Tuesday - March 24, 2026
The Dividend Cafe
The Dividend Cafe - The Bahnsen Group
4.9 • 569 Ratings
🗓️ 24 March 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Brian Szytel recaps a choppy, directionless market day marked by early heavy losses, a midday rebound, and a late fade amid negative sentiment tied to Middle East tensions: the Dow fell 84 points, the S&P 500 lost just over 0.3%, and the Nasdaq dropped about 0.8%, with tech weaker while defensives, dividend payers, and energy (helped by higher oil) held up better. He discusses conflicting reports about U.S.-Iran negotiations and expects uncertainty to persist for several days, while noting markets still seem to price in a potential off-ramp. He highlights that high-yield credit spreads remain tight at 319 bps over Treasuries, not signaling recession risk. Addressing a stagflation question, he argues current conditions differ from the 1970s despite tariff-driven one-time price effects. Economic updates were broadly positive: services and manufacturing PMIs stayed above 50, Q4 productivity was revised to 1.8%, and the Richmond Fed index was flat but beat expectations.
00:00 Market Recap Today
01:04 Middle East Tensions
02:05 Markets Still Hopeful
02:28 Credit Spreads Check
03:24 Stagflation Question
03:50 Why Not the 1970s
04:48 Tariffs and Inflation
05:35 Economic Data Rundown
06:36 Closing Thoughts
Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com
Transcript
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| 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. |
| 0:11.8 | Welcome to Dividend Cafe. This is your host, Brian Saitel, with you today from our West Palm Beach, Florida office here at a nice sunny day, and another day |
| 0:22.5 | in which markets started off trading much lower early in the morning. So we had heavy losses, |
| 0:27.9 | several hundred points. Then we actually regained some of that midday. And then, of course, |
| 0:33.1 | gave it all back before the close. So the direction lists and the rudderless and the more or less |
| 0:38.5 | negative sentiment in market is ongoing around Middle East tensions. So the Dow ended up closing |
| 0:44.0 | down 84 points. SMP was down a little over a third of a percent and the NASDAQ was down |
| 0:50.1 | about eight tenths of a percent. So bigger skew towards tech and those names selling off more, |
| 0:56.8 | the value names, the defensive, the dividend payers all fared better. And then of course, energy was |
| 1:02.0 | positive because you had a move up with oil prices here after yesterday's selloff in them. |
| 1:08.3 | Yesterday's movement while positive, the breath internally was actually not |
| 1:12.1 | that robust. I would call it mediocre at best. It was five-to-one advanced decline. And so you've got |
| 1:17.1 | this announcement with negotiations ongoing between the U.S. and Iran, and then you've got a denial |
| 1:22.4 | of that announcement by the other side. And the reason is just the leverage of negotiation that Iran has is with |
| 1:30.6 | the home route straight closed and with oil prices that are choking global GDP and putting |
| 1:36.4 | pressure on the U.S. And so I don't think they're going to give way to admitting to positive |
| 1:41.2 | negotiations and progress and things that are going to cause both of those |
| 1:44.4 | things to get better in the middle of it. That doesn't surprise me at all. Now, there was still |
| 1:49.3 | shots fired to neighboring countries. There's still Israel's involvement and ongoing work that |
| 1:56.2 | they're doing against Iran as well. And so this is far from over. That said, we've got another four days here |
| 2:02.6 | until this current period of time is going to end. And I imagine that that is all going to continue |
| 2:09.2 | until the last day or somewhere near the end of it, where we'll either know if negotiations were |
... |
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