In this engaging episode, Bill Gunderson delves into the myriad of factors influencing today’s economy, from the impact of tariffs and geopolitical tensions to the technological surge driven by AI developments. He highlights the pivotal roles companies like NVIDIA and Microsoft play in shaping the future, and offers a unique perspective on stock analysis. With his wealth of experience, Gunderson breaks down complex issues like global trade policies and energy demands, offering listeners practical insights into making informed investment decisions.
He’s been seen on CNBC, the Fox News Channel, and the Fox Business Channel. His articles can be found on MarketWatch, Seeking Alpha, TheStreet.com, and many other places. He’s the author of the weekly Best Stocks Now newsletter and the inventor of the Best Stocks Now app. He’s president of Gundersen Capital Management. Here is professional money manager Bill Gundersen.
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And welcome to today’s Best Stock Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management. I’m flying solo here today and I’m broadcasting from a remote location somewhere in South Carolina here this day. I don’t do this very often. I’m going to have to broadcast from my cell phone because we don’t quite have the internet strength here that I need for my Radio modem. We’ve got a down day going on so far, but I will say this. It looks a lot better underneath the surface of the market than it does on the surface. On the surface, it’s just a few white caps here and there. The Dow is down 249, down a half a percent, but I can’t really complain about the week we’ve had or the month we’ve had in the market. I wouldn’t worry too much. The S&P is down 27 points. which works out to about 40 basis points to the downside. The NASDAQ is down just 21 basis points. As NVIDIA powers to a new all-time high today, crashes through that $4 trillion barrier once again, and continues to be our largest position by far at the firm. We also have the small caps. They’re down 85 basis points today. The story of the day is Bitcoin. Can you believe Bitcoin? Its old high was $110,000, and right now it is trading at $117,000. That’s right. You heard it right here on the Best Stocks Now show. Bitcoin powers to an all-time high. So welcome to today’s Best Docs Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management, a nationwide fee-based only money management firm that likes to be a little bit different than the rest out there. The big Wall Street firms that are in love with the Johnson & Johnson’s and the Procter & Gamble’s and the AT&T’s of the world. many of which time has passed by. You know, we’re not out there on the frontier in risky stocks. We’re just in the stocks that are growing today, and their better days are not behind them. Hopefully their better days are still ahead of them, and hopefully they’re in the prime of their life right now. That’s the methodology we employ, hence the name The Best Stocks Now. We had new highs in the S&P 500 yesterday. It hit 6,280. We had a new all-time high in the NASDAQ yesterday, 20,630. Hey, CNBC, I thought the market was supposed to tank this year on the misguided tariff concerns. The market’s hitting a new high, if you haven’t looked recently. And I’m the guy that back on April the 8th of this year, March the 8th of this year, said, you know what? I’d be all in right now. I think this whole tariff thing is going to work. And I based that on an interview I heard with Scott Besant explaining the whole reason behind it all and what they wanted to achieve from it all. And I said, you know, it’s going to work. Well, guess what? It’s working. The story today, obviously, Bitcoin. Man, can you believe it? $117,000 per coin. The old high was $110,625, and we are just blowing through that. We obviously have an administration that is pro-Bitcoin. That helps. You’ve even got people that are advisors. Hi, big up there on the pecking order. advisors to Trump that are also big Bitcoin players. So where Bitcoin ends, nobody knows, but up she goes, and it hits new all-time highs today, along with the NASDAQ and the S&P 500 yesterday. There was a solid bond sale. There’s no shortage of demand for U.S. bonds. Interest rates right now on the 10-year are sitting at about 4.40%. As you know, Trump called for 300 basis point cut. Well, you know what? It can’t hurt to ask. I always ask for a free lobster, you know, on the side with my dinner. It can’t hurt to ask. I don’t think he’s going to get it. He’d be happy probably with a quarter of a point. But the other big news today is 35% on Carney up in Canada. I don’t think Trump likes Carney a whole lot. And I don’t think Carney likes him either. But look, Canada is pretty dependent upon trade with the U.S. If you think about it, they may have ties with Europe and they may have ties with China, etc. China is