The Dividend Cafe - Tuesday - February 24, 2026

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

Brian Szytel from The Bahnsen Group’s Newport Beach office recaps Tuesday’s market rebound: Dow +370, S&P +0.7%, Nasdaq +1%+, with the 10-year Treasury at 4.03%. He discusses reports of possible tax relief in the State of the Union as potentially positive for productivity and growth, while noting broader political concerns around tariffs and government involvement in private companies. He reviews the finalized broad-based tariff rate of 10% (down from a floated 15%), calling it a meaningful reduction—about $140B less in tariff revenue—supportive of economic growth. Szytel addresses media attention on private credit, saying delinquencies are only modestly higher, spreads remain tight, and lending continues; gated redemptions in some funds reflect illiquid underlying assets, not distress, and cited loan sales were near par (99.70). Economic data was broadly positive: Case-Shiller 20-city home prices +1.4% YoY (0.5% seasonally adjusted), consumer confidence rose to 91.2 vs 88.6 expected, and wholesale inventories were in line at +0.2% for December. 00:00 Market Rebound Recap 00:30 Tax Relief Headlines 01:17 Tariff Rate Update 01:57 Private Credit Reality Check 03:38 Today’s Economic Data 04:35 Wrap Up and 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. Welcome to Dividend Cafe. This is Brian Saitel with you here from our Newport Beach, California office here at the Bonson Group. This is Tuesday the 24th, and we had actually a rebound today in market, so pretty broad-based across the board. The Dow was up 370 points at the close. S&P was up seven. tenths of a percent. Nasdaq was up just a little over one percent. Rates on the day were pretty flat, 10 years at 4.03. And there was a few pieces of economic data out that I'll walk through,

but I first want to mention at least some of the media headlines and some of the reports that there could be in the state of the union address some, you know, tax relief both on the personal and business side. Obviously, as a supply site or myself, David is as well. This I think would be a good thing for the economy overall and for productivity and for growth and all those things. We're very aware that for the most part, most of what we've been talking about from the political side has been more tilted negative just because of believing in free trade and having tariffs and some of these government stakes in private companies and different things like this. Obviously, those are not aligned with my world view at least. And I think most free market capitalists would

agree with that. But that aside, this policy on taxes may be just something that is quite nice, but we have to wait and see on that. Outside of that, we did get the final number on tariffs over the weekend, and I was on Schwab TV on Monday talking about a 15% rate that was floated on Saturday for a broad-based tariff amount. We ended up at 10%. The reason is that if they went to 15, they have to make everyone the same, and 15 was technically above what some of the other countries had already in place. And so 10 is where we ended up. That's a huge amount of difference, 140 billion less in tariffs going into the coffers of the government, but that also comes out of the economy. So no free lunch with where that money would come from, ultimately. And so this is

technically a good thing for growth in the economy. Question in there today was about the private credit market. I'm frankly surprised how much media attention this has gotten. Delinquencies are not up meaningfully. They're up modestly, very modestly, in a normalized way. Credit spreads are still tight. They've moved a tiny bit, but not anything that is outside of normal. And for the most part, money is still being deployed, meaning it's still being lent. Everything's basically functioning. That said, there has been media around a couple of closed funds where redemptions have been gated and there's been some asset sales. This happened in some of the real estate funds a few years ago on some of the big asset managers and it happened more recently. And now it's happening in private

credit. And what is the common theme? Well, the investments are not liquid underlying. So whether it's a, you know, class A, you know, building in Manhattan, that's not liquid, or it's a loan to a middle market company that is also not liquid. If you have a fund that owns that stuff and more people try to sell, then try to buy, then they need to manage the redemption so that they protect the value of the fund. It's not because they're doing it for any other reason. It's to protect the value. By the way, the loans that were sold to raise liquidity in the particular fund that's driven all the headlines, were sold at 99.7 cents of the dollar. So that's par. You just don't call something selling at par distressed. It doesn't work like that. I think there's definitely an

interest because of private credit, the market growing so much. And just that in and of itself had driven some had driven some headlines. And now for some, it might be a told you so moment where they're pretending to see cracks in the dam. And that's not what we're seeing at the Bonsor group at all. So functioning market, yes, it's a liquid. That's on purpose. That's why you're getting paid 10% to hold it. The economic data today, I wouldn't call any but earth shattering, but for the most part, I would say positive. So three things. One, you had the 20 city case shiller home price index beat expectations. It was up 1.4% year over year. That's good. If you adjust for seasonality, it was only up.5%. But either way, that was better than expected. So that's good news for housing. It remains stuck and there are no transactions, but let's just say that prices are ticking up still. tiny bit 1% a year. That's half of inflation. Fine. Consumer confidence on the day rebounded. We had that 89 print last month, which was January. We now got to 91 and only 88.6 was expected. So we'll take 91.2. Again, we look at that as more backward looking, but nonetheless positive.

And then lastly, we had wholesale inventories come out in line at 0.2% for the month of December. I'd call that fairly positive. So three out of three on the day on positive news, sprinkled in with some potential tax relief. And voila, markets are up. That's what I have for you today. I appreciate your listening. As I always do, reach out with your questions. Have a good evening. Thank you. 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. Advisory services are offered through Hightower Advisors LLC. This is not an offer to buy or sell securities. No investor process is free risk. There is no guarantee that the investment process or investment opportunities referenced

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