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

and dividends in your understanding of economic life.

Hello and welcome to the Dividendon Cafe. I am actually recording again from my apartment here in New York City,

where I recorded the Dividy Cafe on Friday,

although I recorded Diving Cafe Friday and then ran out the door, and then I just ran in the

door, and I'm recording right now. It's become a convenient place to record quickly and leave,

but actually a whole lot of action in between. But today's Dividy Cafe is a full one.

There's a lot of different things I wanted to cover.

Most of it I wrote very early this morning,

but let's get the stuff that happened throughout the day today out of the way first

just in terms of today's market action.

It wasn't an especially dramatic or eventful day. The

Dow was up 69 points, which is 0.18%. The S&P was up a quarter of a point and the NASDAQ was up

a third of a point. But the bond markets action is a little more interesting. The 10-year today was

up four basis points. So it closed at 4.46%. But the 10-year had been at 4.7% in late April,

and it got as low as 4.28% last week. And then on Friday, it did come up about 13, 14 basis points. Like I mentioned,

it was up four basis points today. So bonds have sold off the last two days, but after a monstrous

rally. Two things are true at once that seem very inconsistent at one another, but are both

very important understanding the bond

market. When you understand the bond market, you understand the whole world. One is that there is a

tight range that has gotten set. By tight, 425 on the lower end, 475 on the higher end, but you may

think that isn't particularly tight, but it is. But then at the same

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