The Dividend Cafe - Monday - June 15, 2026

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

Today's Post - https://bahnsen.co/4eITc6m David Bahnsen covers a broad “around the horn” Monday Dividend Cafe, highlighting extreme SpaceX IPO trading volume as evidence of IPO mania rather than price discovery. Markets rallied on weekend news of a forthcoming U.S.-Iran agreement and a planned signing, with the Dow up 469 points, the S&P up 1.65%, and the Nasdaq up over 3%; technology led while energy fell, small caps continued to outperform, and the 10-year yield held near 4.47%. He notes key unknowns in the Iran deal (Hormuz terms, enforcement, uranium, funds). Economic and policy updates include May industrial production up 0.1%, falling homebuilder sentiment (35), and housing affordability bill uncertainty. He previews the FOMC meeting and Kevin Warsh’s first press conference, cites the ECB’s first hike in over three years, discusses lower oil and gasoline prices, answers a question on dividend growth returns, and closes celebrating the Knicks’ first title in 53 years. 00:00 Welcome and Agenda 01:02 SpaceX IPO Mania 03:11 Markets Rally and Rotation 05:27 Iran Deal Unknowns 07:28 Economic and Policy Updates 09:13 Housing Sentiment Check 10:01 Central Banks and Fed Week 11:05 Oil and Gas Price Moves 11:50 Dividend Growth Q&A 13:37 Knicks Championship Moment 15:31 Closing Thanks 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 Dividing Cafe. I'm your host, David Bonson. I have so many things talking about today. What a remarkable day it has been and you don't even know what I mean by that. Perhaps you think I'm talking about the Iran deal that we have not yet seen. seen the written agreement for. Perhaps you think I'm referring to the SpaceX IPO, which took place on Friday and represents a truly historical moment in so many ways. Perhaps you think I'm

talking about all of the market action. Markets rallied today. They had been selling off in some sectors and rallying in others for the kind of two weeks prior. And perhaps you think correctly that I'm referring to the historical New York Knicks Championship win. We're actually going to talk about all these things. We have some economic updates. We have the Fed. We have oil. Lots in markets.

So we'll get right into it. I'm going to take you around the horn today in the Divinity Cafe. If you missed Friday's Divident Cafe, it was a very important one dealing with IPO mania. Speaking of the SpaceX event, which I very much consider to be a historical moment in a lot of different ways. I wrote a Dividing Cafe on Friday

when I refer to the mania of what's going on with SpaceX investor mentality, investor thoughts, expectations. Let me share one data point with you before we get into the broader market activity. There were 555 million shares of SpaceX sold at the IPO. I believe they priced that what people paid for those shares was at $135 and then it moved up a bit

on Friday moved up a bit more today, bouncing all over. But Friday, 555 million shares in the IPO, 517 million shares traded Friday. So it's not quite 100% of the shares, but it's very close. So if you didn't know better, you might think every single person who sold the IPO Friday, who, excuse me, who bought the IPO Friday, sold it also on Friday. and a whole lot of them did, a whole lot of people that bought shares in the IPO flipped out of it immediately.

But not everyone. You go, how could the share volume be roughly 500-something million for both? Because it's even worse than that, because that's how many shares were trading more than once. Meaning there's people who bought the IPO, sold it to someone who bought it that day and themselves sold it that day to someone else who bought it that day and sold it that day, rinse and repeat. So the heavy volume refers to a high velocity of shares trading. But again, it is part of the IPO mania of the moment that doesn't really speak to underlying price discovery. Read the Dividy Cafe Friday for a broader perspective on the whole subject.

