The Dividend Cafe - Monday - April 27, 2026

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

Today's Post - https://bahnsen.co/4ued1rl David Bahnsen delivers a “normal” Monday Dividend Cafe covering the weekend’s major news—an assassination attempt tied to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner that ended without fatalities and had no market impact—then recaps mostly flat markets (Dow -63; S&P/Nasdaq slightly up) amid unusually extended semiconductor trading. He notes the 10-year yield near 4.3%, sector moves, and elevated oil closing near $97 alongside an Iran proposal involving reopening the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for delaying nuclear talks. Bahnsen highlights M&A skewed toward mega-deals, retail ETF flows chasing recent performance, and discusses a potential federal convertible loan to Spirit Airlines. Economic updates include healthy jobless claims, a pickup in wage growth for job changers, sharply slowing home price appreciation, expectations for a Walsh-led Fed as Powell’s term ends, and a focus on Mag 7 earnings—especially AI capex plans. 00:00 Welcome Back Monday 01:14 Weekend Breaking News 02:43 Market Wrap Today 03:11 Semis And Seasonality 04:42 Mergers And Retail Flows 05:58 Iran And Oil Shock 06:52 Spirit Airlines Policy 07:39 Jobs Wages Housing 09:45 Fed Outlook Midstream 10:17 FDI Versus Policy 11:17 Big Tech Earnings Week 11:50 Closing And Contact Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com

Welcome to the Dividing Cafe, weekly market commentary focused on dividends in your portfolio and dividends in your understanding of economic life. Hello and welcome to the Monday edition of Dividend Cafe. It is a really missed normal Monday Dividendon Cafe today. Around the horn in all of our normal categories, I say it's been missed because it seems like there's been some sort of drama that has forced us to go too high in one category. too low in another for many weeks in a row. And there isn't really any significant market turmoil or around war turmoil today. We're just going to cover kind of all the normal things, although there was certainly some very exciting action in the news cycle this weekend. Before I do get into our Monday Dividin Cafe, allow me please to remind you, if you missed

the Friday Dividy Cafe, a deeper dive into what we believe will soon be confirmed. Fed chairman, Kevin Warsh, and what we expect and want to see out of a new Fed chairman, a little wonkishness in monetary policy on Friday's Dividing Cafe available where, whether you want the video of the podcast or the written version, please check out Friday's Divida Cafe for every element of the Fed and Kevin Warsh. Let's get into it. Let me do the news events first just because it was obviously a pretty major event. Saturday night, I suspect that a lot of people outside of the D.C. Beltway would not have been paying attention to that White House correspondence dinner. Now, if President Trump had ended up giving his speech and that whole thing had happened

and anything newsworthy happened in his speech, he obviously was going to be ripping the press and everything, there may have been either some humor or some, you know, not humor out of all of that. But the event ended up not happening. And that became the story because there was the assassination attempt, shots fired, a man has been arrested. He's actually a Southern California man from Torrance, California, which many of you may not know, is the city in which yours truly was born in Torrance Memorial Hospital in 1974. Thank you very much. But so this lunatic was caught. Nobody was killed. The only person even shot hit a bulletproof vest, what could have been an extraordinarily violent and historical moment was once again by the grace of God limited to what it

was. And in this particular case, you had the president, the vice president, the Treasury Secretary, you had, I think the Secretary of State, you had the top echelons of the administration all in one room and were grateful it didn't become a bigger issue. But that really became the big news story of the weekend, although not anything of any market import. Speaking of, speaking, of markets. We know that the Dow opened up 100 points today, and it ended up closing down 63 points. It gave up its 100 point lead, about 90 minutes into trading, and then really just sort of stayed flat throughout the day from there. S&P was up 12 basis points, the NASDAQ up, just a tiny bit more than that. So really kind of a flattish day when all of a sudden done

across all the market sectors. On the semiconductor front, though, coming into today, you're talking about 18 days in a row that the semiconductor space was open, trading 43% above its 200-day moving average. This is not normal. Let's leave it that way. I wanted to say, just first of all, to remind everyone that I hold calendar indicators or seasonal arguments for things in total disdain. When people refer to percentage, correlations around kind of calendar things and try to draw investment conclusions out of them. I first of all, never find the percentages all that compelling. And second of all, they are median percentages that get there by there being plenty of months

and quarters and seasons where it's just flat out not true. And so how that translates into some investable activity is beyond me. With all that said, about the worthlessness of this, the April through September months of a midterm year are generally slightly negative and historically very choppy, but that is irrelevant in terms of what it means for 2026. So there you go. Okay, so the bond market today down a tiny bit is the 10-year yield closed at 4.3% up three basis points on the day. The top performing sector today was communication services, which was up less than 1%. Consumer staples were down a tiny bit more than 1%. And I wanted to quickly share Torsten Slocke from Apollo

had a chart over the weekend, reiterating that there is a lot of M&A activity going on right now, which was a big theme of mine for 2026. But much like 2025, the MNA activity is heavily skewed to big mega deals. And so while you see an awful lot of large deals going on, 10 billion plus, let's say, the total amount in sub-1 billion-dollar deals is much more subdued. Markets, by the way, down 9% in March, as we know for year-to-date, S&P, I think the Dow and NASDA could both hit down 10. And yet you had retail flows into ETFs that were down 50% as that was playing out. But then in April, as now markets have rallied huge, now you see flows up 250% from the March levels.

