I've been down for the past couple of weeks and have had a lot of time to think about how I could help you make more income and refine your skills as a technical trader, making you a better spread trader. Anyway, I found this training video I made back in Feb 2012. YES, over 12 years ago! It's a day trade on ES futures contract, and you'll like it. That is if you have an interest in making additional income. If you do, and this is open to the entire income trader alliance group, I'm going to put together some videos teaching you how to do this and, more importantly, get a funded account that you can trade. That means you risk someone else's money to trade, and you get to keep the lion's share of the profit. I would have done anything to have this type of account when I started. I was familiar with this, but never had an interest because I trade my own money. After researching this extensively over the past couple of weeks, I've decided to get a $250K account. More details are coming later today. Let me know what you think below.

UPDATED: added a tip I learned from someone else. A few clicks and earnings list is done, no need for logos or lots of typing - super fast! I thought I'd share what I think is an easy way to track earnings. I realize others may have their own system already, but for me, hearing tips from others helps me refine so I thought I would share. I find this approach easier than looking at logos and it keeps the list in front of me when considering trades. I use the free version of Seeking Alpha and the scratchpad gadget in TOS. Here's how I set it up: 1. In SA, enter the ticker and click follow. It will add the stock to what SA calls Portfolio. I made one portfolio for all stocks on my watchlists, but you can make multiple portfolios for different watchlists if you prefer. Do this once and you don't have to create it again, just update who you follow as you change your lists. 2. In SA, go to Market Data, Earnings calendar, click the date, like today April 29 and click box called "my stocks" and it will show you only the stocks on your watchlists (now in your portfolio") that have earnings that day and what time of day they report, ie pre, post, midday 3. Using the scratchpad gadget, I make a list with date, symbol, time. I keep the Mag 7 and big reports like FOMC in yellow. 4. Here is what it looks like with a few example tickers. 5. Updated tip: Someone I know in a different group posted an even faster way to get the list. Once you build your portfolio in SA, on the page listing the Portfolio, look for the column called "Upcoming announcement Date" and sort by most recent. Copy/paste into wherever you track, or just leave it there. You can also download the list from Excel, but you will need to know how to sort & change formatting bec you can't paste from Excel into TOS - it has weird formatting. But, if you've worked in Excel, you prob know how to paste to remove formatting (I used a blank email) and paste that into TOS. I just pasted the WHOLE EARNINGS SEASON in just a few clicks, no logos and very little typing. Woo hoo!

This is why we don't trade earnings

My first profitable trade: RUT -1935/+1940, 5 contracts $1.20 spread, GTC filled this am at $0.60’; made $300. A little close for comfort when it came close to my zone

What's your hourly rate? :) I was trying to wait patiently for good entries and had a hard time finding some this morning after closing trades from yesterday to avoid risk of a continued down-turn. I wish I had kept the SMCI spread, but figured it was better to keep my money than lose it...! So, around 1pm today I opened trades on SMCI and SPX when signs of support and upward momentum showed... Note the near-the-money 0-day option sold on SPX for .45...$450/hr...LOL - It got a little sketchy near the closing bell, but thought I'd try it when the market continued some upward momentum around that 1pm local (3pm EST) timeframe. - I think I'd prefer to be further from the money and out a few days, similar to @Joshua Fong today, but this was a good experimental play. It was fun to watch the value drop so quickly toward closing!