But that data point to me is just staggering and worthy of being. shared. So in light of the announcement over the weekend that the U.S. has said we have come to an agreement with Iran and Pakistan saying, yes, there is an agreement and a date being scheduled for this Friday to go sign that agreement. Markets began to go up in the pre-market last night, and then this morning the Dow opened up 600 points. It went even further intraday and then gave up 300 points from its high in the final two hours of trading, and the Dow closed up 469 points, which was almost 1% on the day. So a big rally there, but the S&P was up 1.65%. The NASDAQ was up over 3%, although neither made new highs because, again, they had been down quite a bit in the last

10 days or so. The big gainer for the day was certainly technology. up 3.3%. Energy was the big loser down 3.5%. And the bond market really didn't move much. The 10-year closed to 4.47%. So the yield was down one basis point. So he had a little bit of upside in bonds today. But more importantly, from about three weeks ago, where the tenure did get, you know, well above 4.6% it has certainly stabilized and come down a bit with the yields who come down from that point. And that's kind of gone hand in hand with a rally in reeds and utilities and industrials and some of this rotation that had been a very prevalent theme over the last 10 days, although there was some reversal in that today, but not cleanly because a lot of the consumer staples,

for example, were up today, even as health care and energy were down. This was more. today about energy being down and technology being up. What else I want to go through in markets? I think that covers it. I just want to point out small cap has continued to be a big outperformer. So the broadening of the market in this rotation has stayed steady and small cap again rallied today. So the Iran announcement is the biggest news story for most. I wish I could give you more commentary on it.

There just isn't a lot out there until we. get the full text of the deal. I don't really know why we haven't, to be honest, and Vice President Vance did say it is coming. So there should be some removal of certain ambiguities when that text comes. But one of the issues was the U.S. said that Iran will not be able to charge tolls in the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz is fully reopening. Iran said that they will be allowed to charge fees. And I don't really know the difference between tolls and fees. I mean, I know the difference in the word, but I don't know the difference in the meaning of the word. And so we'll see how that gets unhashed when presumably the full text is released. There are still questions about

enforcement. There are questions about the enriched uranium stockpiles. There are questions about what funds Iran is and is not getting and when and who goes first. So there's a lot of questions about the trustworthiness, but I do think that for the most part, the deal is what I suspect it would be and that there are people that were going to like it no matter what and people are going to not like it no matter what. And then there's people that are going to ask some questions to get more clarity and we'll wait for those things. But it is kind of the deal that the markets have thought person time was going to be coming and will allow the longer term issues to play out, which I find to be exponentially more important than the shorter term aspects.

The other news story of the day, I'll wait till the end, even though in the written Dividendon Cafe, I got right into it, but I will wait to talk about the NICS till the end of this, because I want to make sure that those you don't want to hear about the NICS get everything you came to Dividendant Cafe to get. So consider this my appeasement. On the economic front, industrial production for the month of May was up 0.1%. It was expected to be at 0.3%. Mining was the positive element, but the other categories were mostly down on the month. High-tech manufacturing continues to be the bright spot. And a lot of the other areas came down from where they were in May, which may have had a lot of abnormal activity around people, around actors moving in light of what was happening in the

Middle East. On the public policy front, there is a possibility of Jay Clayton. being confirmed as the Director of National Intelligence this week, which would avoid an interim director named Bill Pulte, who currently is running Fannie and Freddie and the kind of housing portfolio of the executive branch. And the president has named him to be the interim DNI, but that does not require Senate approval, which you would certainly not get. But if Jay Clayton is confirmed, who is the president's permanent appointee, then it bypassed. is the need to have Pulte there. And I'm watching this very closely for a variety of reasons.

Speaking of housing, the housing affordability bill, there was one version in the House passed some time ago, totally different version in the Senate passed some time ago. And now supposedly there's a new attempt at reconciling the two that's come back to Senator Thune's desk at the Senate Majority Leader to reintroduce on the Senate floor, but many on the House side have said they haven't seen it or not necessarily in approval of it. So I'm not going to comment until it actually is happening and I know which bill is potentially going to happen if either. And I will just wait until that happens rather than waste oxygen. The NHB Home Builder Sentiment Index dropped further in the month of June. Remember,

50 is sort of the break-even level and anything above 50 is considered positive sentiment. And anything below 50 is a contraction of sentiment. It had been a at 37 last month and it came to 35 this month. Prospective buyers traffic is the biggest weight pulling it down coming in at 25. The average price reduction in homes that did sell, remember this is new construction, not existing home sales. New homes that did sell saw a price drop on average of 6%. And 62% of transactions had some incentive involved in the

sale. On the Fed and monetary policy side, the ECB raised rates Thursday. That was their first interest rate hike in over three years. But remember, their rate was at 2%. Ours is currently at 3.5 to 3 and 3 quarters percent. They raised it from 2 to 2 in a quarter. So you can say they're tightening, but they're tightening from a much, much, much looser level than our own U.S. Fed policy rate has been. This was certainly well anticipated by markets. I have a link. in dividend cafe.com to an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about Warsh's plans, Kevin Warsh, the new Fed chair, this week, the Fed is meeting.

