#47 – Being Thankful For Market Productivity

Jeff Lloyd [00:00:39]:
Who doesn’t get excited about Thanksgiving? It is. This is the favorite week of the year. I think that Thanksgiving for so many people is because it’s the start of the season, the fall. And maybe this is I’m projecting or I don’t know what you call it, but as a parent with four kids doing four different things, this has been the busiest fall. Not busiest, but just running in different directions with different sports. And the one thing, too, that I almost didn’t expect because I’m still a new er, football dad is just how long football season goes in high school. That keeps going. Then it overlaps with basketball.

Jeff Lloyd [00:01:16]:
Not for like a week, but like a month and a half. It overlaps. And then as soon as that starts to wind down, lacrosse starts to go. But this fall with all the different sports, it’s been. It’s been a lot. So I’m really looking forward to this Thanksgiving week as a bit of a respite. Jeff Lloyd.

Jeff Lloyd [00:01:33]:
No, I agree. And when you have those sports overlapping, your schedule becomes full time shelling kids from the courts to the fields. I mean, it seems like it’s nonstop. And I think we had this conversation a couple of weeks ago. It seems like once the kids are back in school and then start the sports, that’s like the busiest time of the year.

Jeff Lloyd [00:01:54]:
I almost want to tell some football stories, some NYO football stories, but I’m gonna leave. I’m gonna leave it. The competition with between brothers is it’s in the moment, it’s rough. In hindsight, it’s pretty funny. But they love to put each other in each other’s places. Yeah. How many, how many touchdowns did you get? Ooh, none. You had no touchdowns.

Jeff Lloyd [00:02:19]:
Oh, you only had one touchdown. I had X touch.

Jeff Lloyd [00:02:22]:
You know, that’s just good competitive spirit.

Jeff Lloyd [00:02:26]:
In the Moss house. I don’t remember. To my younger brothers. I just don’t. Anyway, it’s a new world we live in. Good morning. Welcome to money matters. It is the fall.

Jeff Lloyd [00:02:35]:
It is Thanksgiving. We are thankful to be here. We’re honored to be here. And there’s an awful lot in this economy, in this stock market and economic data points. Jeff Lloyd, you and I this week started to say, well it’s thankful we get some another all time high on the S&P 500, thankful for all time highs. And then we said, well wait a minute, we’re thankful for S&P 500 hitting 6,000 and we’re thankful for. And all of a sudden it turned into a list that’s a little bit of a recap of what we have been thankful for that is very likely played out at least in some way, shape or form inside of your 401k. If you’re listening here on a Sunday morning.

Jeff Lloyd [00:03:13]:
And let’s go through. And it was a list that started with two, three, four things just. And then we just kept talking and going through, hey, what about, we broadened it out.

Jeff Lloyd [00:03:21]:
What about dividends? What about the unemployment rate? What about inflation? Let’s. So let’s go through some of those, some of what we’ve seen over this past so far this year. The year is starting to wind down. You actually had a note too just about the mind blowingness of Nvidia earnings this week. Just the sheer revenue that company is doing.

Jeff Lloyd [00:03:43]:
Yeah, we’re kind of wrapping up earning season right now. Nvidia, the largest S&P 500 company in the world, reported earnings this past week. And just the numbers. And remember this isn’t a buy, sell hold recommendation. We’re just talking, you know, major company. When Nvidia reports earnings. You remember last time they were, there was an earnings, there was like watch parties.

Jeff Lloyd [00:04:04]:
Watch parties.

Jeff Lloyd [00:04:05]:
Everybody dialed in to, you know, see what their earnings were. Well this past quarter, and these are just quarterly numbers, this in full year, last quarter, their sales, their revenue, 35 billion. That’s billion with a B for the quarter, for the quarter. Net income 19.3 billion.

Jeff Lloyd [00:04:24]:
Think about all that. Think about all that cash 19.3 billion. So that in net income, it’s amazing.

Jeff Lloyd [00:04:32]:
So that revenue number of 35 billion, that’s bigger than 237s and P500 components.

Jeff Lloyd [00:04:40]:
From a revenue perspective or just the, just the, the market cap size.

Jeff Lloyd [00:04:43]:
The market cap size and then net income on a market cap size is bigger than 120S. P500 components which is just mind blowing.

