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

Good evening and welcome back into Dividend Cafe. This is Wednesday, September the 17th.

Brian Saitel back here with you on a big Fed day. So today was the end of the

FOMC policy rate decision meeting and done some announcements there on rates, largely in line with

expectations. We got Fed funds that was cut by a quarter of a percent, so 25 basis points.

That brings us down to four to four and a quarter percent on Fed funds.

That was widely expected from all the last data that we've been getting.

They talked a bit about their dual mandate and what has now shifted from an inflation concern,

mainly around tariffs.

And Powell unpacked that a bit in his press conference a little bit more,

has now shifted into the softening that we've seen in the labor market. And so that's what's warranting there, bringing interest rates down. Out of all 12 voting members, all of them

voted for it. There was one dissent, which was the newest member that was recently appointed

in Miran, and he voted for the 50 basis point rate

cut. But dot plots are suggesting, again, in line, two more rate cuts before the end of the year.

So fairly clear path telegraphed from now through Christmas on Fed policy, they did upgrade

things like GDP. There was a 1.4. This is a real rate. Remember net net of inflation 1.4% to 1.6%. That's a good

thing. Inflation was largely in line, still elevated around 3%. But again, that risk just shifted

a little bit more on the labor side and they felt like they could warrant bringing the interest

rate down here a little bit. Dot plots into the future

were a little lower than expected. But, you know, I'll be honest, over the years, the

expectation of the Fed getting their one to two to three when people start quoting them out to

2028 and things, it's really pretty silly. They've never gotten any of that correct. It's hard for

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