not a consuming nation. They’re not going to be buying a lot of Canadian goods. And Europe, on the other hand, while they’re a big part of Canada’s trade relationship, the U.S. is by far the number one trade partner for them. And I’m sure that 35 percent is not palatable for them. Something has to give. It all kind of began with a little bit of that, a little bit of that, Carney’s policies. And as I’ve said before, Trump is the first president ever to use tariffs as far as not only trade relations, but how they run their countries. I mean, look what he’s done to Brazil here this week, to Lula. He doesn’t like the way they’re treating former president Bolsonaro, who is much more of a capitalist than the new guy, who is much more of a socialist than the old guy. And they’re out to get Bolsonaro, and Trump slapped a 50% tariff on them unless they treat Bolsonaro a little bit better. So we’re seeing a weapon that we’ve never really seen before been used in the way it is. I suppose it beats ballistic missiles. I suppose it beats sanctions. I suppose it beats embargoes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, or standoffs in the Bay of Pigs and the like. But it seems to be working, and we’ll see. Brazil’s got to come around. NVIDIA’s crashing through $4 trillion again today. Let’s just check in on it. Last time I looked, it was up 1.5%. I wrote an article two years ago, three years ago, one year ago, six months ago, and continue to call NVIDIA the best stock in the market today. No, it’s not AT&T. It’s NVIDIA. And the proof is in the pudding. The company is breaking through $4 trillion to become the biggest stock of all time publicly traded. We’ve never had a $4 trillion stock before. But there it is. NVIDIA right now sitting at $4.05 trillion. Draw that out on your scratch pad. How many zeros is that? Don’t forget to add the decimal points. That would be two more zeros. NVIDIA is hitting $166.18 today. And in a down market, I was pretty happy when I looked at our overall mix. And we were down just a little bit, and we might even be positive by now with this move in NVIDIA today. And what’s driving NVIDIA? Two letters. Two letters. AI. and four letters that pretty much started this whole thing, NVDA. And the other one, I would say the number two AI stock in the world is Microsoft, who began this whole thing with ChatGPT. And Microsoft, I would expect, will in time become the second $4 trillion company. It’s now sitting at $3.72 trillion. If this were a horse race, NVIDIA is pulling away right now from Microsoft. It blew by Apple quite some time ago, the company that hasn’t had a good idea for quite some time, in my opinion. And then it blew by Microsoft. And now NVIDIA has opened up about a three-length lead on Microsoft. They’re at $3.72 trillion. NVIDIA is at $4.05 trillion. We own both stocks in our portfolio. Somehow Microsoft, unlike other big tech, I’m talking Intel, IBM, et cetera, somehow Microsoft has figured out a way to stay current. They’re much more than just Windows, and they’re also a big player in what is probably the biggest growth sector driving the market right now. which happens to be AI. Whether you trust AI or you don’t trust AI, whether you use chat GPT, whether you don’t use chat GPT, it is a big driver of growth in our economy right now. It’s not tobacco. It’s not food. It’s not medicine. It’s not drugs anymore. It’s not the building sector. It’s not commodities. No, it’s two letters. It’s AI, and that’s driving a lot of growth. Some have even estimated that it’s as much as 1% of our GDP right now in the U.S. economy. Okay, we’ll be back. There’s a lot of rare earth news. There’s some nuclear news. There’s some tariff news. And it all affects you. And you need to know about it. We’ll be right back. And welcome back here to the second quarter of today’s Best Docs Now show. Well, the 35% tariff on Canada is a big setback for their new Prime Minister Mark Carney. He was trying to reach a trade agreement with Washington. And now, instead of a 25% levy, it’s up to 35% levy. And Trump says, Instead of working with the United States, Canada retaliated with its own tariffs. And he also said he criticized the fentanyl flow from Canada and its tariff and non-tariff trade barriers that hurt U.S. dairy farmers and others. Trump went on to say, if Canada works with me to stop the flow of fentanyl, we will perhaps consider an adjustment to Well, like I say, 35% is a pretty stiff levy there. Canada is replying, saying that we’re doing what we can. We’re committed to working with the United States to save lives and protect communities in both of our countries from the scourge of fentanyl. And we’ll just have to see where it goes from here. But that’s kind of a surprise that he went to 35% on Canada. All these countries, all these trade partners are getting their letters this week. Europe hasn’t gotten its