The Dividend Cafe The Bahnsen Group

Today's Post - https://bahnsen.co/4bjQ9x6

“Sell in May and go away” became an adage some people love to say in our business, and I really have no idea where it came from. Whenever people ask me if we follow that adage I reply the same as I do about any other “adage” – things that are made up to offer a cute rhyme may not necessarily be the best way to formulate an investment policy.

Some months markets go down. Some months really good investment plans see the holdings in a portfolio increase in price, and other times decrease in price, The investment plan is not better or worse in some months than the others – it is all part of the plan presumably put together.

Various calendar correlations, almanac tidbits, and nursery rhyme poetry are not investment strategies. They are actually not even good at understanding correlations, let alone causations, as most of these things on their own merits and claims are merely 50/50 propositions.

But what is a real investable philosophy is what you can find in the pages of Dividend Cafe. And for a discussion of all those things and more, we start … now …

Links mentioned in this episode:
DividendCafe.com
TheBahnsenGroup.com

Links mentioned in this episode:
DividendCafe.com
TheBahnsenGroup.com

Links mentioned in this episode:
DividendCafe.com
TheBahnsenGroup.com

Links mentioned in this episode:
DividendCafe.com
TheBahnsenGroup.com

Today's Post - https://bahnsen.co/4dd0xsl

Economic Front
The big economic news last week was the 1.6% annualized real GDP growth for Q1 when +2.5% had been expected. The 3.4% of Q4 (again, all these numbers are annualized, which is just how they get discussed) was not going to repeat itself, but 1.6% vs. 2.5% projected and 2.7% in the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model was a big step down.
The positive side is that manufacturing appears to be picking up, New Orders are on the rise, and low inventories now mean more manufacturing later.

Net exports were the biggest drag (-0.9%), and, as is almost always the case, consumption was the largest contributor (+1.7%). Capex contributed just +0.4%.

The Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) was up +2.7% year-over-year last month, matching expectations.
Personal Income rose +0.5% in March, in line with expectations.

54% of people worked at firms with less than 500 employees in 1980. That number is just over 46% now.
The fertility rate in the U.S. dropped to 1.62 last year, the lowest on record. Our fertility rate has been below the 2.1 replacement level for 17 years now.

Links mentioned in this episode:
DividendCafe.com
TheBahnsenGroup.com

Today's Post - https://bahnsen.co/49UmDwH

The first thing I will say is that by popular demand, we will be adding back the “What’s on David’s Mind” to the Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday email blasts starting next week for Dividend Cafe subscribers (and on some days, “What’s on Brian’s Mind”). By and large, the feedback to the newly revamped Dividend Cafe has been overwhelmingly positive, and a few knobs turned on the daily programming will continue to fine-tune. Thank you all for your feedback; we are very excited to have one property, one brand, and one medium to deliver the TBG thought leadership to you.

This week we are going to look at the history of yields from the market today, the history of market drawdowns, the state of commodities, the future of national debt, some global debt to avoid, expectations for Chinese economic growth, the energy sector, and finally, some Presidential conspiracy theories. That’s a lot to pack into one Friday. No one said this would be easy; we only said it would be fun.

Links mentioned in this episode:
DividendCafe.com
TheBahnsenGroup.com