session. That trade hit its target exit price six days later, netting traders $968 on four contracts and a 10% return in just six days.
For those who are not familiar with this strategy, a diagonal call spread involves buying a call option with a longer expiration date and a lower strike price and simultaneously selling a call option with a shorter expiration date and a higher strike price. You pay a net debit to enter the trade, and that debit is the maximum potential loss, making this a defined-risk trade.
The long call gives you the right to buy the underlying asset at the lower strike price at any time before the longer expiration date. Meanwhile, the short call obligates you to sell the underlying asset at the higher strike price if the option is exercised.
The diagonal call spread is a neutral-to-bullish strategy that yields profits whether the stock stays flat or increases over time.
If the stock price rises significantly, the long call option will likely increase in value more than the short call. This difference in value generates a profit, allowing you to exit the trade at a credit that is higher than the debit you paid to enter. And even if the underlying doesn’t move higher, the shorter-term option you sold will lose time value as expiration approaches, contributing to the overall profit on the trade.
Diagonal call spreads are one of the go-to strategies in the 5K Challenge program. Looking at our year-to-date 5K Challenge closeouts, last week’s SMH exit marked our third profitable diagonal call spread on the semiconductor ETF this year.
We’ve also had success using this tactic with chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA), earning nearly $2,600 in 15 days earlier this month. This was our largest cash win from a single position so far in 2025 across all of our services.
We’ll continue to utilize this powerful options strategy. In fact, 5K Challenge members entered a new SMH trade last week the same morning we closed the latest winner.
While we typically highlight one trade in the Weekly Income Report, before we leave you today, there is another trade, or trades rather, that we need to discuss: our remaining Income Madness closeouts.
We closed our final position last week, marking 14 profitable trades and $2,870 in cash generated in the live account.
In my eight years with Traders Reserve, we have never closed the books this quickly on a round of Income Madness. It took us just eight days! And our average time in trade was a mere 3.1 days.
You can see the full results below:
Of course, we had a strong market at our back. That certainly helped. And we purposely chose to avoid the upcoming Federal Reserve meeting, opting instead to trade during the first full week of earnings season.
Earnings season is off to a strong start, with many firms beating expectations. Yet, this is being overshadowed by the flurry of policy announcements following President Donald Trump’s return to office. For its part, Wall Street appears optimistic as investors anticipate deregulation, tax cut extensions and pro-growth policies.
But as you can see below, while the January round of Income Madness was the shortest amount of days from the time we put on our first trade to our final closeout, the total income we generated was in line with past events.
Looking back at our past five rounds of Income Madness, we’ve totaled more than $13,700 in less than a year. So, it’s not hard to see why it is one of the most popular features of our Income Masters program.
Next month, we’re running a special one-time Income Madness event for Investor’s Blueprint Live attendees. We’ll host five days of live trading between Feb.19 and Feb. 25. The first three days will be held via webinar only, while the last two days will take place in person (or virtually) at Investor’s Blueprint Live in Boca Raton, Florida.
The only way to get in on the action is to be a part of Investor’s Blueprint Live 2025. And as John Hutchinson will be telling you in the coming days, this Investor’s Blueprint Live will be a special one.
If you’re interested in joining us but have yet to secure your spot, you can do so here.
