The Dividend Cafe

I love the topic of this week’s Dividend Cafe. I believe one of the most powerful people in global finance gave me the chance to address a topic today that desperately needs to be addressed. And through this topic we have profound takeaways to inform our understanding of economics, and to apply such understanding to the emphases we put in our portfolios. I will leave the introduction there, and ho...

We all know that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been the biggest story of 2022 thus far, not just for markets but for the entire news cycle. Ten minutes do not go by on the news without hearing the word “Russia” or “Ukraine” – for good reason (there is a war going on, you know). And there are other countries that do not exactly hide in the background, either. China is never far from our dialo...

Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com

I hope you will find this to be a special Dividend Cafe. No, this week’s Dividend Cafe doesn’t dare to bring the vast military sophistication of people who tweet all day long to you, but maybe we do one better. We don’t talk about Russia/Ukraine at all. Actually there is some true connectivity between much of what I discuss today and how it interacts with current events, but at the core of the pre...

The fog of war continues in Ukraine with the entire world watching. The path to some immediate resolution has mostly closed, and expectations are for a complicated and extended process. Prayers are for minimal bloodshed and certainly for a limited scope to where the conflict goes. But few analysts are able to formulate a scenario where this ends well. The dollar is rallying. The Euro is collapsing...

I have pretty much written each Friday’s Dividend Cafe on the Friday morning of the day you receive it every single week for over a year now. If there is an exception to that over the last 12+ months I do not remember it. I used to write the Dividend Cafe in bits and pieces throughout the week and then “pull it all together” on Friday mornings, but a little over a year ago I changed my approach an...

There was plenty of talk about Russia/Ukraine in DC Today this week as well in the unreliable news cycle, and there really isn’t any “new news” to report. I am not sure we will be talking about Russia/Ukraine in six months, but I am very sure we will be talking about inflation, the Fed, and interest rates in six months. I want to do my best to make those six months (and more) of conversations be a...

Long-time readers know that I have strong opinions about the Fed, about monetary policy, about its relevance to economic conditions, and of course about its implications for investment decision-making. Today we have enough misinformation out there about the Fed that it may be a chance to actually use that word appropriately. And this misinformation comes in a period of elevated interest. The stake...

We are living in interesting times for equity investors, and I have no reason to believe those times will get any less interesting any time soon. But one thing I would love for clients of The Bahnsen Group, and to a lesser extent, all readers of the Dividend Cafe is for there to be an understanding of what equity investors are really after. We all know “buy low, sell high” – and I even wrote a boo...

Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com

I understand it may seem odd to devote a Dividend Cafe to the particular subject of the Energy sector in a week of surreal market volatility and media obsession over the Fed. But in fairness, I write about the Fed almost every week, plus four days a week in The DC Today, and the entire subject of monetary theory underlies all that we do in capital allocation at The Bahnsen Group. Our nuanced views...

I telegraphed last week a special Dividend Cafe on energy today, and I reiterated that plan several times in DC Today this last week. But as I began pulling it all together in my hotel room here in Washington D.C. at 4:00 this morning, it occurred to me that we appear to be living through a market doing much of what I have been talking about for a very long time, and that I have an obligation to m...

2022 is just two weeks underway, other people are joining me in no longer saying Happy New Year, the NFL playoffs are finally starting (a week later than ever before), and the college football champion has been declared. Coming into the new year was the time to forecast what we expected for the year – but now, we are actually in it. And speaking of those forecasts, I will keep the white paper in f...

Topics discussed: Tech Reckoning Sector Positioning for 2022 (Tech, Energy) Tax implications for 2022 Inflation in 2022 Dividend growth investing in 2022 Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com

CIO and Managing Partner - David L. Bahnsen Deputy Managing Partner - Brian Szytel Deputy CIO and COO - Deiya Pernas Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com

Markets followed up their monstrous week by dropping a bit to start this week, then rallying back to even mid-week, to sit somewhere between flat on the week and down ~100 points or so as I prepare to go to press. The Nasdaq, though, didn’t fare so well on the week, dropping -600 points (-4%) as of press time and warranting a distinction in this week’s Dividend Cafe on how one may want to think ab...

As I type on Friday morning well before the market will open for the day, the Dow is up ~1,200 points on the week, basically right back to where it was the day before the Omicron news and market sell-off, and the futures are pointing upwards for today as well (of course, anything can happen on that front). A week ago, I devoted the Dividend Cafe to discussing why I felt the Omicron story was a bad...

Topics discussed: Volatility The Fed Energy Omicron Variant Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com

It has been a wild week in the markets, with the -900 point drop of last Friday (Thanksgiving weekend) followed by a +235 point gain Monday, a -650 point drop on Tuesday, a -460 point drop Wednesday (after being up +500 points earlier in the day), and then a +620 point increase Thursday. As I type Friday, we are down -120 points, having been up +160 points earlier, so currently (at press time) ref...

I know it is not the edition some of you look forward to most each year, devoid of such enticing topics as monetary policy and market valuations, but it is one I genuinely enjoy writing each year. Today’s Dividend Cafe captures some Thanksgiving reflections from yours truly, the author of each week’s Dividend Cafe but also the Founder and Managing Partner of this firm. I remain in a daily state of...

This week I did something a little unique. I dedicate the Dividend Cafe to the topics du jour in the space of prices, labor, production, and the Fed – basically, all the stuff everyone is talking about (and should be talking about). But rather than it seeming like a single, monolithic essay on it all, I think I have it broken up into bite-sized pieces that will be easier to understand and take in....

Market movers and shakers discussed in today's episode. Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com

There is a lot of anxiety in the economy right now even though the unemployment rate is incredibly low, and nearly every metric on the planet is looking good (besides elevated price indexes). We went month after month last year with people telling us (and many of them seemed to really, really enjoy saying so, mostly because they are awful human beings) that no one would ever shop again, fly again,...

Most of the attention in the markets this week was on the Fed’s announcements Wednesday – (a) That interest rates aren’t being changed any time soon, and (b) the quantitative easing program launched 20 months ago will start to be slowly eased back later this month with a goal of no additional bond purchases in roughly nine months). But very little attention is ever paid to why these policies exist...

Today's call focuses on the latest in financial markets and the reconciliation bill. DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com