Dividend income is often overlooked amid gyrations in the stock market. Consider that in 2024, market bulls were boasting about 24%-plus S&P 500 returns. No one was very focused on the broad market index's 1.2% dividend yield. But dividends are an important element of return, and 2025 for a while was bearing that out. Through May, the S&P 500 was up a thin 1.1%; without dividends, there was essentially no returns at all. Of note, dividend income accounted for 42% of the total return of the S&P 500 between 1930 and 2012, according to Hartford Funds. And that's just the average. In some of those decades, dividends accounted for more than 50% of total returns and even 100%. More recently, dividends have accounted for a smaller portion of returns, at around 15%-20%. But not all dividends are created equal, though, and it is important to understand the difference between the two main investment categories: high-yield stocks and dividend-growth stocks.

The Vickers Top Buyers & Sellers is a daily report that identifies the five companies the largest insider purchase transactions based on the dollar value of the transactions as well as the five companies the largest insider sales transactions based on the dollar value of the transactions.

We are raising our 2026 gross domestic product (GDP) growth forecast to 2.3% from 2.1%, our 2Q26 estimate to 2.5% from 2.2%, and our 2027 growth forecast to 2.4% from 2.0%. The major change to our estimates is that indicators point to even stronger Gross Domestic Investment (GDI) even as inflation constrains consumer spending. Companies see an opportunity to raise productivity and their return on capital and artificial intelligence (AI) dominates the increase in investment. The investment dollars then boost the Equipment and Intellectual property categories in the GDP report. Nvidia CFO Colette Kress recently estimated that AI infrastructure spending is on track to reach $3-$4 trillion annually by the end of this decade. We also have increased our estimate of imports, which reflects purchases of gear to support the AI buildout. As a reminder, GDP is the value of goods and services produced in the U.S. Imports are subtracted from GDP. We did not make major changes to our outlook for consumer spending. Consumers are proving to be more resilient than we expected with gasoline selling for more than $4.00 per gallon. On the positive side, bigger tax returns helped, unemployment continues to be low at 4.3%, and hiring has improved (with payroll gains averaging a healthy 188,000 over the last three months). Household net worth is also up 8% from a year ago. But inflation is playing Scrooge, rising faster than wages. The Consumer Price Index was up 4.2% in May. Average hourly earnings were up just 3.4% in May. Real Disposable Personal Income, which is calculated after taxes and adjusted for inflation, was down 0.1% year over year in March and down 1.1% in April. News of an interim peace deal between the U.S. and Iran sent gasoline to $4.07 a gallon yesterday from $4.53 a month ago (according to AAA). Lower gas prices are welcome news for consumers as we approach the important back-to-school shopping season, which starts after the July 4 weekend. Spending during Amazon's Prime Day (June 23-June 26) may be a useful leading indicator.

The stock market attempted to erase some of Friday's massive losses, but mostly failed. In the short-term, the bears still have the upper hand, as many stock indices failed at key retracement levels as well as at clusters of moving averages. That is not surprising, considering the almost-uninterrupted rally in April and May as well as the pending inflation data and the SpaceX IPO. Index gains on Monday came exclusively from the scorchingly hot semiconductor stocks, as investors decided to take advantage of the recent weakness and reignite their chase of the momentum titans. MU popped 10%, ASML 6.5%, INTC 11%, LRCX 7%, AMAT 9%, KLAC 9%, and MRVL (Jenson Huang's recent $1 trillion proclamation) jumped 10%.