letter. I would imagine today more than likely the checks in the mail or the letters in the mail, and they’re going to find out what their tariff is. Vietnam was reportedly caught off guard by Trump’s 20% tariff decision, which is much lower than Canada, but Vietnam was down to 10%, and that made all the companies that sell the Abercrombie & Fitches, the Philips, Van Heusen, etc., that have a lot of clothing made over there, and other manufacturing that goes on in Vietnam, It was at 10%, but he did go up to 20%. Now, down in Brazil, which is the other hot spot right now, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Thursday he will impose retaliatory tariffs. Okay, go ahead. I’m warning you. On the United States, if President Donald Trump follows through on his promise, he hasn’t done it yet. But he has threatened Brazil with a 50% tariff. And, of course, Brazil is the bee in bricks. Trump not a fan of bricks. Lula said he will trigger Brazil’s reprocity law approved by Congress earlier this year if negotiations with the U.S. fail, he said. Uh, so anyways, uh, we’ll see. I, I think Lula is going to have to make some big changes in order to get that tariff down. And as I said, Europe is waiting for their letter, uh, from Trump, uh, to see where their tariff is that Trump is going to make a major statement on Russia on Monday. Well, there’s an update on, uh, on Armageddon. Are we dealing with Gog and Magog here in Russia, in Putin? It seems very clear, very clear, that he does not want to stop with the territory that he’s gained in his conquest of Ukraine. It appears that he wants the whole thing. And, you know, Trump really doesn’t know what to do, I would say. I mean, he says he’s getting a lot of you-know-what from Putin. So Trump’s going to have to do something, and it looks like maybe some very, very stiff sanctions will be coming on Putin, and we’ll see what Putin does to retaliate. But that’s not a good situation. You know, Putin has really gone to kind of the dark side here. Not that he was ever on the sunny side of the street, but he’s really gone to the dark side and is a pretty scary guy. And I’m sure Europe definitely on edge, raising their budgets to 5% to stock those weapons as a group there in NATO. And then you’ve got China, which for now, you know, the tariffs seem to be in place. But they continue to squawk and whine and holler. Marco Rubio is going to hold his first in-person talks with his Chinese counterpart at a Malaysia summit today amid trade tension. So that hasn’t happened yet. But today, Marco Rubio will meet with his counterpart. It’s their first face-to-face talks. But here’s the big kicker. It could potentially be laying the groundwork for a future presidential summit. Will Trump go to China? Will she come to America? We’ll just have to see. But, you know, I have to bring all of this stuff up because it affects the market greatly. It affects your shopping at Walmart. It affects your portfolio. It affects your safety. in this nation. These are all very, very big occurrences happening in the world right now. OPEC sees no end in sight for the age of oil. Well, I don’t either. When I look at the cars on the road and the trucks and the ships coming into our ports, etc., etc., etc., the airport, all of the planes, all of the contrails in the sky over Charleston, There’s not going to be peak demand yet. We haven’t hit that in oil. And OPEC says that they don’t think that has happened, even though some have said, oh, it’s all over for oil. We’ve hit peak oil. No, I don’t think so. OPEC is doubling down on its view that global oil demand will keep rising through 2050. Having said that, it’s hard to invest in oil, however. It’s news-driven. You saw recently when the whole Iran thing took place, oil shot up to $75 per barrel, and then it shot right back down to the low 60s, and right now it’s in that $66 area. It’s been difficult to invest in, but I would say some of the smaller companies smaller oil producers, oil and gas producers in the U.S. I watch them on a daily basis. They’re showing some signs of life. But as far as a growth industry, 15%, 20% earnings growth per year, there’s very few stocks in the oil sector that have that kind of growth. But those are the ones that you’ve got to focus on. Big Oil has perked up a little bit. Chevron and BP and Exxon, they pay some hefty dividends. But I don’t know. I mean, I look at the returns of those stocks over the last 10 years, and it hasn’t been very good. And by the way, somebody asked me, Bill, you know that you have your app. And, of course, on the app, if you go to it on the homepage, the very first selection on the menu says, is my instructions and my commentary on how I use my app on a daily basis to narrow down the market. But, you know, I begin with track record. The track record of a stock is what they have delivered to investors over the last 