Jeff Lloyd [00:04:53]:
It is, it’s kind of. It’s an amazing story to see what has happened. It’s it. It reminds me of the Morgan Housel when you go back to the art deal. The German art dealer who didn’t wasn’t necessary who became a billionaire he essentially ended up with over a long period of time I think it was 50, let’s call it a half a generation of call it a billion dollar art collection. And it wasn’t because he had an eye for who was going to be worth a lot of money in the future. He just had this strategy where he bought up all the art he could buy. So he went to all these different venues and bought up lots and lots and lots of artwork.

Jeff Lloyd [00:05:29]:
And 90% of those, those pieces just did okay and they kind of floated. They, they went up a little bit. Went up with inflation or collectibles or art inflation. But a few, a handful were from the largest names in the history of the art world. They weren’t at the time but they became that and they drove the vast majority of the value of that art collection. And why is that a correlative story? Well it’s because it’s this collection of companies in the S&P 500 because it is a to some extent a winner bias. As the good companies get bigger and better they start to have more outsized impact on the S&P 500. So again when you see a company go from under 100 to over 100 billion to a trillion to multi trillion that’s really pushed, it’s helped.

Jeff Lloyd [00:06:21]:
That’s part of why it’s part of the magnificent seven help push the S&P 500 of the market higher. But what I will do is skip to number on our list of what we’re thankful for. The good news this year so far is it’s not just been the nvidias of the world we have had we are thankful for and I don’t know what number let’s see dividends brought. There’s gotta be oh number three on my list thankful for equity markets broadening out. So it hasn’t just been the magnificent seven. It hasn’t just been technology over the past 12 months. The S&P 500 yes up this is the last 12 months. So not just this year about 31% but the Russell 2000 which looks at smaller companies and small today is anything under 10 billion is that’s a teeny tiny company.

Jeff Lloyd [00:07:12]:
We have trillion dollar companies but these are still multi billion dollar companies that Russell the Russell 2000 up about 30%. One of the proxies we look for for watching dividend oriented stocks that this is a collection of companies that have raised dividends for at least five years, at least five years straight that’s returned about 26%. So it hasn’t just been tech, it hasn’t just been ultra mega cap the biggest of the big it’s been a much broader collection of companies across multiple different indices. Large, ultra large but also small and mid cap that have done and dividend paying stocks or if you look at some of the value indices relative to growth indices, they’ve really done well this year. So it’s been a good year. Thankful for the equity markets broadening out here on this almost eve of Thanksgiving.

Jeff Lloyd [00:08:03]:
Jeff Lloyd and that’s really been nice to see that broadening of the rally. We Talked about the Mag 7 ad nauseum the last couple years and I think the broadening of the rally just represents just a healthier market that’s not as top heavy as we’ve seen over the last couple of years.

Jeff Lloyd [00:08:21]:
So number one on our list thankful for now what 50 over 50 all time highs for the S&P 500 this year. Again I recoil when you hear all time high. Well I don’t know if I want to invest in an all time high that seems like I’m staring over the edge of a cliff. Historically that’s not necessarily so. We see large, large clumps of all time highs once we hit them. And I think the reason is that it takes an awful lot, awful lot has to start going right for the market to start to make all time highs. And not every all time high is all that big of a deal. I think it’s, it says a lot but it can be one point on the S&P 500 and the next thing you know we have a brand new all time high even though it’s a tenth of a percent higher.

Jeff Lloyd [00:09:03]:
Again, a lot has to go right to get there. That’s why they typically work in these clusters if you will. And we’ve had again now over four dozen of them this year in 2024s and P500. Number two, thankful for that. Going from just shy of 4800 earlier this year or the beginning of the year to hitting recently 6000 on the S&P 500. Number three again thankful for equity markets broadening out. We’ve already covered that. Number four, thankful for less volatility.

Jeff Lloyd [00:09:32]:
If you look at the vix, the CBOE volatility index AKA the vix, which measures kind of market feel, people buying protection against market drops in large part. That was at 38 in August. Remember we had that summer hiccup, it was July and then the market started to sell off August and the Vix spiked almost 40, which again, that is sensing, that is showing there’s an awful lot of market fear out there. Well, what’s happened since and particularly since the election is we now have clarity about what Washington’s gonna look like. We know the White House, we know the Senate, we know the, the House. And that just gives investors certainty around what was a very unnerving election for 100 million plus Americans. The, or let’s call it all 340 million Americans. I think babies were even watching.

