Thursday - July 9, 2026
The Dividend Cafe
The Dividend Cafe - The Bahnsen Group
4.9 • 572 Ratings
🗓️ 9 July 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this midweek Dividend Cafe (Thursday, July 9), Brian Szytel notes a mixed recovery in markets amid renewed volatility tied to Middle East tensions, while oil prices pulled back slightly and interest rates were flat to slightly lower. Economic updates included initial jobless claims coming in a bit better than expected, suggesting steady, healthy employment, and weaker existing home sales (down 3.4% to 4.09 million), reflecting affordability pressures from high rates and a stuck housing market, with modest price declines seen as healthy clearing. He reviews June FOMC minutes showing a divided committee, some discussion of potential hikes, continued attention to AI demand, geopolitical risks, tariffs as a GDP drag, and higher inflation projections for 2026–2027, with expectations split between hikes and no change. He also explains that business cycles persist due to real-economy lags in capital, credit, inventories, labor, and policy transmission.
00:00 Market Recap Volatility
00:46 Jobs And Housing Data
01:32 Housing Affordability Reset
02:37 Fed Minutes Takeaways
03:54 Dot Plot And Guidance
05:05 Why Business Cycles Persist
06:53 Wrap Up And Q&A
Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Dividend Cafe weekly market commentary focused on dividends in your portfolio and dividends in your understanding of economic life. |
| 0:10.0 | Welcome back to Dividend Cafe. This is Brian Saitel, your host here in this midweek Dividend Cafe session on Thursday July the 9th. In a bit of recovery, |
| 0:24.3 | although mixed and uneven, the last couple of days market volatility has picked up because |
| 0:29.5 | of geopolitical peatedness in the Middle East. And that continues on today, but there was more of a |
| 0:34.7 | recovery trade going on. There wasn't a lot out in the economic calendar. A couple of things I'll walk through. Brent and WTI both ended up pulling back |
| 0:42.6 | just a little bit on the day, so you got some reprieve there in oil, and then interest rates |
| 0:46.7 | were flat, just slightly lower, actually. So markets tend to be shrugging off here a little bit |
| 0:51.5 | of the volatility that we've seen. And overall, earnings have |
| 0:54.9 | continued to be positive, as is the economy that we're seeing overall. The economic side of |
| 1:00.4 | things out on the day, let's see, we walk through these. We've got initial jobless claims, |
| 1:05.2 | a little better than expected. We got a 215 print and expecting a 218. So employment continues to be healthy, I would call it. It's not |
| 1:13.6 | necessarily getting better or worse. It's hovering right around the 4.2, 4.3% unemployment level. |
| 1:19.5 | That would be considered quite good. Existing home sales, and we've talked about this quite a bit, |
| 1:24.0 | the real estate market continues to be, I've called it stuck, but the numbers that we've |
| 1:29.0 | seen over the past years, over the past one year at least, have continued to be a little bit |
| 1:33.7 | weaker, and we saw that today. Existing home sales, we're down 3.4% for the month, which is meaningful. |
| 1:39.7 | We're now at 4.09 million versus consensus at 4.2 million. So we know there's this demographic imbalance. |
| 1:46.9 | There's household formation going on and we've underbuilt homes for two generations. |
| 1:51.4 | That said, interest rates have not come down and affordability is at all-time lows. |
| 1:56.2 | And so you're just having a moment where people that own houses aren't willing to move and pay higher |
| 2:02.5 | property tax rates and higher mortgage rates. And those that are trying to form new households |
| 2:06.9 | are just unable to afford it at this point. And home builders can absorb some of this to a certain |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 18 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Dividend Cafe - The Bahnsen Group, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Dividend Cafe - The Bahnsen Group and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.