The Dividend Cafe - Tuesday - March 31, 2026

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Brian Szytel hosts Dividend Cafe on Tuesday, March 31, recapping a broad market rally with the S&P 500 up about 2%, the Nasdaq up about 3%, and bonds higher as the 10-year yield fell roughly 3.5 bps to around 4.30%. He says headline-driven moves and short covering are fueling volatility, noting markets react to shifting commentary about a potential end to the war and the Strait of Hormuz. He addresses a question about the U.S. stopping oil exports, arguing it’s unlikely, would reduce profits and jobs, and U.S. refineries are largely configured for heavier crude unlike domestic light sweet production, making a shift a decade-long project. Economic updates include the Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index (+0.2% in January; +1.2% YoY), JOLTS job openings at 6.9 million (in line), and consumer confidence beating in March. 00:00 Welcome and Setup 00:19 Market Rally Recap 00:46 Headlines and Positioning 01:42 Oil Export Thought Experiment 02:31 Housing Price Update 03:13 Jobs and Confidence Data 04:08 Wrap Up and Tomorrow 04:24 Disclosures and Disclaimer 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. Welcome back to Dividend Cafe. This is Brian Saitel, your host, today on Tuesday, March the 31st. And big update overall here in markets across the board. You had S&P up about 2%. NASDAQ was actually up about 3%. A little over that here. I'm recording this just a few minutes before the close. Nonetheless, across the board rally in stocks and broad-based and a little bit more skewed towards some of the momentum names, some of the growth names. You also had a rally in bonds. Tens were down about three and a half basis points. So you're still floating right at that 430 level there on the 10-year yield.

The big driver in today's news wasn't necessarily the notion of Taco, Trump always chickens out, because he's really just floating things on truth social on what could be an end to the war somewhat soon. and potentially with the U.S. pulling out of the Strait of Hormuz even before it is reopened. Do I think that is very likely? No, but nonetheless, markets are not only pricing in the fact that it will or won't happen, but just that he will say that it will or won't happen. And those things are actually distinctive if you think about it. Markets are worried about being overly positioned on one side of the other when you can have headlines like this just drive a 2 to 3% move in one day. that literally rips the faces off of short positioners and causes them to cover shorts and fuels the rally in addition to that. So that's some of the dynamic and like we've said many times,

trying to really place trades around some of those things or listen to people that can tell you definitively which direction it's going to go is kind of just bonkers to us. Question in there today was about what if the U.S. ceased to export any oil and we just consumed it ourselves? We can produce about as much as we consume. David's response was perfect, which is I suppose that's possible that we could just cut ourselves off from global opportunities and making money from other places, but I don't think that it's very likely and it's just not very akin to capitalism and then also there'd be too many layoffs and loss of profits. But on top of that, I would also just point out, U.S. refineries are not designed to refine the crude that comes from our country. It's

designed to produce the stuff that comes out of the Middle East, which is the heavy stuff. We produce light sweet, and Brent is the heavy sour, and that's what all of our equipment is made to set up and to refine. So changing that is something that would take a decade. So there's also that going on in that dynamic as well. But it was a good question. I appreciated it. There were a couple of things in the economic calendar and there's going to be more here as the week progresses. But we did get a new fresh read on the K-Shiller 20 City Home Price Index. For the month of January, it was up 0.2%. And then year over year, it's up 1.2%. So I wouldn't call half of inflation necessarily a screaming hot housing market from a price appreciation standpoint of 1.2% that said was actually a little better than

expected. And remember, housing has been stuck now for just years. And so it is positive just to see that prices have stabilized. And yes, they've calmed down, but they also aren't declining. And there really is zero transactions, not literally, but there's very few transactions taking place to set price discovery. But that's your housing number there. You also had job openings number. This is that Joltz number that we talk about quite a bit. It's important because it's a forward-looking indicator on the economy. The more employers that are out there listing new jobs, you just know they're more optimistic about the future of their company. We got a 6.9 million job number, and that was exactly in line with expectations. I'll say that that's good. You want to see labor market balance between job

openings, hirings, and firings, and that's more or less what we're saying. Now, that slowed a little bit from what we had. Remember, back in the COVID era, it was north of 9 million. This is more normalized. And then the last thing we had, on the economic side, at least, was, consumer confidence beat for the month of March and that's a good thing because that's showing you that oil prices are higher which feeds into CPI but overall people are still feeling confident we don't pay a ton of attention to these things just because we look at them as lagging and people answering a survey on how they feel is a little more backward looking that it is forward looking and predictive nonetheless there you have it on

the day so I'm going to give that one to you three positive so you're batting a thousand a day three out of three in the good news sector but I'm going to leave it there I think the price of momentum on the day speaks for itself. And a good day overall. I'll be back with you tomorrow on Dividend Cafe. I'll reach out with your questions. Thank you again. 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 investment

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