Jeff Lloyd [00:10:28]:
Jeff Floyd, number five, thankful for lower interest rates. Well, did I say where we went to? We’re at 38 all the way down to 17 today on the Vix. Number five, thankful for lower interest rates and not a whole lot lower. This one almost didn’t make the, this.

Jeff Lloyd [00:10:43]:
Was kind of, almost like a head fake kind of recently.

Jeff Lloyd [00:10:47]:
This would have really been on the list a couple months ago.

Jeff Lloyd [00:10:50]:
As you know, we talk about 30 year mortgage rates a lot. We got upwards of almost 8%. Then it started ticking down. It almost broke into the fives, got around that 6. Now we’re kind of back up pushing the, the 7% range like in that 6.8, but 6.9 range.

Jeff Lloyd [00:11:08]:
But if we’re look, if we’re being, if we’re looking at the exact numbers here and this is not every mortgage is this. I think it’s a little bit misleading, but if you look at the Data of the 30 year average, 30 year mortgage, 30 year fixed mortgage rate, October of 23, it was 7.8. Just this week it was 6.8. So it’s down still a little bit from its high. The interesting news that correlates to that, I think a flash on my screen maybe Thursday or Friday morning, we did see a big jump in, it was existing home sales in October. Well, that was on the heels of lower mortgage rates in August and September. So we’ve also talked about that. What we believe is that magic rate where you’re talking, you’re at the dinner table.

Jeff Lloyd [00:11:56]:
Housing decisions are made at the dinner table. They’re not made during the work week, they’re made at the dinner table. Hey, do you think we can go buy another house? And surveys show, and this I think makes sense once you get to five and a half percent, couples, families, individuals say, wait A minute. I can handle a 5 1/2% mortgage. We were getting there. We’re starting to see some real real estate activity. We’ve got to run to weather, traffic. JEFF lloyd Then we have whole lot more to be thankful for right here on Money Matters on this Sunday morning.

Jeff Lloyd [00:12:27]:
The Sunday prior to Thanksgiving holiday news. Weather, weather, traffic. The more Money Matters right here on WSB straight ahead. Go, go, Daniel, go. Good morning. Welcome back to Money Matters Sunday morning WSB radio. Your host Wes Moss along with co host Jeff Lloyd here on this is finally falling. It’s finally fall.

Jeff Lloyd [00:13:17]:
It’s finally Thanksgiving. Felt like it just, it just was never going to arrive. It’s been so, so much later than normal. We are thankful that it’s Thanksgiving week, of course and thankful for at least a list of 10 for markets so far this year. Markets, economy, dividends, you name. We’re going through that list.

Jeff Lloyd [00:13:35]:
And Wes, you’re a little thankful for some 30 degree weather or the weather touching the 30s this past week.

Jeff Lloyd [00:13:41]:
I do like it. Yeah. I wore a sweater this past week for the first time in the year. Well, since the summer.

Jeff Lloyd [00:13:48]:
We also did something for the first time this year.

Jeff Lloyd [00:13:51]:
What did we do? We had a fire at the house. Oh, you guys had a fire?

Jeff Lloyd [00:13:54]:
We did our first fire.

Jeff Lloyd [00:13:56]:
Do you.

Jeff Lloyd [00:13:56]:
Well, maybe not this year.

Jeff Lloyd [00:13:57]:
Was it, is it gas fire? Is it one of these little.

Jeff Lloyd [00:14:00]:
It’s wood. So actual good old, good old fashioned open the floor wood burning.

Jeff Lloyd [00:14:05]:
It doesn’t smell up the entire house.

Jeff Lloyd [00:14:07]:
It doesn’t.

Jeff Lloyd [00:14:08]:
Huh.

Jeff Lloyd [00:14:08]:
It does have a little nice smoky smell to it.

Jeff Lloyd [00:14:12]:
Yeah.

Jeff Lloyd [00:14:13]:
But it doesn’t flood the house with smoke.

Jeff Lloyd [00:14:14]:
What we’re thankful for your fire, your whatever flu and chimney system you have that actually takes the gets that smoke out the. All right. We’re thankful for a couple things we’ll do. We’ll dome this lightning round because we’ve already gone through these five. Thankful for over 50 new all time highs on the S&P 500 this year. Thankful for the S and P going from about 4800 to 6000. Thankful for equity markets really broadening out, which I think that is probably what people maybe anyone invested in equity type funds in their 401k probably really noticed that or have noticed it this year. The less volatility Vix was at 38 in August down to 17 this week.

