Welcome to the Dividing Cafe weekly market commentary focused on dividends in your portfolio and dividends in your understanding of economic life.

Welcome the Dividendon Cafe. It is Tuesday, December the 10th. Brian Saitel with you here from the Bonson Group.

And bringing you some information on today's moves.

We had a slightly down market. The Dow was down 154 points. That's about a third of a percent.

And the S&P and the NASDAQ were down essentially the same, give or take, a small amount.

So everything was down on the equity side, right around a third of 1%. The 10 year was up

three basis points. So we gained three basis points on the 10, 10 year. We closed at 423. So a little

give back today, but fairly modest. There wasn't a whole lot in the economic calendar. There was a

couple of things out, although tomorrow we're going to have a fresh read on

inflation with CPI. And I believe the markets are frankly just, you know, waiting for that more

meaningful news. You know, now that we're getting into the year in, that's one of the final

larger things that we'll get on the economic side, at least, until the end of the year. We also

have next week's FOMC decision, which is an 85% probability.

They're going to lower rates by 25 basis points. But we're starting to get down to the wire,

and those are the remaining two pieces. And so today was a little bit quiet. But you did have

the NFIB small business survey. It actually has been below its historical average for almost

three years. A lot of that has to do with just general uncertainty, whether it's political or interest rate-driven or economic.

There's been uncertainty on the small business side.

Most of that, I think, was more interest rate related over those years than anything else.

But now that you have some clarity, rates are coming down, you know, the election has happened.

The survey actually jumped up above historical average into its highest level in over three

years.

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