Welcome to the Dividing Cafe weekly market commentary focused on dividends in your portfolio and dividends

in your understanding of economic life. Well, hello and welcome to what is actually very bizarre

Monday Dividing Cafe, just a surreal weekend. And in a lot of ways, there's a lot of market

activity going on and there's all the stuff that I normally talk about and we're going to talk

about it. And there's no reason not to. I mean, the assassination attempt on Saturday failed.

And so in one sense, it's okay, there's a lot of normalcy.

We can just talk about bonds and yields and all that. But like I'm still struggling with the fact that it was,

that you're talking about a centimeter away from it not being normal, from it being this national

situation that is really, in a lot of ways, kind of

unthinkable. And so the political moment, the Republican convention starting tonight,

today former President Trump announced his selection of current Ohio Senator J.D. Vance

to be his running mate, to run as vice president

along with former President Trump as they seek the White House in November, polling data,

betting odds and things like that are pointing to that being a much more probable outcome than many would have guessed.

The current President Biden is dealing with a lot of mutiny efforts within his own party and

own infrastructure, their donor base, Hollywood, other key figures in the Democratic establishment that seems to have

tapered down to some degree. The betting odds for whatever they're worth have picked back up to

a much higher assumption that President Biden will end up being the candidate. Some people may

think that's a good thing.

Some I think it's a bad thing.

What's interesting is some who are not Biden supporters may think it's a good thing

because they believe he's more beatable.

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