10 years, five years, three years, one year. That puts it in perspective for me. If you’re going to make your initial analysis of a stock you’re looking at, look at the track record of returns that they have delivered to shareholders. We’ll be right back. This is Bill Gunderson. Thank you for tuning in to today’s Best Stocks Now, Best Inverse Funds Now show. I put several hours of research in during the wee hours of the morning each day to bring you the very best cutting-edge stories that I can. To get two free weeks of my newsletter, go to GundersonCapital.com. To talk to us about our fee-based only money management services… Call us at 855-611-BEST. Now, back to the second half of the show. We’ll be right back. Dan, welcome back here to the second half of today’s Best Stocks Now show. Well, you know, there are definitely some themes in the market this year that we just keep hammering on. You know, the whole theme with the tariffs, obviously, is probably the biggest theme in the market this year. But I would also remind you that the market hit… new all-time highs yesterday. The NASDAQ hit a new all-time high. The S&P 500 hit a new all-time high. The Dow is about 600, 700 points away from its all-time high. And, of course, you’ve got Bitcoin today hitting 17,000. So, you know, and we’ve had some very good jobs reports recently, not only in job creation. We’ve also had those initial jobless claims stay under 300,000. Of course, they did that all through the Biden administration, too, to be fair. We continue to have a robust jobs market. I see it as a supply demand issue. I think there’s a lot of demand for good workers. And there’s not a lot of supply of good workers out there, it seems. I’ve got all of them working for me, I guess. But it’s tough. You know, it’s a tough environment to get good workers right now working for you. The demand is definitely there. There’s no excuse. If someone’s out of work, there seems to be plenty of work out there. Another big theme. Big, big, big thing here in 2025, obviously AI. But the power underneath AI that it needs. The U.S. is expected to okay the Tennessee Valley Authority small nuclear reactor in 2026. Okay? So they’ve accepted an application for construction permits. from the Tennessee Valley Authority to build a small modular nuclear reactor, the first U.S. utility to seek federal approval for such a project. Now remember that acronym or those three letters, that abbreviation, SMR, Small Modular Nuclear Reactor. We’ve talked about this many, many times. They can be built much faster. Now, I would just say in previous administrations, this would have been tied up in courts for years and never gotten off the ground. I mean, look at the West Virginia liquid natural gas pipeline. That was tied up for years. Look at the one in Michigan that goes through Michigan, that pipeline. This is nuclear now. This is a step up from a liquid natural gas pipeline. But they’ve accepted the application. They expect to approve the application by the end of 2026. Okay, so that’s still over a year away. But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, with the 2026 approval, and you’ve got the Tennessee Valley authorities plan to build a 300-megawatt reactor developed by who? GE Vernova at its Clinch River site in Tennessee. So that is the first. There are currently no small reactors. modular reactors operational in the U S and only three are operating worldwide. I believe two of them are in China. The nuclear regulatory commit commission has approved only two SMR reactor designs, both of which were submitted by nuclear developer, new scale and new scale symbol. I’ve talked about new scale many times. The symbol is F M R. They’re doing a lot of work on the smaller reactor, the design. You also have Oklo, which is a competitor there. And you have others. I see ASP Isotopes is in the news today, ASPI. They’re buying out another small company. They’re trying to develop a fuel that would be much more efficient and much more quicker to make. enriched uranium than the current methodology. So there’s a lot of different plays in this nuclear area, but that’s big news. Okay, that’s the first small nuclear reactor, an application for by the Tennessee Valley Authority to build a small modular nuclear reactor in And on the receiving end of that is GE Vernova, which was spun off by CEO Larry Culp, who’s done a great job at turning GE around. The mess that the Immelt made, he has done a fantastic job at turning that thing around. Another issue here, another theme, and we saw it come to before yesterday, is Rare Earth. I saw a coal mine being approved in Wyoming. When’s the last time a coal mine? Maybe the canary in the coal mine. I don’t know. But when’s the last time a coal mine has been approved in Wyoming or anywhere? But they also think that there’s rare earth down there up in Wyoming. And we had the big