Jeff Lloyd [00:14:52]:
Thankful for lower rates, just albeit not all that much lower but better than being higher. I can’t imagine if we have higher than 7 or where we were at almost 8%. Talk about a housing market logjam. We’re going to see it’s just going to be crickets when it comes to housing transactions, but I don’t necessarily think we’re going to get there. We’ll see. Number six, though, thankful for higher dividends. And we looked at essentially the period, the timeframe of 2023, so this is one year versus another year. And we’re not obviously done 2024 yet.

Jeff Lloyd [00:15:23]:
So these are somewhat estimated, but we’re essentially going from about $576 billion s and P500 aggregate dividends. So you take all 500 companies and you add up what they’re, what they’re paying out in total to in in return of capital to shareholders, actual checks in your brokerage account or in some cases still. I still work with folks that still get checks in the mail.

Jeff Lloyd [00:15:51]:
They still get the physical check for the dividend. Yes.

Jeff Lloyd [00:15:55]:
Checks in the mail, which when I was growing up, that that was a really common phrase. You don’t hear it a whole lot anymore.

Jeff Lloyd [00:16:02]:
That’s mailbox money right there.

Jeff Lloyd [00:16:03]:
Mailbox money. Checks in the mail. Dividends still come in the mail. So we’ve gone from 7,576 billion to over 600 billion. It’s up $27 billion. Now. We’re at about $72 per share in dividends from the S&P 500. Just as a reference point.

Jeff Lloyd [00:16:21]:
We’ll do some math when we get back. And this is, I think, one, this is a very powerful thing to understand about investing. It’s not just about the growth of capital or the or the dividends you get, but the growth of those dividends. Dividends per share of the S P500 back in. Let’s go back to 2002, about 18, 19 bucks today, clocking in around 72. We’ll do some math around that. Money Matters Math around that. After news, weather, traffic, stay with us.

Jeff Lloyd [00:16:50]:
Right here on WS Big.

Wes Moss [00:17:00]:
It’S WSB’s Money Matters with Wes Moss, certified financial planner and chief investment strategist from Atlanta’s Capital Investment Advisors. Wes talks to you about investing and saving for the future.

Jeff Lloyd [00:17:13]:
Good morning. Welcome to MONEY Matters here Sunday morning, Sunday before Thanksgiving. And we’re giving thanks here on this Sunday morning on MONEY matters. We’re thankful for you tuning in and being a listener of Money matters, whether you’re on your way to church or maybe out of church by now, headed home to brunch. Chili Sunday, who doesn’t love the fall? Jeff Floyd, good morning. Always great to have you here in.

Jeff Lloyd [00:17:38]:
Studio hey, some people might be driving for their Thanksgiving plans, going out of town for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Jeff Lloyd [00:17:44]:
It’s only so long. The signal will last.

Jeff Lloyd [00:17:46]:
A lot of schools don’t have.

Jeff Lloyd [00:17:47]:
Unless you’re listening to this on via podcast form.

Jeff Lloyd [00:17:49]:
That’s right. But a lot, a lot of schools are out the entire week, so maybe we get a few travelers this Sunday morning.

Jeff Lloyd [00:17:55]:
You know, I was with the. I experienced the range of WSP to this week, but again, that’s another story where I want to, I want to get to dividends. But I also, this is just a anecdotal of. It’s not really anecdotal because I’ve asked enough people. If you ask one person once their opinion on something, the economy, then that’s just anecdotal. But if you do that five times a week for your entire life, I don’t think it’s anecdotal. It’s kind of a running tally. So one thing that I do tend to do, particularly if I meet somebody who’s retired or newly retired or even a couple years, I want to know what it’s like.

Jeff Lloyd [00:18:36]:
What’s it like? How is it? What do you mean? No, retirement. How is it? Do you like it? Oh, and you want people to start talking about something. The stories are, I love to hear how, how it’s going, whether you’re 58 and you’ve retired and you’re 62 and you retired at 58, or you are 74 and you’ve already retired. And I’ve got. I get some conflicting advice. I’ve just. And we need, probably need to do a whole show around some of the conflicting advice that I get because some of it is retirement’s overrated and I don’t love it. But I think it’s more like 2 or 3 to 1.

