The Dividend Cafe - The DC Today - Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

Today's Post - https://bahnsen.co/3HB81Xw A pretty boring day in markets with the Dow up and Nasdaq down. A lot of eyes are on what is coming next in the Middle East after the horrific murder of American lives over the weekend. Oil prices so far are not responding with any panic. Microsoft and Google each release results after hours today. They are big companies, you may have heard. Earnings growth of +4.9% (year-over-year) is expected this earnings season from an expectation of +2.7% y/y revenue growth. We are barely at 25% of companies having reported so far so we will do a better assessment of how this is tracking after each of the next two weeks. 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 Tuesday edition of the DC Today. We are down to just one day left in the month of January. I wanted to give you the market recap of today, Tuesday, January 30th, and talk about a couple other quick issues. So we'll go through the market today first because the Dow was up 134 points, but the NASDAQ was down 0.76%. So you had the Dow up over a quarter of a point,

the NASDAQ down three quarters of a percent, S&P was down just a tiny bit. So a a quarter of a point. The NASDAQ down three quarters of a percent. S&P was down just a tiny bit. So a little bit of a mixed bag. And you had energy was the second best performing sector and financials, the best performing sector, both up over 1 percent. And then real estate, the worst performing sector, down 1 percent. So an interesting mixed bag. But the bond market is still rallying. The 10-year was down another five basis points today. The yield down to 4.04% in the bond market. So really interesting set of circumstances. I think a lot of eyes continue to be on the Middle East,

what exactly the response to the attack on American lives was over the weekend. Oil prices in the meantime are not overreacting. Look, WTI crude's at 77.88. So it was up 1.4% today, but you're not seeing an 83, 86, $90 kind of spike. It's just been very, very moderate between 75 and 79 since the incident of the weekend. The after hours action today and into the evening and of course tomorrow will be interesting

because you do have both Microsoft and Google reporting this afternoon and other big tech companies still report this week. So that's more likely to be a market mover. But so far, you've only had 25% of S&P companies report. We're tracking for earnings to be up on the quarter 4.9% year over year, with revenue up on the quarter 2.7% year over year. But with only 25% reporting, those expectations can change very quickly.

And not only do you still have 75% of the S&P 500 to report, but you particularly have the biggest companies in this magnificent seven. I think it's six of the seven still to report, although two of them reporting this afternoon. What else do we want to go through? On the economic front, the JOLTS data revealed just a hair over 9 million jobs that are open. That was about 275,000 more than expected. So the job openings, obviously nowhere near the 11 million and 10 million we'd seen a couple of years ago, but still well over 9 million, higher than expected. But then the quit rate is down to 2.2%, which is those voluntarily quitting. You say, why does that matter?

Because people are more likely to quit when they have a higher expectation of finding another job. They become less likely to quit when those circumstances change. And right now the quit rate is the lowest in five years. So there's some foreshadowing, you you would think of the job openings data coming down. In the Ask David today somebody asked me what is the basis for which I thought was ironic for calling one one hundredth of one percent a basis point. Why not just call it what it is? And again, you'll hear me say something like 30 basis points or 30 bips, and that's a reference to three-tenths of one percent. And the number could be 84 and it could be one, but all of it is against the denominator of a hundred of a percent. So it's

a very clunky and awkward thing to say, and we say it 50 times a day in our business, doing a bond yield spreads, market returns, because you're doing a fractional marginal mathematical movements. And so saying three bips as opposed to three one hundredths of one percent is just simply shorthand. And that's the reason it's organic efficiency. The Fed releases tomorrow. Clients are receiving their weekly portfolio holdings report tomorrow at the DCToday.com, as well as at our YouTube page. We have the link to the highlight reel of me being on set with Stuart Varney and Fox Business today.

And other than that, that's all I got. I am back with you again tomorrow in the DC Today. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. And thank again tomorrow in the DC Today. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. And thank you for reading the DC Today. The Bonson Group is a group of investment professionals registered with Hightower Securities LLC, member FINRA and SIPC,

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