news yesterday on a stock that we own in our emerging growth portfolio, MP Materials, which is Mountain Paths. Right on the border of Nevada and California. I’ve been there many, many times. I’ve eaten at that Barstow station. That is the busiest McDonald’s you’re ever going to find. They have a line like they do at the TSA, you know, where first you go left, then you go right. Like the mouse trying to find the cheese. I feel like an idiot in those TSA lines. There’s nobody ahead of me, and I’ve got to walk 100 yards in a mouse kind of line to like a stupid idiot. But, hey, that’s the times we live in, I guess. NP Materials is up another 5.5% today. It was up 53% yesterday. But I want to bring your attention to a couple of others. There’s a big player in Australia, Linus Rare Earths, which is L-Y-N-A-S. I need to add it to my app. It’s a pink sheet stock. It doesn’t have an American depository receipt. In other words, it doesn’t have a three-letter symbol. It doesn’t trade on the New York Stock Exchange. Instead, it trades on the pink sheets. L-Y-S-D-Y. L-Y-S-D-Y is the largest rare earth producer outside of China… And it soared as much as 20% to its highest level since mid-August 2022. And it’s on track for its best trading day since April of 2020 after MP Materials yesterday made a deal with the U.S. government. The Pentagon invested $50 million into MP materials, and that stock was up 53%. There’s one other one, Iluka Resources, which is I-L-K-A-F, and I will add that to the app. And I would just say to all app users out there, The first thing to look at when you enter in the symbol is look at the one year, the three year, the five year and the 10 year returns of the stock. That’s where I begin. And then I work from there. That is the track. That’s the batting average. That’s the back of the baseball card. You turn the baseball card over, and you see the last 10 years. At least you used to. I don’t know what baseball cards show anymore. They probably got so many statistics, you can’t find the batting average anymore. How do they do against right-handers? How do they do with men on base? How do they do with this and that? How do they do with windy conditions? There’s so many stats now, it’s mind-boggling. The bottom line is, The guy’s batting 312. He’s driven in 79 RBIs. He’s hit 27 home runs. I wish the Padres had a guy like that, but we don’t. We have Manny Machado. He’s okay, but he’s no Shohei Otani. Anyways, on a stock, I’ve been a baseball fan and a stats guy all my life. I just am enamored with stats. But I don’t get out into the weeds with the stats. Keep it simple. And that’s why Bill Gunderson eliminates stocks right off the bat. Verizon, sorry. Terrible returns. Johnson & Johnson, sorry. Someday the guy from Johnson & Johnson is going to call me up, the CEO, and Maybe I should be an activist investor and try to stir things up there. They have done terrible. Disney, terrible returns. Look at those returns. That’s a good start on any stock before you go any further with it. We’ll be right back. And welcome back here to the final segment of today’s Best Docs Now show. Let me give you an example of a baseball card I just pulled from my stack. It’s not a baseball card. It’s a publicly traded company by the name of ConAgra. I’ve got nothing against ConAgra. They’re a publicly traded company. You can buy shares on the New York Stock Exchange. ConAgra is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. It’s 60% owned by institutions. The website looks real fine and dandy here. I’m looking at the cover page of their website. They are the most energized and inclusive food company in the world. Well, okay, that sounds all good and dandy. And you’re probably familiar with their brands. Okay, let’s just look at a few of them. This sounds like my shopping cart at Walmart here as I look at ConAgra’s brands. Oh, there’s Slim Jim. I love those little beef sticks. Healthy Choice. I don’t put too much of that in my cart. Duncan Hines. David Sunflower Seeds. I’ve Chewed on a few of those at the Padre games. Hunt’s tomato sauce, I’m sure. Marie Callender’s, Ready Whip. You ever put Ready Whip on your pumpkin pie? How about Vlasic pickles? How about bird’s eye vegetables? How about Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn? He used to live down in Coronado. Duke Slim Jim’s, Banquet Frozen, Pam Spray. I use a little bit of that. Hebrew National. Oh, yeah, I’ve partaken of a lot of those things. Now let’s turn the baseball card over, okay? That looks pretty good on the surface. But how have you done for your shareholders over the years? And, you know, the original idea behind the Best Stocks Now app was track record. I wanted to see track record. After all, when you buy a mutual fund or, you know, or an ETF, You want to know the one year, the three year, the five year, ten year. People want to know that from me. Track