Welcome to the Dividing Cafe, weekly market commentary focused on dividends in your portfolio

and dividends in your understanding of economic life.

Hello, this is David Bonson. I am the managing partner of the Bonson Group, and this is the Dividendon

Cafe annual year behind year ahead white paper.

I'm going to introduce to you today in this video and podcast, all the things that I have to say about the year that just was in 2024.

We're going to rate some of the themes and thoughts we had about the year a year ago, give a little report card

on how we did in our projections for the year, and then we're going to go offer more of the same

for 2025. We want to look ahead to what the year ahead is likely to bring and the big themes that we're seeing when we think

about the economy and financial markets. This is an annual tradition. It's going to be a fun one,

so let's jump on into the Dividing Cafe. The genesis of this endeavor goes back to, before I ever left Morgan Stanley, we were doing an annual kind of

summary.

And we've sort of just grown it over the years.

I don't honestly recall if it used to be as long as it is now.

I think I probably used to do a little bit shorter of a version, but there wasn't really

ever any point that we targeted a certain length that just sort of organically gotten up to be

when I'm submitting it pre-edited. I think this year it was 26 pages and almost 10,000 words,

and there are about 20 charts. As a matter of fact, there's

exactly 20 charts in the PDF of the paper. We're going to put a lot of those charts up on

the screen for you here. For those of you watching the video, we probably won't put all of them

up, but we want you to be able to see some of the kind of visual support for some of the things

we're talking about.

In 2024 is a year in which a lot of investors have a chance to say, or not just investors, but observers of the market,

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