Jeff Lloyd [00:19:17]:
That is retirement is awesome. And I love it. And I got some of that. I had more of that of the latter this past week. I met somebody who was again, let’s call it mid-60s, sold a business in their early 60s. And I would say kind of abruptly. And this happens to a lot of business owners. You run a business for the first 10 years, you really don’t make a whole lot of money.

Jeff Lloyd [00:19:43]:
Then the next 10 years you end up maybe you make a fair amount of money. And then the last 10 years, if you run something for 30 years and you get the army of American productivity in the United States, the tailwind, that’s how people can make a real fortune. But it doesn’t usually get realized until there’s some sort of transaction, some sort of event, and we’re in a world today where there are far more private companies than there are public companies. And private equity is a giant force, economic force in the world. And they’ll come knocking on your door if you’ve got a good business. Eric von Hessler here on the station kind of rails against private equity firms because he doesn’t love the thought of every plumber, H Vac, the air conditioning, ventilation, pest control, all bought up by private equity. And we talked about this. There’s a great Wall Street Journal article that talked about how you’ve got these plumbing companies and landscape, you name it.

Jeff Lloyd [00:20:37]:
If it’s a profitable company, chances are a private equity firm is going to come knocking. And now what happens? All of a sudden there’s a big windfall. Might be $1 million, $2 million, might be $50 million. But often it’s kind of this abrupt, oh, wait a minute, I’m, I’m, I think I’m ready to, I can, I can stop working. And that is somewhat synonymous and it shouldn’t be, but it’s somewhat synonymous with the word retirement. So when I’m asking that question, Jeff Floyd, it’s, it’s really, the question is how do you like not working? How is, how is retirement for you? And I would say almost by. To the number retirees that are seen the happiest, I’ll ask them this question. Well, what do you do? Like, what do you do? Now here’s the answer I got this week.

Jeff Lloyd [00:21:22]:
I do something every day.

Jeff Lloyd [00:21:24]:
I like that answer. And Wes, of course, of course we all do something.

Jeff Lloyd [00:21:28]:
But what is that? What do, what do you mean by.

Jeff Lloyd [00:21:30]:
You should probably write a book on happiness and retirement? Maybe, maybe we’ll put the, that as a goal for 2025.

Jeff Lloyd [00:21:35]:
Thought about it, thought about it.

Jeff Lloyd [00:21:36]:
I’m still learning as, as we all should and we should all continue to learn. But yes, doing something every day.

Jeff Lloyd [00:21:43]:
What do you do every day?

Jeff Lloyd [00:21:45]:
Staying active. Something mentally and physically active and engaged.

Jeff Lloyd [00:21:50]:
And it takes a lot of work. It really comes back to having some real structure. You know, the family that I met this week still get up at 5:30 in the morning, still work out every day. Again, I don’t do that get up at 5:30 workout, then do another couple workouts throughout the week. Maybe golf once or twice a week, do something, volunteer. Maybe it’s in the ministry or with the church. Every single week. Maybe it’s twice a week.

Jeff Lloyd [00:22:16]:
Then you’re facilitating and you’re helping that group throughout the week, you’re consulting still on a business, you’re on a board of a business, you’re helping other entrepreneurs. If you sold a company, you’re maybe helping a consulting for a private equity fund or doing some sort of consulting within the industry that you’re in. And I find that over. I do find that a lot, particularly with folks who had a business, they do tend to stay active. But the more active they are, the retiree that I ask, how is it going? What are you doing? And it’s the ones that say, well, I’m doing something every day. And then they start to list what that something is. That’s a happy retiree.

Jeff Lloyd [00:22:57]:
I kind of like how that’s what.

Jeff Lloyd [00:22:58]:
I want to be like when I grow up.

Jeff Lloyd [00:22:59]:
Kind of like how you phrased it. You’re like, hey, how’s it going? And they’re like, what do you mean? What are you talking about? No retirement. They’re like, oh, light bulb goes off. And then they go into what they’ve been doing and how they’ve been spending their time.

Jeff Lloyd [00:23:13]:
Jeff Floyd I’m thankful for those conversations. And let’s go round out our list of thankfulness as we approach. Just get so excited to think about Halloween or Halloween.

Jeff Lloyd [00:23:23]:
Wrong Halloween was fun. West.

Jeff Lloyd [00:23:25]:
Wrong holiday. So excited thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, but that’s a little ways out. All right, so we were at thankful for lower rates. That’s a stretch. Jeff Lloyd because rates aren’t.