record of how you’ve done over the years. Because you can’t really hide. I don’t care how inclusive you are or how good the Orville Redenbacher thing of popcorn is on a Friday night movie night or whatever. Here’s the performance of the stock. Okay. Let’s say I would have invested in it 10 years ago and just kept it there. I’ve lost two and a half percent per year. Well, that’s not good. The S and P’s done 21% per year. Keep in mind that this stock is 60% owned by institutions. That’s mutual funds, big institutions, Morgan Stanley’s of the world, uh, Merrill Lynch’s of the world institutions. I’m not an institution. I’m just a registered investment advisor that manages money for folks. You would have lost. Okay, over the last five years, it’s gone backwards by 7.7% per year. Who’s the CEO of this? How long has he had his job? Maybe it’s just a bad industry. Maybe it’s a bad sector. Maybe there’s not a big profit margin in Birdseye Peas and Slim Jim Beef Sticks. Could be. Over the last three years, you’ve lost 14% per year. Now, I can guarantee you this stock sits in many portfolios out there in America, people that are with the big institutions. If they own 60% of the stock, it’s spread out amongst their investors all over the country, all over the world. Over the last 12 months, ConAgra, C-A-G, is down 29%. I hope that illustrates my point about looking at track record first, okay? Just look at the track record. The app spells it out. Well, you say, what about the dividend? Yeah, okay, the dividend is, let’s see. Oh, you’re going to get a 7% dividend on ConAgra. That includes the dividend yield, okay? Those returns include the dividend yield. So I’m sure some dividend hog out there is saying, how can you pass up ConAgra at a 7.5% dividend yield easily? The stock has lost 2.5% per year. If you just average that out, compound annual growth, over the last 10 years, and the chart is hitting new lows, okay? That’s as opposed to many charts that are hitting new highs. The market hit a new high. ConAgra can’t really blame the stock market. It can’t really blame tariffs. It’s all it can do is look at itself in the mirror and say, we performed terribly for our investors over the last 1, 3, 5, and 10 years. Okay, a couple other stories, and then I got to go. I’ve got a newsletter to write this weekend. And all of these stocks I talked about this past week, I’m going to do a few more here before we run out of time, are in the newsletter. My 12-month price target on the S&P 500 will be in the newsletter. Once again, I’ve been a bull since 2009 because earnings have been going up since 2009. There’s been some times along the way where I’ve been cautious, no question about it, But earnings have been going up. You see the chart I print in the newsletter every single week. It’s a bar chart. That’s the second place you look after you look at a company’s track record is the market and the earnings picture for the market because that’s the macro picture. And you’ll see that we’re going to have record earnings this year and record earnings next year. Now, you might not realize it. Maybe you’re sipping on your morning coffee. Does it come from Brazil? Well, companies that buy a lot of Brazilian coffee, there’s now a 50% tariff threat against them. Dutch Brothers gets 50% of their coffee from Brazil. I don’t know where Starbucks is, but I’m sure there’s quite a bit of that. But you’ve got to realize that the news on tariffs goes right down to the coffee in your mug today. Drone stocks fly higher as Hegseth reportedly orders production ramp. And, of course, we own AeroVironment, AVAV. A couple other players there, Red Cat on fire today, RCAT, and Kratos, K-T-O-S. One last one. Three days ago, the number one stock in my app was Flutter. Flutter is a sports gambling stock. They’re in a deal to buy Boyd Gaming’s 5% stake in FanDuel.com. That looks like a win-win situation to me. We continue to hold water. Okay, to set up an appointment with us, make the switch away from the Wall Street institutions that own soggy stocks like ConAgra and others like it. Just look at the track record of the stocks that you own in your portfolio. Please, be yourself a favor. You get four weeks to the app for free at GundersenCapital.com. You can look up all your stocks. Look them up. Give them a grade. How have they done? To set up an appointment with us, 855-611-BEST. 855-611-BEST. Have a great day, everybody.
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This show is not a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. Bill Gunderson or clients of Gunderson Capital Management may have long or short positions in stocks mentioned during the show. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Gunderson Capital Management is a fee-based registered investment advisory firm. All accounts are held at Charles Schwab. Schwab is a member of SIBC and FINRA.
