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

Welcome into Dividend Cafe. This is Wednesday, October the 22nd, and it's Brian Sightel with you here from our West Palm Beach, Florida office.

On a down day overall in markets, although we were off of the lows for the day, we still

closed down on the Dow about 7 tenths of a percent. We were down about 6 tenths of a percent

on S&Ps and down about a percent or so on the NASDAQ. So a little bit wider slide with some missed earnings inside of some tech bellwethers.

Showing the NASDAQ a little lower, rates were just flat on the day.

We're still at about $3.95 on the 10-year treasury.

And gold was actually notably lower again.

Remember I mentioned this yesterday.

It was down the biggest in about 12 years in a day. At least it was a 6% decline for whatever that's worth. And today followed through with another percent decline. So there's some oscillation here around some asset classes. News really was centered around back and forth on U.S. China trade relations, and mostly for the worse, there was comments

that Trump had that may restrict software exports and some autos and also some airplane parts and

things for the trade negotiation. So this is just ongoing. And I have a couple things to say about that.

In fact, David had a nice write-up in there today that I'll go through and give my own thoughts, along with his.

You've got things in the market that have run up a lot.

The S&P is at trading at 23.4 times earnings at this point.

So if, you know, everything comes out rosy with the Trump and she meeting between the two world's largest nations in trade.

What's more likely that you've got extended rally that takes SMP from 23 to 24 or 25?

Or that the semiconductor space, which has already just rallied through every possible good news that may come of this. Trade negotiations with enhanced exports of chips and rare earths back the other way.

Is it likely just to continue?

Or are those things long on the tooth and perhaps what has already sold off me catch a bid?

And it's something to think about and food for thought.

Often it's by the rumor sell the news. Those are my words, or to quote famous adage in markets, but there's a lot to be said about this. When you look at oil trading in the mid-50s, and what that's saying is that there's something going on in the economy. That's not a normal paradigm. We're right at levels that it costs to basically produce it and pull it out of the ground.

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