Jeff Lloyd [00:23:37]:
But technically they are lower. And we can be thankful stretch, though.

Jeff Lloyd [00:23:41]:
They’re not where we want them to be, but we’re getting there. Thankful for. We already talked about higher dividends. The math behind this, though, is interesting too, because when you read about aggregate dividends, it’s very easy to picture. Well, okay, wait a minute. All of these big 500 companies in the S&P 500, they’re paying out $603 billion on an annual basis. That’s a big number. But what does that mean per share? And I went back and looked at the last 25, 30 years of dividend history, and you go back to.02 or, I’m sorry,04.

Jeff Lloyd [00:24:12]:
The S&P 500 in aggregate was paying at about 18, 19 bucks per share. Today it’s up to almost $72 per share. So what does that mean? What do you get? How do you get 72 bucks? How much money does it take when you say wes per share? Well, you can’t buy just the s and P500 because it’s an actual Index, but you can buy a proxy for that. Of course, there’s many, there’s. I don’t know if there are hundreds, but there are many different ETFs that allow you to essentially participate in the s and P500. And I looked at just the largest of them, which is sp, and it’s essentially the same price as the s and P500 minus a zero. So if the S&P is at 5,000, it’s at 50, it’s at 500 bucks. If the S&P is at 6,000, it’s close to 6,000.

Jeff Lloyd [00:25:01]:
It’s not exact, but that’s about how it works. So mathematically, if you own 10 shares of it, and again, if it’s 5,900 or 590 bucks times 10, you’d be putting in about $5,900. Close to 6,000. And guess what you would get out of that? You’d get about 72 bucks in dividends. That’s what we mean by saying $72 per share. What is I think even more interesting. And again, we’ll go to. We’re thankful for this is the growth behind that number.

Jeff Lloyd [00:25:32]:
We want the s and P500 to go up. And by the way, we’re not saying buy, sell or hold. I loved your terminology earlier today. That was good. This is not a buy, sell or hold on spy. We’re just really talking about the index. But to look at what think about the math behind 18 bucks or 1860, $18.60 back in 04, second quarter to 72, where we are today. What’s the percentage rise of that over that whole course of time?

Jeff Lloyd [00:25:58]:
So it’s almost a 300% increase. It’s 286% increase over that time period.

Jeff Lloyd [00:26:06]:
All right, that’s, that’s the amount the dividend went up over that period of time. Now it’s still long time. 20, 20 years annually though. Jeff Lloyd, annually, what is the been the increase just, just for the s.

Jeff Lloyd [00:26:20]:
And P500, on average about 6 to 7% per year now.

Jeff Lloyd [00:26:26]:
And that’s over 50, 40 years. 50 years. 80 years. This was just the last 20. It’s been a little more than that. So the math behind 1860, that go into 72, that’s about 7% per year. So it’s kind of a fascinating thing if you look back and you think you’re able to get that much more in income. Let’s put it in context.

Jeff Lloyd [00:26:48]:
If you had a portfolio back in 04, 20 years ago and it was paying you $10,000 worth of dividends in any given year today would be, it would be paying you 286% more than that. So your $10,000 that you were getting per year now is mathematically it’s $38,600. It’s a big number. If you get 100 grand back then you’re 386,000 in income. Talk about a raise. That’s a good 7% raises every single year on average. That’s serious.

Jeff Lloyd [00:27:22]:
That’s a good raise. And that’s also a way to protect your purchasing power.

Jeff Lloyd [00:27:27]:
So if inflation 3. And your wage, you’re getting, your, your wage is going up 7. You’re getting, you’re getting a real raise of 4.

Jeff Lloyd [00:27:36]:
That’s right.

Jeff Lloyd [00:27:37]:
I’m thankful for that mechanism now. It’s not guaranteed, doesn’t happen perfectly. It’s not an exact straight line. But that collective army of American productivity, it’s not just about growth, not just about innovation. It’s about net income. That for a certain amount of companies, actually a lot of companies in the s and P500, almost 80% of companies pay some sort of dividend and they’re not there just to pay you this kind of token dividend. They want to maintain it and companies want to ratchet it up and that’s very powerful over time. Doesn’t get a whole lot of press but we’re doing it here today and we’re thankful for that.

