The Dividend Cafe - Monday - June 8, 2026

Episode Date: June 8, 2026

Today's Post - https://bahnsen.co/4fE0HN7 Brian Szytel fills in for David on Dividend Cafe, recapping a mixed market day: the Dow fell about 80 points while the S&P 500 rose ~0.3% and Nasdaq ~0.8%, reflecting a rebound in tech after Friday’s sharp chip-led selloff following a nine-week, 47% tech rally. A much-stronger-than-expected May jobs report (172,000) pushed bond yields higher (10-year ~4.57%) and shifted Fed futures toward pricing possible rate hikes, with inflation still elevated and employment resilient, though labor participation remains low at 61.8% and small business hiring plans are weak. He reviews Middle East escalation and oil around $91, notes pullbacks in silver, gold, and Bitcoin, and argues their lack of cash-flow tether increases volatility. He highlights data-center capex and a bullish natural gas/pipeline thesis, and previews a coming episode on IPO mania and extreme revenue multiples. 00:00 Welcome and Setup 00:15 Market Recap and Tech Rebound 01:11 Rates Inflation and IPO Rules 02:51 Metals and Bitcoin Volatility 04:31 Middle East Tensions and Oil 05:21 Jobs Report and Fed Outlook 07:13 Energy Demand and Natural Gas Thesis 08:05 Wrap Up Knicks and Next Episode Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com

Welcome to the Dividend Cafe weekly market commentary focused on dividends in your portfolio and dividends in your understanding of economic life. Good evening and welcome to Dividend Cafe. My name is Brian Sightel is your host. Although you're seeing me here on the video and the recorded podcast here today, filling in for David, even though this is a Monday edition. And so we've got quite a few things to walk through on the day. The market itself actually ended up closing down about 80 points on the Dow. But the futures in the opening were actually quite positive. When we waffled around throughout the rest of the day and ended up closing slightly negative, the SMP was still positive by about 30 basis points.

NASDAQ was actually up about eight-tenths of a percent. So what you saw was some reversal of what we saw really on Friday, which was that big chip sector technology sell off. But just for context, leading up to Friday, the rally that we had for nine weeks, up 47 percent in the tech sector was the most that has, ever happened in any one sector in that period of time, including technology, and including the blow off top of 1999. So keep that in mind of when we're talking about things being expensive or frothy, we're not making it up. The market really has moved quite a bit,

especially in that one sector and especially in that semiconductor space within that sector. We had also a much better than expected jobs number on Friday, and that drove bond yields up, and it drove Fed futures and expectations for not just no rate cuts. but now rate hikes being priced in to where the futures are now trading. But for all of those that may wish that interest rates just go back to the good old days of ZERB, back to where they were in 2021, there's always give and take with that. Interest rates are a reflection of inflation expectations of growth expectations. So the lower the rate, the lower the growth expectations and vice versa.

There's a nominal inflation rate, and that's made up of two things. and one of those things is good, one of those things is bad. The good thing is obviously real growth and economic growth, and the bad thing is inflation. You have to net those two things out. Obviously, SpaceX has been in the news a whole lot. This is a huge IPO, the biggest ever that's coming to market. They're only floating about $75 billion of the call it $1.8 trillion market cap,

which isn't very much. A lot of the pre-IPO folks have lockups on their shares, but it was nice to see the S&P 500 not change or massage its rules. to allow it to enter the index right away. And so that's a good thing when they're floating that little of an amount based on the size of the company, in other words. 10 year yield today was up about three basis points.

We're at 457. We're still in that range, although that range has slowly moved higher with the ongoing war in the Middle East. But on the day, the big sector was tech. The bottom sector was utilities, anti-rotational day from what we've been saying. A couple of things I'll mention in the precious metals market,

because it's, or at least it was, a very hot topic. The first month of the year in 26th, January, silver was actually up 60%, 64 to be exact. And now it is down 5% on the year. So it's down something like 44% from its all-time high. It's a big move lower. Gold, same thing. It was up about 25% or so to start the year.

And now it's now flat, slightly lower. So these things have really come off of where they were. And that is notable. I think for most market participants, that have been following them. The reality in my humble opinion here is the ability for retail investors to buy the ETFs of these things,

the spot ETFs, drove a lot of that momentum on the way up, and then vice versa, on the way back down, there's an easier sell button than holding physical bullion like the old days. Same type of story with Bitcoin. We just dropped below 60,000 weekend, but look, it was 125,000.

