Welcome to the DC Today, your daily market synopsis of the Dividing Cafe, brought to you every Monday through Thursday to bring you up-to-date information and perspective on financial markets.

Well, hello and welcome to the Monday edition of DC today, the midway point of the month.

It's May the 15th. And there's a few things I want to go

through today. A lot of conversation focused around the debt ceiling. I wrote a dividend cafe

on Friday suggesting that the current lay of the land, that markets are more or less taking

their peas and cues from Fed-reecision talk from debt ceiling volatility and debate around

how that all plays out, and then the third piece being regional bank vulnerability.

The news did get better on the debt ceiling over the weekend, and futures were actually

up at a very, very early this morning, up about 120 points.

They had been down a little bit last night, and then the market opened up 50, zigged and

zagged a little throughout the day, and closed up 50.

Pretty much closed, kind of where it opened.

And the NASDAQ was a little better.

I think it was up 0.66%.

The S&P was up about a third of a percent.

And so more or less the good news, if you will, is twofold.

I'll first give the kind of explicit part, and then I'll tell you my kind of reading

of it all, which I think is the better part.

The explicit part is that they know that Speaker McCarthy and President Biden are set

to meet tomorrow, and that there has been movement and behind the scenes chatter

and that both sides, the White House and the House Republican leadership are getting together

to see where things stand and that they are talking more optimistically.

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