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

Welcome to Dividend Cafe. Today is Thursday, January the 30th.

Brian Saitel with you recording today's market move, which was all fairly positive.

Dow was up 168 points, NASDAQ up about a quarter of a point, SMP up about a half a point,

in percentage terms, that is. So positive across the board, and there was some economic data

that was out today that was a little mixed at first

read, but ended up being a positive, which was a preliminary glance in read at fourth quarter GDP,

which came out at 2.3%. There was a number of two and a half that was looked for in there. So it was

a little lighter than expectations. Although when you read through things, the consumption figure was huge. It surged by 4.2% in the quarter. That's more than double what it has been doing. So there's a big move up in consumption. And as I mentioned in the letter, one thing I'll always count on is that if Americans are employed, especially if they're making a little bit more than they did the quarter or the year before, I'm pretty sure they're going to spend it and they usually do.

We just got off a holiday season. This was a big one. And sure enough, it's coming through in these numbers. So you've got a very strong consumer. It's a very de levered consumer compared to years past,

and they're out there spending. And with that spending, there's velocity, there's room for GDP advancement, there's economic growth.

It's what's showing up in earnings and all these things. I'm sensitive to saying real wage growth, because I understand, especially for those not earning a wage, meaning living

on fixed incomes, although most of those people are also getting Social Security, which was

adjusted for inflation. But aside from those things, wage gains for employed have been positive

recently. And the gain from prior quarter, meaning Q3, which was 1.1% to this quarter was 2.8%.

So these are big increases in disposable income. This is after tax, after inflation,

this is the money that people end up having and checking in savings to go either save or

spend. The savings rate declined by three-tenths for the quarter. It means people save less,

and then they spent more because they had 2.8% disposable income growth. So there you have it there.

I won't beligate the point. That and also, I had mentioned something that someone picked up on

in Tuesday's podcast regarding the Jevin paradox. This is basically saying that as the energy

input into technology gets less expensive,

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