Jeff Lloyd [00:28:11]:
Number seven, thankful for large cap dividend companies. There were 403 of them. That’s 80.1% of the, of the S&P 500. The down from 404 again the amount of companies that lower their dividend. It’s, it’s pretty, it’s pretty few and far between. And number eight, thankful for small to mid sized companies. 65, almost 66% of those of the, of the mid cap 400 pay out of dividend. So we’re thankful for that.

Jeff Lloyd [00:28:42]:
We’re thankful for dividend growth. More importantly, we’ve got a couple more on our list. We’ve got to run. We’ve got to run to weather traffic. Then more money matters. We’ll round out our list of what we’re thankful for here. Markets, the economy straight ahead. Good morning.

Jeff Lloyd [00:29:27]:
Welcome back to Money Matters here Sunday morning, the Sunday before our favorite Thursday which is Thanksgiving. We’ve got a lot to be thankful for here on Money Matters. Thankfully for you. Tuning in, thankful for Jeff Lloyd being here in the studio. Did we get all the way through our 10? I don’t think we did.

Jeff Lloyd [00:29:43]:
We have two left. But before we move any further, there’s one other thing that I associate Thanksgiving with besides church. It’s right up your alley. Detroit Lions football. I love watching them play football on Thursday afternoon.

Jeff Lloyd [00:30:02]:
Now, as a semi Detroit Lions fan and they are so good. They’re good this year. They’re almost too good. But isn’t it always the same game? Isn’t it always Lions, packers or who is it this coming Thursday?

Jeff Lloyd [00:30:14]:
They’re they’re playing the Bears.

Jeff Lloyd [00:30:17]:
Are always Lions. Bears. Always on Thanksgiving Day.

Jeff Lloyd [00:30:20]:
I’m not sure if it’s always, but they seem to play the same opponent over and over.

Jeff Lloyd [00:30:26]:
But I’m I’m thankful for that Thanksgiving Day football. I heard they may even have Is it correct that there may be a Christmas Day game? While you look that up, I’m going to go on to what else we’re thankful for here. The Little NFL Thanksgiving holiday Research so we talked about how broadly we’re thankful the markets have broadened out this year. The markets have done well this year. We’ve had all time highs. They’re on our thankful list. Less volatility, at least as of this week relative to where we were this late in the summer. Lower interest rates just barely made the list.

Jeff Lloyd [00:31:01]:
They’re not as low as we wanted. We’d like them to be thankful for higher dividends, thankful for large and small dividend companies. Which leads us to number nine and ten on our thankful list. Jeff Lloyd did you find out our answer?

Jeff Lloyd [00:31:14]:
There are football games on Christmas.

Jeff Lloyd [00:31:16]:
There are.

Jeff Lloyd [00:31:16]:
Okay, but we are thankful. Number nine, Lower inflation, lower inflation, lower.

Jeff Lloyd [00:31:23]:
Inflation, lower rate of inflation. We try to make sure that we are the media will come out and say inflation is lower and it’s lower and everything’s great. It’s only 2.3%, as we all know. And we feel that it’s still up over 20% and it’s just a slower incline that we’re experiencing or a rate of incline. So US Core CPI back in September 2022 was almost at 7. Today we’re down to 2.2.6.

Jeff Lloyd [00:31:55]:
The last reading in October.

Jeff Lloyd [00:31:56]:
Oh, this is for core cpi. So we’re still not even. We’re not close. We’re not quite to the 2% target that the Fed would like to see. Then we we round out our list at number 10. Thankful for. I’m thankful for the labor market. Jeff Lloyd Thankful for the unemployment rate being as low as was it 14.9% back in April 2020.

Jeff Lloyd [00:32:19]:
And when the world kind of shut down all the way down to 4.1% as we stand here today.

Jeff Lloyd [00:32:25]:
That’s the unemployment rate, but the employment rate. 96%. Gotta love that. And the army of American productivity here on Thanksgiving week. And I’m thankful for them. Such a glass half full guy I am. I can’t help it.

Jeff Lloyd [00:32:40]:
Maybe even slightly more than me. Love that it’s a 96% employment rate, not a 4% unemployment rate. We’re rounding. But give us some grace here on this Sunday headed into Thanksgiving. Thank you so much for tuning in. You can EAS easy to find Jeff Lloyd Easy to find me and our team. You can find us@yourwealth.com that’s whyour wealth.com. have a wonderful rest of your Sunday and holiday Thanksgiving week.