The Dividend Cafe - Wednesday - February 18, 2026

Episode Date: February 18, 2026

Brian Szytel from Dividend Cafe provides a broad market update with all three major stock indices higher (Nasdaq up about 0.75%, S&P 500 up about 0.5%, and Dow up about 0.25%) while interest rates rose slightly, with the 10-year yield up three basis points. He reviews several economic releases, including January FOMC minutes that conveyed a more hawkish tone as inflation was described as slower to return to the 2% target, January industrial production that beat expectations (0.7% vs. 0.4%), and December durable goods orders that fell 1.4% but were better than consensus, with underlying measures stronger (excluding transportation up 0.9%, and core capital goods orders excluding defense and aircraft up about 0.67%, roughly double expectations). He notes housing starts and building permits were slightly better than expected but characterizes housing as still stuck due to interest rates, tax law changes, and reduced post-COVID mobility. 00:00 Market Snapshot: Stocks Up, Yields Higher 00:35 Key Economic Releases: Fed Minutes, Production & Durable Goods 01:41 Why Durable Goods Matter: Business Confidence & Capex Signals 02:40 Housing Starts & Permits: Still Stuck in a Range 03:10 Tariffs and GDP Explained: Net Exports, Double-Counting, and Reality 04:47 What’s Next This Week: PCE, GDP, PMIs & Consumer Sentiment 05:12 Wrap-Up: Broadly Positive Day + Q&A Invitation 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 to Dividend Cafe. This is Brian Sightel from our Newport Beach, California office here, TBGHQ. On basically a broad upday in markets, modestly so. You had all three stock indices up. You actually had a larger move higher in some of the tech sectors like the NASDAQ. for example, which was up about three quarters of a percent. The S&P was up half of a percent. Dow was up about a quarter of a percent across the board there. And you had interest rates that were slightly higher on the yield curve, so 10-year moved up three basis points on the day. So quite a bit of economic news out on the day, and that's what I'll go through and spend

most of the time on today. There was one, two, three, four pieces out that were of note. One of them was the FOMC minutes from January. This is the last Fed meeting where they held rates steady. There was more of a hawkish tone in the minutes, citing that inflation was slower to move back to their 2% target. We did get jobs numbers after that report, so keep that in mind. Some of these things can change month to month, but somewhat more hawkish tone there. You had industrial production for the month of January. This is a non-delayed report, actually, a fresh, relevant one that was better than expected. We got a 0.7 versus a 0.4 on the month, which was good. And then you had durable goods orders that were down for the month of December. This is actually slightly delayed,

but they were down 1.4% for the month of December. It was actually better than consensus. We thought they'd be down about two. But if you strip out a little more volatile sectors and cyclical stuff, like transportation, for example, they were actually up 0.9% on the month, better than expected. So all that to say, what does it mean? Durable goods orders are big things, expensive things that are important because they're a leading indicator because you buy those big expensive things like machinery and aircraft and vehicles and equipment to produce stuff for a long period of time. And they're bigger investment. So if you're doing that, gives a high level of business confidence, gives you a high level of activity and output and economic growth that you can look into.

So we look at those things pretty carefully. If you start to peel back that onion, little bit on durable goods. If you looked at like core capital goods orders, outside of defense and aircraft, it was actually up two-thirds of a percent on the month. That was about double expectations. So all in all, the goods orders were decent, you know, still slightly negative for the December, but when you kind of look at the underlying pieces, they were better than expected for the most part. And I think that was a good thing for what transpired in the markets today helped some of the support in markets. There was another read actually on housing. Both of these reports were delayed though, so I'm not going to go into them a ton, but there were housing

starts that were just a little bit better than expected. And actually, the building permits were also a little bit better than expected to. So I don't know if I'd call that green shoots and housing. It just continues to be waffling around this sort of quote stuck area that it has been for a long time because interest rates and tax law changes and different things have just made it less desirable for people to want to move post-COVID. There was a question in there today about tariffs, and if they are a major component in what tracks and calculates GDP, or it's really just a numbers game just because dollar value of imports of tracks from DDP, while the dollar value of exports adds to it. So if you change a tariff or a tax on some of those, then does that really matter?

So the answer is that the definition is a little different. So GDP is actually a consumption plus investment, plus government spending, plus net exports, which means exports minus imports. So when you peel all of that back, it's not that tariffs are irrelevant in the calculation because they can change exports and imports. It's that we are removing imports from subtracting them out, and otherwise they'd be counted twice, because if you looked at the fact that they'd be consumed and part of the consumption element or part of the investment element, they'd be double count it, and so it's just exporting, I'm sorry, but intended, it's just removing the double count of imports on there, irrelevant of tariffs. So I hope that makes sense. I hope that helps,

and it's a little convoluted, but tariffs are just increasing attacks on the consumption side. So ideally it would drive a small amount less than that, but then it would drive some revenue to the government. The problem is with other things like the one big beautiful bill and some other offsets that basically sterilized the effect of them, in fact, more likely to the positive as stimulative for the economy. It hasn't been a big driver of both long-term inflation and or long-term growth or not growth. So that's what I have for you, at least on that question and that answer segment for the day. Tomorrow we will get more news out. This is a shortened week from the holiday on President's Day. So tomorrow, let's see, we've got things like PCE inflation. We have a Q4 GDP read,

and then we'll have PMIs. And then Friday we'll actually get the University of Michigan Consumer sentiment. So there's a good amount of info coming for the remainder of the week. But for today, we'll chalk it up to a decent day overall in markets and fairly broad-based. So with that, I'll let you go. Reach out with questions, as always. Thank you for listening to the Dividing Cafe. 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 Hightower Advisors, LLC.

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