The Dividend Cafe - Tuesday - September 30, 2025

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

Market Highlights and Insights: September 30th Edition In this episode of Dividend Cafe, host Brian Szytel from The Bahnsen Group office in New York City provides a concise market overview for Tuesday, September 30th. Despite a negative start, the market ended slightly positive with the DOW up by 82 points, S&P up by 27 points, and Nasdaq up by a third of a percent. Key economic updates include a slight increase in the Case-Shiller Home Price Index and better-than-expected new job openings, reflecting a balanced labor market. Brian also discusses the implications of current trade margins, tax rates, and capital expenditure focus on artificial intelligence. Additionally, he addresses a viewer question about proxy voting in index investments and the proactive approach The Bahnsen Group employs to ensure proper company stewardship. Brian wraps up by promising more economic insights in the next day’s episode. 00:00 Introduction and Market Overview 00:38 Economic Calendar Highlights 00:59 Labor Market Insights 01:33 Consumer Confidence and Manager Meetings 01:59 Focus on Market Margins 02:50 Artificial Intelligence and Productivity 03:16 Proxy Voting and Index Investing 04:36 Conclusion and Next Steps 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. Good evening and welcome the Dividend Cafe. This is Tuesday, September the 30th. Brian Saitel with you here from the Bonson Group office in the Big Apple here in New York City. We had a modestly positive day, although we opened this morning negative and traded down most of the day. and then before rallying here into the close. And so we got an up day on Dow by 82 points. We had S&P up 27 points, which these days equals about 4 tenths of a percent. And then we had the NASDAQ up about a third of a percent. Yields on the day were fairly flat. The yield curve slightly steepened, but the 10-year closed at 4.15. There was a couple of things on the economic calendar that I'll run through before getting into the meat of today's podcast. But there was a

K Schiller Home Price Index that was up about 1.8% for the month. This was more or less in line. We were thinking 1.9%. So cool down in housing, but still slightly positive. And then you had the new jobs opening number, which we pay a lot of attention to. This is that jolts figure. We actually beat expectations on this number. We got a 7.2 handle versus a 7.1. That's important because the unemployment number is about equal now to the number of new jobs that are open. So it's just a very balanced labor market right now. And while there's enough slack in the labor market to warrant some Fed cuts, that's what's priced in on futures, you're still saying it hang in there okay and I'd prefer that versus bad news being good news on

Fed funds rates. The last thing you had on the day was the consumer confidence number was just below expectations at 94 versus 96. Again, we look at that as more of a lagging indicator. We're here doing our money manager meeting marathon week. We've got over 20 meetings that are planned. It's a busy week of the year. Lots of takeaways. We're actually going to summarize them for you in one dividend cafe instead of parsing them out day by day. But the one thing today I think that's important to take a look at is margins because you've got markets trading at 24 times earnings and we're looking at things like tariffs and how that consumption tax might eat into profits and impact those margins, and then the same token, we're looking at things like a lower

effective tax rate with the ability of companies to expense and pass through a reduction in their taxation by expanding some of their capital expenditure. Those two things will tend to offset at one another, and we're looking at the next couple of quarters to pay attention on how that's going to affect margins, because when we're trading at these levels, you frankly need those margins to warrant it. Granted, that risk-free rate is going to come down a little bit on Fed funds and so that's supportive, but that margin number is going to be important. And the point that I'll make is that there's been so much CAP-X spend on the side of artificial intelligence on AI that we want to see that productivity gain hit into the market. And you've seen some slight

wage growth on the real side, meaning above inflation by about a point that's good for the labor market and it's good for the economy. But it's not quite hot enough to pass through some of that employer extra cost and to hit those margins. And so those are some of the things that we're taking a look at. On the question for the day, Ask TBG, there was a question really on the index side, and we had wrote about this maybe a week or so ago. And this particular client is asking about proxy voting and how that works with the index investors, because it's not them individually voting. It's going to be either the holding company or the investment manager. And of course, he's exactly right. When you own an index from a large company like a Blackstone or a Van,

Vanguard or any of these large index manufacturers, they're the ones responsible for placing these proxy votes. They may be something that they're in line with some of your social agenda views, and maybe that's DEI or maybe that's ESG or whatnot. But aside from that, it's something that has been somewhat complacent by most index investors for a decade and a half now. The approach that we have is much different than that. We're more proactive.

We've hired a specific firm to not just target certain social agendas or anything like like that, but just to make sure that those agendas aren't impacting proper company stewardship because as shareholders, we want what is best, not necessarily what is in vogue or what is popular for a CEO to say on television to keep his job, so on and so forth. So we're active in the correspondence with the investment investor relations part of those businesses, and we take it seriously. These are businesses that we own on behalf of our clients, and it's not something we're going to be complacent about. So that's my Ask TBG question and answer for the day in my market recap. Again, modestly positive day overall. I'll be back with you tomorrow,

which will be Wednesday, Dividend Cafe. We'll have a lot more to go through on the economic side. I encourage you to reach out with questions as always, and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks again. The Bonson Group is a group of investment professionals registered with High Tower Securities LLC, member Finra and SIPC, and with High Tower Advisors LLC, a registered investment advisor with the SEC. Securities are offered through High Tower Securities LLC. Advisory services are offered through high tower advisors LLC. This is not an offer to buy or sell securities. No investor process is free risk. There's no guarantee that the investment process or investment opportunities referenced Tyrion will be profitable. Past performance is not indicative of current or future performance

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