Welcome to the Dividend Cafe, weekly market commentary focused on dividends in your portfolio

and dividends in your understanding of economic life.

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the Dividend Cafe.

I'm your host, David Bonson.

I am the managing partner here at the Bonson Group, and each and every week

have the distinct privilege of bringing you our weekly market commentary Friday to cover

whatever it is that is on my mind and inspiration for that week and Monday going through the set

topics of what's happening in the market

with the Fed, in oil and energy markets, with housing and economic data and so forth.

So we got a couple left here on the year, but we're getting near the end of the year moment.

And I'm going to update everyone next week as to what exactly we're going to do and not do in

the final holiday weeks of the year.

But for today, you get a normal dividend cafe, so we're going to get into it.

I'm going to spend the bulk of my time today talking about the subject of optimism, and

particularly the optimism that is showing up in the data right now.

And then for many, it might be showing up anecdotally just in terms of vibes in conversation

and the impressions one has in the business community.

But there's even a more empirical or objective way of looking at data, of looking at optimism, both with small businesses

and with larger, more public market-oriented businesses.

In light of the incoming Trump 2.0 administration, when we're talking about what that

might mean and what it might not mean as it pertains to markets, the economy, et cetera,

there's a few other things I'm going to cover, too, not related to that topic that were just

...