So again, just these contrarian realities of retail investors following the market and buying or selling after the event has happened over and over and over again. On the newsfront, the only other thing, because I already covered the White House Correspondents dinner, but on the Iran update, their peace plan proposal is supposedly ready to agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for asking for a delay about nuclear negotiations, pushing that off into the future with some treaty in between we will see. I'm going to skip to the oil section real quick because this goes with the Iran issue, but the notion that we would have new highs being made in the markets, while oil is at 95, 96, today it closed at almost $97 of 2.5%. It is a pretty big shock to people.

It continues to be, though, reconcilable around the fact that markets are reflecting what they believe will happen in the future with oil prices, not what is happening in the present. All right. Public policy, the president seems to be very serious that he wants federal government to take a big position in spirit. Airlines. I'm going to talk about this in my Capital Record podcast tomorrow as to why I have sort of ideological beef with this. On just kind of markets level, I don't think very many people

consider it systemic. And it is rather surprising. But it's different than the deal, for example, Nippon Steel, where they argued it had connection to national security. I don't think that they argued it in good faith, but they argued it. No one's even pretending Spirit Airlines is about national security. So we'll see what happens there. Apparently, the structure would be a $500 million loan from the taxpayers that then would be convertible into equity. Okay, economically, weekly jobless claims came in at $214,000. The four-week average is sitting around $210,000. It's an extremely healthy number. And again, when you look at conflicting data in the labor market, BLS and ADP, I think you have to say right now, the initial jobless claims number seem to be winning out.

I would point out too, and this also came from Torsten Slocke, that the wages, that real wages are starting to pick up. The Federal Reserve of Atlanta showing in their updated data, particularly for job changers, people switching jobs and increase in wages, a little more flattishness. But you really saw the rate of growth of wages declining for the last four years and to see a little pickup in the rate of growth of wages. Notice what I said and what I did not say. Rate of growth of wages had been declining, not wages had been declining. We do not have negative wages over the last four years, but we did have a rate of growth of wages that was declining. Home price appreciation. I always love the monthly report from Ed Pinto and my friends at the AEI.

Housing Center, but this is very important, very connected to one of the themes I had on the year. The March year over year, home price appreciation number was 1.2% nationally. That is a negative number net of inflation. That month's year over year home price appreciation is the lowest it's been since the AEI Housing Center began tracking the composite data 13 years ago. Yet even when saying that is taking place nationally, it's still pretty divergent around the country. You see Memphis way down. You see Kansas City way up. But interestingly, California, Texas, and Florida, all up less than the national average. Some real substantial freezing of home price appreciation, unsurprisingly, considering the length of time has been since volume has been dramatically reduced from normal

averages. The expectation is at Chairman Warsh at the Fed. We'll end up being confirmed, just as Chairman Powell's tournament's May 16th or so, could delay a few days or weeks beyond that, but we don't expect that. Right now, we're looking at a 70% implied probability for rates to stay the same for the rest of the year, 30% of maybe one more rate cut. I mentioned oil prices already. Midstream was up 2% last week. We have a lot of midstream companies, big ones, reporting earnings results this week.

Mike D asks us in the Ask TBG, do you consider FDI for indirect investment a form of industrial policy? Should FDI be pursued by nation states? What could go wrong? And no, FDI is not industrial policy, but it can be something that results from that industrial policy. Industrial policy is when a federal government centrally plans to favor a particular sector, often justifying it on the basis of national security. or some specific economic rationale. Foreign direct investment might be something that happens because of government intervention of industrial policy, but it also could happen from organic market forces, where capital has just been rationally allocated in a free country with a free market with attractive investment opportunity, attracts capital from foreign sources.

So we're not confuse FDI with industrial policy, although FDI can result from industrial policy, it often can happen completely naturally on its own. With four of the MAG7 names reporting this week, I expect a pretty big week in the market in terms of just earnings results when you have your Amazon's and Microsofts and Googles and Metazole reporting. So we'll see what happens there in markets,

but the bigger issue to me will be, what do they announce about capital investment plans, capital expenditures around the AI story. That's the biggest thing in the news this week. In the meantime, reach out with any questions. You have questions at thebonson Group.com. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching.

And thank you for reading this Monday edition of the Dividing Cafe. The Bonson Group is a group of investment professionals registered with Hightower Securities LLC, member FINRA and SIPC, and with High Tower Advisors, LLC, a registered investment advisor with the SEC. securities are offered through Hightower Securities LLC. Advisory services are offered through Hightower Advisors, LLC. This is not an offer to buy ourselves securities. No investor process is free risk.

There's no guarantee that the investment process or investment opportunities referenced Tyrion will be profitable. Past performance is not indicative of current or future performance and is not a guarantee. The investment opportunities, reference Tieran, may not be suitable for all investors. All data and information referenced herein are from sources believed to be reliable. Any opinions, news, research, analyses, prices, or other information contained in this research is provided as general market commentary and does not constitute investment or vice. The Bonsor Group in Hightower shall not in any way

be liable for claims and make no express or implied representations or warranties as to the accuracy or completeness of the data and other information, or for statements or errors contained in or omissions from the obtained data and information referenced here in. The data and information are provided as of the date reference, such data and information are subject to change without notice. This document was created for informational purposes only, the opinions expressed, are solely those of the Bonson Group and do not represent those of High Tower Advisors' LLC or any of its affiliates. High Tower advisors do not provide tax or legal advice. This material was not intended or written to be used or presented to any entity as tax advice or tax information. Tax laws vary based on the client's individual circumstances and can change at any time without notice. Clients are urged to consult their tax or legal advisor for any related questions.