The DC Today - Thursday, April 4, 2024
The Dividend Cafe
The Dividend Cafe - The Bahnsen Group
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🗓️ 4 April 2024
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
Today's Post -
Our morning rally in stocks turned decisively negative midday. There was geo-political tension with Iran threatening action after Israel’s strike on Syria and then some mixed messaging from different Fed presidents today that seemed to both contribute to today’s decline. That said, there really wasn’t a whole lot to warrant such a large 750-point swing from top to bottom on the day, so some strange market action with volatility picking up.
While the overall labor force participation rate has come up recently, it’s still on the lower end of the historical norm at about 62.5%. It’s interesting to see the bifurcation of what’s driving it. The participation rate amongst the largest cohort of working 25-54 year olds is actually the highest it has ever been in this country at 83.5%, while the 54+ is basically at the lowest level it has ever been at about 38.5%. Read into that what you will, but the charts seem to shift just following the pandemic with a greater gap between the two cohorts. Younger folks with fewer assets had less wealth effects from rising prices, while the opposite was more prevalent in the older is my take.
Links mentioned in this episode: TheDCToday.com DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | 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. |
| 0:14.1 | Welcome to DC today. It's Thursday, April 4th. And actually, one of the larger drawdowns actually on the day, we closed down |
| 0:24.6 | 530 points on the Dow. But the interesting thing was we were up pretty much most of the morning until |
| 0:30.6 | about 2 p.m. Eastern. So we were up a few hundred points, actually. So the swing on the day was about |
| 0:35.8 | 750 points from top to bottom. You know, and I wish that |
| 0:40.9 | there was, you know, some sort of real definitive culprit to that or smoking gun. There was a few |
| 0:46.8 | things. One, geopolitical tension with Israel's strike on Syria, Iran pledged to have, you know, a retaliation there. And I think |
| 0:59.2 | there was angst there. There is a non-farm payroll number tomorrow that may have caused some |
| 1:03.7 | just angst in the market, but I'm not sure I'm reading into that a ton. And then there was |
| 1:08.7 | about a half a dozen different Fed presidents speaking over |
| 1:11.2 | different engagements across the country that frankly most of them I thought were more |
| 1:17.8 | dovish really. They were middle of the road. There wasn't a whole lot of new statements. One of them |
| 1:24.0 | in Minnesota who used to work in the building that I used to work at here in |
| 1:28.3 | Newport Beach, Neil Koshkari, had a comment that said, I'm expecting two rate cuts for this year, |
| 1:35.7 | but if inflation keeps trading sideways, then maybe we don't need any at all. And that was right |
| 1:40.9 | around the time the market turned, but I don't know that that was necessarily |
| 1:46.9 | the reason. I think it was a combination of these different things. And sometimes there isn't always |
| 1:51.8 | a huge definitive reason when markets turn. But nonetheless, market sold off quite a bit. |
| 1:58.8 | And, you know, so with that, you know, we have, with tomorrow's payroll number, I thought I'd put a |
| 2:05.5 | section in there just on labor force participation. Because it is interesting, the actual total |
| 2:11.6 | rate, the labor force participation rate, has moved up. It was in the low 60s. we're at about 62.5 now with more going you know |
| 2:19.5 | everyone back at work and all that but if you look at the breakdown between the two cohorts of like |
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