So this is a bigger than a price drop. It's actually back to the same level it was in 2021, which is five years of no return. A lot of volatility inside of that, I'd point out. But when you look at precious metals or Bitcoin or whatever other sort of directional play that you want to make, neither of those things have an intrinsic cash flow-based value. They have an intrinsic value. One is a use case for Bitcoin and one is jewelry and some manufacturing equipment for gold. But my point is just there isn't a cash flow generation to tether the value and the prices to these things to anything.

so they just tend to be more volatile. So let's get into this. Over the weekend on the top stories, we did have Iran launch missiles back at Israel. U.S. is urging Israel to not retaliate. Of course, Israel had already retaliated to some small degree. And then on we go, unfortunately. The interesting thing is the longer this goes on,

in some ways more desensitization in the market is there, and that's normal. But also, you're saying oil now in the 90s, low 90s. That's higher, obviously, than it was in the 60s, of course, But all things considered, it's not all that high. And so, one, we're realizing that the Strait of Hormuz is hyper important, of course, but then also the world is a different place than the supply shock of the 1970s. It's just, it's dealing with this much better.

Countries are more resilient. There's more sources of energy now. And frankly, economies are more efficient than they used to be. Let's take a look here on the economic side for the day. We had the May jobs report, print 172,000 jobs. that's literally 100% more than we thought that we were thinking would be somewhere in the 70s or 80s. So big jobs number, labor continues to be very resilient.

That's a good thing. But if you think about inflation remaining high and they call it high twos to low threes and jobs at full employment, it leaves only one side of the Fed's mandate. And that's why the Fed futures are pricing in a rate hike rather than a rate cut. But the other news is that you've got inside of the jobs number, a lot of the new hires and job creation was inside of the data center

construction and CAP-X build-out, and those numbers are ramping up. So the three-month is better than the six-month is better than the 12-month. All that to say, the labor participation rate, and we watch this quite a bit, we feel it's important for not just economic reasons, but also societal reasons. The labor participation rate is only 61.8%. That's about as low as it was in the very depth of COVID in 2020. So there's phenomenon happening here, and he could call it different generations, different working habits, different economic environment, work from home. Probably it's a combination of all those things. Nonetheless, it's not good when only about 61% of those that could work are. We did get a small business report that is also somewhat abysmal

as far as new hiring projected out of small businesses. So that's not necessarily a positive thing. But look, back to rates and what I said about inflation, we're only, I guess now, technically, there is a 5% chance we get three rate hikes before the end of the year. Good luck. without ever coming to fruition, it won't happen. But nonetheless, there's about a 22% chance for two hikes and about a 43% chance for one hike. So if you added up 5, 22, and 43, there's somewhere near a 70% chance

that there's going to be some movement and a 30% chance that keep rates the same. So that's a huge difference, big change. WTI was a $91 today. Hard to call that a crazy number, all things considered in the Middle East. But the one thing I'll say, too, on the natural gas side is if you think that data centers are going to need a lot of energy,

and of course that's true, the cleanest and most abundant and most efficient fuel to power these, which they're mostly in the United States, by the way, is natural gas. And if you think that, then the pipelines, and that's how we have positioning, but those MLPs to deliver the natural gas to where the refinery and then also where the source is to be used as energy, it's a strong investment paradigm. And it's something that we believe in and something that we believe in, and something that should be a value. We really can't have that level of electricity without having a thesis

towards a bullish natural gas thesis. Again, this is David's Dividend Cafe for Monday, and it's always a pleasure to go through it. I know he's a big Knicks fan, and we've got Game 3 coming up. For any of you, Knicks fans out there, go Nix. And if you didn't catch the Dividend Cafe from Friday, I encourage you to read and also to listen to that

because I thought it was a neat touch for David to put his speech from Pacifica Christian High School on there. And there's a great video of his daughter Sadie giving an introduction that I think is worthwhile. But there's some sage advice and some life lessons and just good nostalgic memorabilia to go through when you listen to that. With that, we've got another dividend cafe coming out this Friday. It's going to focus on this IPO mania. You've got these IPOs coming to market now at 100 times revenue, not earnings. They don't have earnings.

100 times revenue. Crazy when that's commonplace. And so there's going to be a good dividend cafe to go through that with you. And with that, I shall let you go for this evening. Thank you for listening and reach out as always. The Bonson Group is a group of investment professionals registered with Hightower Securities LLC, member FINRA and SIPC, and with Hightower Advisors, LLC, a registered investment advisor with the SEC. Securities are offered through Hightower Securities LLC.

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