The Dividend Cafe - Tuesday - September 8, 2026

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

Brian Szytel reviews a down day in markets after Labor Day, noting the Dow fell 628 points while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq also declined, though the Dow remains up over 10% year-to-date. Oil prices rose (WTI near $93.6, Brent near $98) amid heightened US-Iran/Middle East tensions, lifting inflation expectations and interest rates and raising concern about energy as a consumption “tax.” He highlights NFIB small business optimism at 98.7 and points to Friday’s CPI as the key market-moving event. He discusses the strong nonfarm payrolls report (162,000 vs. ~58,000 expected) alongside discrepancies with private payroll measures, with unemployment around 4.1% and the Fed seen as having a ~60% chance of a September hike amid a split committee and upcoming midterms. He also addresses client concerns about the Hugging Face incident and argues AI will both strengthen and intensify cybersecurity threats, with costs ultimately passed to consumers. 00:00 Market Wrap Kickoff 00:38 Oil Spike And Inflation 01:13 Key Data And CPI Watch 01:38 Jobs Report Breakdown 02:51 Fed Rate Hike Odds 03:28 Cybersecurity And AI Risks 04:47 Closing Thanks 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. As always here on Tuesday, Brian Saitel with you here as your host. On another down day, obviously yesterday, markets were closed for Labor Day, the holiday. But Friday they were down a similar amount. The Dow actually closed lower on the day by just over 600.628 S&P. he was down half of a percent, NASDAQ was down a third of a percent. So 628 down on the Dow is obviously a red number, but in today's terms, that's about a little over a percent. So keep that

in mind. On the year, the Dow is still up a little over 10 and a half percent or so. But it's been all over the place day. WTI was higher. We had some pickup in kinetic activity between the U.S. and Iran and Middle East back and forth, and that is ongoing. And so you have WTI up about two and a half percent on the day. That puts WTI at 93.6 and then Brent at 98. So those levels keep creeping back up. Oil stocks have performed because of it. Inflation expectations have moved higher. Interest rates have moved a little bit higher. And we're inching back towards where we were towards the beginning of the year when this thing broke out. Not a good sign for oil, which is and diesel, which is a huge input cost and consumption basically tax. From the standpoint of news,

there was an NFIB small business optimism survey that we got that was slightly less than the prior month, but still just over historical averages at 98.7. Remember, we're going to get our fresh read on CPI on Friday, and that's probably the biggest news for this week. And I think markets will end up trading back and forth around that until we get that number. And I do believe that'll be a market-moving event to see what that number comes in at. But look, on today, we talked a little bit about the jobs number. remember Friday was the non-farm payroll number, and we got a much better than expected number. We got 162,000 jobs created when only about half of that was expected, 58,000, or less than half of that. So good news there, that said, the grain of salt to take with it is, remember, the private

numbers were way far lower than expected. And so when you looked at ADP private payrolls or the Ravalia numbers, they were a fraction of what the BLS reported as private sector job creation. And there's nothing necessarily sinister about that. Those are two different surveys. They're two different ways of measuring things, and they're both fallible, and they both have pros and cons with them, and so we look at all the data all the time. But if you looked at current unemployment rate all the way down at 4.1 percent, and the relatively low level of hiring and firing, employment is just still strong. It's still doing well, but at some point, seems like it would break one way or the other. The month of August for this BLS non-form payroll number didn't do much to change that narrative.

In fact, if anything, it exacerbated it, meaning that we're just still moving along in employment. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. I would say it's a good thing. And it's technically what's giving the Fed the ability to even consider raising rates. Again, I've mentioned this, but there is midterms coming up here right around the corner. The CPI number this Friday, that will be a big factor in what they end up deciding to do. And right now, you've got a 60% chance. they're going to raise in September, and there's basically one rate hike priced it for this year anyways.

So the question will just be kind of getting it done before midterms, would they want to? Well, Warsh have the votes inside of the committee, which is very split. Will we actually get a crack in employment that will cause them to pause? All these, well, the war change and all these things are just live topics right now. The question that we had today was a client talking and asking about hugging face and the hack recently and how it could have been close to a global crisis and what are our thoughts around cyber fears and what is the strategy, so on and so forth.

Look, I don't view the hugging face incident as a hack that was going to turn into a global crisis, necessarily, but I believe that it cuts both ways. You've got better technology now, better ways to protect against, and to have better cybersecurity, yes, and AI will be on the side of making things better. But then on the other side of that,

that same technology can be used by the bad guys to continue to get better and they certainly are. And unfortunately, it's something we now have to live with much more than we ever had to. I don't know how many listeners on this call have had some sort of fraudulent charge come up on a credit card, but I'm assuming most everyone has because it's so common and frequent. And what that's causing is just higher interest rates on credit card companies and higher fees as they have to pay for those things. And ultimately, they just get passed through to us. So the bad guys may or may not be winning, but either way, it ends up costing the consumer in some way,

shape or form. So I don't think that is something that is going to end anytime soon. And like I said, it cuts both ways. The new technology helps the good guys and it helps the bad guys at the same time. And that tension back and forth is not something I see changing over the next decades, our life, let's call it. I'm going to leave it there, a little short and sweet, but I appreciate listening as I always do. And appreciate your questions. Thank you for listening to the Dividendant Cafe. The Bonson Group is a group of investment professionals registered with Hightower Securities LLC, member FINRA and SIPC with Hightower Advisors LLC, a registered investment advisor with the SEC.

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