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 Thursday edition of DC Today, which is going to be our final DC today of

2003. There will be a dividend cafe tomorrow on Friday. And it's one that I greatly

encourage all of you to read, watch, listen, whatever your chosen medium may be.

I think it's an important topic, and I'm looking forward to sharing with you the things

that I have to say.

The reason we're not going to have a DC today next week is hopefully obvious.

It's Christmas on Monday.

And then, you know, with the end of the year, holidays and so forth, I'm going to be out of the country of my family. And my team

deserves a few days off from all this production. And you deserve a few days off from having to

hear mine and Brian's voice or read our

boring literature.

So we'll get back at you into the new year.

And there's going to be a lot of fun things that we kick off the year with.

You know, I do this annual white paper recapping the year behind and, and forecasting a lot of

things about the year ahead. And I'm really looking forward to writing that this year. It's one of

my favorite things to do every year. It's become a tradition that it kind of serves as that bridge

from one year into the next.

So I'm looking forward to that project and bringing that to you in the early part of the new year.

As far as just closing out, 2003 is DC today.

Just keep in mind that what I'm about to share doesn't actually close out the year in the market because,

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