The Dividend Cafe - Tuesday - January 27, 2026

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

In this episode of Dividend Cafe, Brian Szytel discusses the mixed performance in the markets on January 27th, with the Dow significantly down while the S&P and Nasdaq saw gains. Notable mentions include a major AI deal, significant declines in healthcare stocks due to an executive order on Medicare payments, and high volatility in the silver market. Economic indicators discussed include a cooler-than-expected Richmond Fed Index, a significant drop in consumer confidence to its lowest level since May 2014, and a slightly better-than-expected rise in home prices. Szytel also touches on the Trump administration's new executive order on proxy advisors and its impact, as well as the limitations of market prediction platforms. The episode concludes with a brief mention of the upcoming FOMC decision. 00:00 Introduction and Market Overview 00:25 Tech and Healthcare Sector Highlights 01:14 Economic Indicators and Consumer Confidence 02:13 Housing Market Update 02:29 Proxy Advisors and Market Predictions 04:13 Upcoming FOMC Decision 04:31 Conclusion and Sign-Off 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 Tuesday, January the 27th. Brian Saitel with you here on a bit of a mixed bag day in markets overall. You had the Dow down on the day significantly over 400 points. You had the S&P that was positive by about a half a percent. NASDAQ was up about a percent. So you had more of the opposite of rotation. You actually had small caps underperform and you had an outperformance and some of the tech names. You've got a lot of the Mag 7 names starting to report this week.

There was also a large AI deal. And then on the Dow, which you had is a very large health care name down significantly, call it 20%, that dragged the index overall down. And this was on an executive order or statement from the Trump administration on Medicare payments and the growth of them being stagnant versus rising, which is what was priced into that, particular stock. Bonds little changed on the day, 10 years at 423. The dollar was down slightly about a percent. And then you had silver that was actually down 8 percent. So this has been a heck of a roller coaster for everybody that's been watching it. It's quite literally up and down five to 10 percent

in a day. Some of that is what we've called short covering rally in a commodity constrained, supply constrained, precious metal market like silver is getting the best of it from a volatility standpoint. The Richmond Fed Index in January came out below consensus measured here on economic activity essentially. So cooler than expected. And then we had consumer confidence. This is a number we don't tend to pay a lot of attention to at the Bonson group, but it is a barometer of expectations and how people feel about markets. The reason we don't tend to look at it quite as much as it just tends to be a little lagging and is what people have just gone through versus ultimately what they will do in the future, number one, and the number two, they can say things in a survey all they want,

but we can just look at consumer spending and get a sense of if people feel confident or not. And they would vote with their pocketbooks. So if they're out buying stuff and spending, it means that they're pretty confident in their ability to afford those things. And I would tend to look at those numbers a little better. Anyways, the point of this is it missed pretty big. And it's actually the lowest number on the consumer side and from confidence that we've seen since May of 2014. This is lower than what we saw during the pandemic when we weren't sure on the global health of everyone's. Pretty low number there on confidence. And the last number we had on the day was the home price figure from Kay Schiller. We tend to look at this here and there. I mean, this is a delayed figure

because of the government shut down. So it was up a little bit more than expected by about 1.4%. So I guess some positive news on housing. As far as what was on David's Mon here in the write-up for today, there was a comment out from the Trump administration and an actual executive order signed directing federal agencies to increase the oversight of proxy advisors. Whether you think that's good or bad, I can see both sides to it. But that aside, the comment here is not about that. It's about being ahead of the curve. TBG enacted our own private proxy advisor from Bauer Research years ago, and the whole point of that was to just remove the conflicts and distractions essentially in this mechanism and to give us a voice. And David has used that microphone quite a bit. And we've been

able to affect some changes in some large companies that we own by just voicing opinions on what is in the best interest of shareholders and what may not be. But it's a touchy subject and one that we just feel we were ahead of the curve on a bit and we wanted to mention it because I think it's important to investors. The question in there today was about the extreme versions of market prediction platforms to bet on anything, basically, gamifying, gambling, anything that you can bet on, basically. And it also gives you a revealing of what the crowd thinks. In theory, the prediction markets were to provide some information and signal benefits of

facilitate price discovery and the pricing of risk, but ultimately they turned out to be perpetrators of gamification as well. So what does that mean? This is basically something that was developed to try to help set odds and predict things. And number one, it's fallible. And the number two, they're just able to be gamed as a system in and of themselves so it become less useful. That's what I have for you today.

It was somewhat of a quiet day, at least on the news. news calendar and the economic calendar. But remember, we do have an FOMC decision coming out a Wednesday this week, so that'll be tomorrow, and that press conference is going to be important. They're sure that they're going to hold rates the same, but it'll be interesting nonetheless on what they're able to speak a little bit about. So we'll be watching that closely, and I'll be able to walk through with you a little bit tomorrow. But with that, I will let you go for this evening. I appreciate you listening, as I always do, and reach out with questions. And thank you for listening to the Dividend Cafe. The Bonson Group is a group of investment professionals,

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