The FMC meeting begins tomorrow, and the Federal Open Market Committee will then release their results on Wednesday, and Kevin Warsh will do his first press conferences, the new Federal Reserve chairman. The chairman's view on the Fed saying less is well documented in this. link in the Wall Street Journal I provided at Div Cafe. I'd love to the article. So oil was just down 4% today, $81.31. It's pretty much exactly what I've expected that with the market now seeing

this path to Hormuz reopening, whether it takes four days or four weeks, oil prices are down from that mid-90s level they'd been, but nowhere near the mid-60s level they were before the war started. Midstream, by the way, was up last week, about 0.7% despite oil prices being down 6% on the week. Gasoline prices, which were a national average, were at $2.90 before the war began, reached about almost $4.60 at the high, now today's sitting at about $4.7. Off of the highs, well off of those lows. The ask, TBG question had to do with why high quality dividend growth names, based on the persistent higher returns, why investors don't see it and then bid up the prices. And I point out they're not

persistently high returns. There's periods of underperformance, periods of outperformance. It's also about bottom up companies. Sometimes they out-execute. Sometimes they miss the mark. And so it isn't the type of thing that would fit in the category of being as a sort of group, bid up in price, but that is a less definable thing that people might think, what we're referring to, because dividend growth covers a lot of different sectors and factors. But I also point out that it speaks to the whole point of dividend growth investing, which is that it is not something I believe in doing so that markets will respond, meaning you get a price return because people believe you will get a return. It's what I would refer to as an exogenesis.

factor versus an endogenous factor. The endogenous element of dividend growth investing is what I care about, which is the fundamental behavior and performance and activity of the underlying business, not a market response to those things, that actual growth of operating profits, actual growth of free cash flow, actual growth of dividends distributed investors. That's where the returns are coming from, as opposed to those who were trying to get the markets to go bite on something. There's a great question. My answer is on the homepage at divinitycafe.com. So we have Fed meetings the next couple days. Reach out with any other questions you have. The other news item I had was that the Knicks did win an unbelievably historical NBA championship.

I am a lifetime basketball fan, became very, very passionate about basketball in my freshman year of high school. And I've been less of an NBA fan. over the last five to ten years. And a lot of other people have, too. And I just want to say, even though my wife and I became bicostal a little less than 10 years ago, and I kind of raised my youngest child, Graham, who turned 16 on Sunday, as a Knicks fan. The fact of the matter is that as we adopted more into New York, we became bigger New York fans. But if I lived in Timbuktu or Siberia and had access to watch this Knicks team,

I would like watching the NBA again. That's why I do think that there are some people don't like New York and don't even like the Knicks that have enjoyed watching the Knicks play. It's just been an incredibly fun team to watch. This point guard, Jalen Brunson, plays the game of basketball way it's supposed to be played. Their ability to come back from being down huge

that's never giving up. It's just been fun in a time where there's a lot of things that just aren't fun going on in the world. And I insist on dwelling in the play. positivity and not only seeing what's happened here in New York, the unbelievable emotion around this win, Jolina and I walking around Saturday night after the win and just experiencing the sheer joy and emotion of the win. But I will tell you that as a basketball fan, it was a lot of fun. What Brunson did Saturday night, I'll never forget. And so look, if this doesn't belong in Dividon

Cafe, so be it. Just give me two minutes. That's all I have taken and I'll get on with it now. Congratulations, NICS, world champions, first time in 53 years, and I am 52 years old. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching and thank you for reading The Dividend Cafe. The Bonson Group is a group of investment professionals registered with High Tower Securities LLC, member FINRA and SIPC, and with High Tower Advisors LLC, a registered investment advisor with the SEC. Securities are offered through High Tower Securities LLC. Advisory services are offered through High Tower Advisors LLC.

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