The Dividend Cafe - The DC Today - Thursday, September 7, 2023

Episode Date: September 7, 2023

Today's Post - https://bahnsen.co/466evrH Markets acted a little more 2022-ish today, with defensives all up and Technology way down. Reports of a Chinese iPhone ban from government departments took a toll, and the U.S. dollar may be headed to its eighth consecutive weekly increase (longest streak since 2005 if it holds). Links mentioned in this episode: TheDCToday.com DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com

Welcome to the DC Today, your daily market synopsis of the Dividend Cafe, brought to you every Monday through Thursday to bring you up-to-date information and perspective on financial markets. Hello and welcome to the Thursday edition of DC Today back in the New York City studio office. Kind of interesting day in markets. It's going to be a short little report today. You'll have a dividend cafe tomorrow, as always, Friday. And the way I'd sum up kind of markets today is it was a little 2022-ish. You had almost all of the defensive sectors up. The leading sector on the day was utilities, which were up one and a quarter percent. You had technology was the worst performing sector, and it was down over one and a half percent. And included in positive territory were other sectors like real estate, healthcare, consumer staples, things like that. The Dow ended up being up 57 points and the S&P was down a third

of a percentage point. The NASDAQ was down almost 1%. So you've had a little bit of a, and it isn't much yet, but over a couple of days, a little bit of a 2022 like deal where Dow Defensives, this type of stuff, has done a bit better. Still on the year, though, obviously, NASDAQ is up significantly. There were some perhaps news interventions into markets. I'm always very hesitant to say what caused a particular market activity, because oftentimes what causes markets to do something is nothing whatsoever, nothing definable or provable or measurable whatsoever. But I do suspect that the reports that have come out, which are not really totally clear or specific or verified. which are not really totally clear or specific or verified. Nevertheless, I put a link to the kind of major report from Bloomberg in DC Today today about the Chinese government potentially banning or further restricting government employees from having iPhones. And so there's

not just the impact it could have to Apple, but it just does seem to be a form of escalation in this economic tension between the U.S. and China. And again, it's not even really clear to me exactly what may or may not be true in the whole news story there. was up again and is on pace, if it doesn't give this back tomorrow, to end up with the eighth consecutive week of dollar appreciation versus a basket of other currencies. And that would be the longest streak of positive performance for the dollar if it does indeed close up eight weeks in a row since 2005. Not exactly what a lot of people were predicting earlier in the year. Oil was still right there around the $87 a barrel level today. Not a huge move. Bonds were up a tiny bit near the end of the day in particular.

Yields moved and you had the tenure was down four basis points, but it's still sitting at about four and a quarter. But this is about the third or fourth time it's gotten above 4.3 and kind of come back. So we'll sort of see what it does there. Weekly jobless claims this morning came at 216,000. That was 13,000 less than the week before. And that is the fourth consecutive weekly decline in number of initial jobless claims. That's all seems to me to be a very good thing. It is at the lowest level since February now. But the only caveat I want to give, and I do this whether the data looks a little higher or lower, is running a three or four week average to just confirm that there's nothing lumpy in the data. I think it's a harmless thing to do and it leads to a much better data point. And because of the

Labor Day holiday Monday, I do suspect it's possible that there's some stuff missing in the data this week. Maybe there isn't, but I'd rather wait till next week to talk about it further. There is a link in the DC Today to my appearance on Varney this morning, where he and I covered a number of different topics. Like I said, you'll have Dividend Cafe tomorrow, and I'm going to basically leave it there. Up on the Dow today, down on the NASDAQ, and overall, just not a lot of movement of markets these days as we await a number of things to kind of see what the next step in this ongoing saga may be. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. Thank you for reading the DC Today. And I will see you tomorrow in the Dividend Cafe. Thank you. Past performance is not indicative of current or future performance and is not a guarantee. The investment opportunities referenced herein may not be suitable for all investors.

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