Thursday - February 19, 2026
The Dividend Cafe
The Dividend Cafe - The Bahnsen Group
4.9 • 569 Ratings
🗓️ 19 February 2026
⏱️ 8 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Brian Szytel from The Bahnsen Group recaps a modest down day in markets—Dow down 267 points, S&P 500 down 0.25%, and Nasdaq down 0.33%—while noting the market remains up on the week. The 10-year yield edged down to about 4.07% amid expectations that a new Fed chair in May could eventually bring short-term rate cuts. He discusses rising Middle East tensions and increased U.S. presence tied to Iran, which has helped push crude higher (about 6% over two days; up ~15% YTD), but argues energy’s strong performance is primarily driven by supply/demand fundamentals and well-run businesses, with the sector up ~23% YTD and 95% of names above their 200-day moving average. He highlights leadership from defensives like energy, industrials, staples, and materials—often a late-cycle signal—while technology and communication services lag, with only ~40% of names above their 200-day averages; he notes some software valuations have compressed from mid-30s multiples to low-20s. Economic updates include better-than-expected initial jobless claims (206k vs 220k), a wider December trade deficit (over $70B vs ~56B expected), a stronger Philly Fed manufacturing reading, and weaker pending home sales. He closes by answering a question on non-GAAP vs GAAP P/E ratios, explaining non-GAAP adjusts for one-time items to estimate normalized earnings, while cautioning that recurring “anomalies” can make non-GAAP misleading and require careful analysis.
00:00 Market Close Recap: Indexes Dip, Rates Steady
00:52 Energy Sector Strength: Oil Headlines vs Real Fundamentals
02:08 Sector Rotation & Valuations: Defensives Lead, Tech Lags
03:30 Economic Data Roundup: Jobs, Trade, Manufacturing, Housing
04:07 Viewer Q&A: Non-GAAP vs GAAP P/E Ratios Explained
05:28 Wrap-Up & Weekend Sign-Off
Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Dividing Cafe weekly market commentary focused on dividends in your portfolio and dividends in your understanding of economic life. |
| 0:12.1 | Good evening and welcome to Dividend Cafe. This is Brian Sightel from our Newport Beach, California office here at the Monson Group. |
| 0:23.0 | On the down day overall in markets, |
| 0:28.8 | although modestly so, and this was the first down day in the last three, and the market is still up on the week. But you had the Dow down on the day, 267 points, S&P was down a quarter percent, |
| 0:36.3 | NASDAQ was down a third of a percent. |
| 0:39.3 | There was a good amount of economic data out that I'll walk through. |
| 0:42.9 | But interest rates didn't move a ton. |
| 0:44.6 | You had a basis point off of 10 year, so we closed at 407. |
| 0:48.9 | So continuing to pull down those interest rates here a little bit, and there's reason for that as we get new Fed |
| 0:55.5 | chair Warsh to come in the next couple of months in May, and then ultimately likely to reduce |
| 1:00.7 | short-term interest rates. But let me walk through what I had for you today on the market. |
| 1:05.1 | There's been an increase in tension in the Middle East, so there's been more of a U.S. |
| 1:09.3 | presence there related to Iran, ongoing negotiations |
| 1:12.3 | and talks, and more comments today. And so you've seen the price of crude and Brent and WTI all come up |
| 1:18.6 | here the last couple of days. It's up about, call it 6% or so the last two days. And then on the year, |
| 1:24.8 | oil is up about 15%. But the point is that that isn't what's actually |
| 1:29.4 | fully behind the sector performance. The sector performance is really based on supply |
| 1:34.3 | demand, favorable fundamentals, and just companies and businesses that were well run and performing |
| 1:40.1 | on their own fundamental merits. You've got a 23% move up on the year on the sector. |
| 1:45.4 | It is a larger sector that we hold, but we hold it more from the standpoint of positive |
| 1:50.1 | fundamentals and also just in a very attractive income stream, a dividend growth paradigm that |
| 1:55.5 | we like very much. Internally, if you look at the energy sector, 95% of the names in the sector are trading above |
... |
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