Thursday - September 17, 2026

0:00Welcome to the dividend cafe weekly market commentary focused on dividends in your portfolio and dividends in your understanding of economic life. Welcome back to dividend cafe. This is Brian Saitel with you here this Thursday September the 17th from our Newport Beach California office here as I head out in a little while, but I wanted to record this at least before the market closed even though it's about about 45 minutes or so. Early, but what we've got today is a rebound the Dow is up over 300 points. SMP is up over a percent. NASDAQ is up about one and a half and 10 years down fairly dramatically again that curve keeps flattening. We've got tens now under 5% at 495. So broadly risk assets the other thing that was moving was oil which abated prices moved a little bit lower. The rotation that we've seen is somewhat reversed we've seen for the last several months money coming out of technology and moving into some of those other sectors today we saw the rotation go the other way in fact the last couple of days and you're actually seeing some of that stuff get bid again and so the equal weight is under performing the cap weighted index.

1:14If you look at what's going on in the economic calendar there was three things that was the Philly Fed manufacturing index that came out better than expected that's a good thing for manufacturing you've got initial jobless claims that were lower another good so we're two for two now that was 196,000 versus 208 anything under 200,000 for a week by the way is just historically very robust for the employment market so keep that in mind. Meaning not as many people filing for unemployment and then you got housing starts same old same old we missed on the starts and then we also missed on pending sales we got a point three positive though and we're expecting a point five so I guess it isn't all that bad but for the day on the economy I'd say two out of three which as I say ain't bad. The topic there that I touched on a bit was about AI and the fear that is around it there was news of it needing to be slowed down in order to put safeguards around it and it's causing a lot of fear will it exterminate the human race things like this I just wanted to remind everyone that there's basically every single technology advancement and human history where there's fear associated with it because.

2:25The human beings simply just fear what they with they don't understand and how things are going to play out that all said pretty much always history has been fairly consistent with what it ultimately does for society and for the economy and for the market for example the naysayers in the mid 90s pointed to a productivity paradox where computers were everywhere except for the productivity numbers themselves that was right before productivity growth literally doubled from 1995 to 2004. So no one knows exactly how this cycle is going to play out but the 90s taught us that both both camps could be wrong at once the skeptics were wrong about the technology and the impact on productivity and then the euphoric sort of shiny object chasers were wrong about the valuations that they paid. So I'm just asking doesn't that sound a bit familiar to this current environment I'd say that it does. The question that came in was about oil being over 100 at the same time as the fed is raising rates. Doesn't that mean that we're going to hit a recession because of that and the answer is historically speaking no that hasn't always correlated again often rates are being increased because the economy is doing well and prices are moving higher and oftentimes that can mean that commodity prices are moving higher along with the growth.

3:44So just keep that in mind if they make a huge policy here and they over do it sure it's you can cause a recession the history speaks to that too. But my point is just at 25 basis points at a time and the current starting point is just not something I'm seeing so far in really what's priced into dot plots and what's being spoken about is a modest amount of rate increases not something that is going to double fed funds or anything like that. So those are my comments on that question for today but that's what I have for you and I'll be back with you next week. There's a lovely and really great dividend cafe for your inbox for tomorrow that David wrote on the fed and fed policy and so you should try to read that if you can. Otherwise I'll be back with you next week. Enjoy your weekend and we'll see you next time on the dividend cafe. The Bonson Group is a group of investment professionals registered with high-tower securities LLC member Finra and SIPC with high-tower advisors LLC a registered investment advisor with the SEC. Securities are offered to high-tower securities LLC advisory services are offered to high-tower advisors LLC. This is not an offer to buy a sell securities no investment process is free risk there's no guarantee that the investment process or investment opportunities reference theory and will be profitable.

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