Join Bill Gundersen and Barry Kite as they explore the financial market’s current state and emerging trends in this edition of the Best Stocks Now show. With major indexes hitting highs and gold surpassing $4,000 for the first time, listeners gain insights into the precarious speculative phase of the market. As asset classes surge and government shutdowns are overlooked, the experts analyze potential impacts on investors. Highlighting the influence of prominent financial figures like Paul Tudor Jones and Ken Griffin, the episode draws comparisons to past market bubbles and considers contemporary tools and investment strategies that address modern complexities.
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.
SPEAKER 06 :
And welcome to the Tuesday, October 7th edition of the Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management, a nationwide fee-based only registered investment advisory firm. I’m here with Barry Kite, our chartered financial analyst. And we have a mixed open so far to the market, but we have two records being set here today, actually three records. We have number one, we have the NASDAQ hitting a new all-time high. It’s up 26 points right now. AMD is pushing it higher. AMD is up 6.6% again today. The NASDAQ is now 22,967, just a shade away from 23,000. The S&P is also hitting a new all-time high today. It’s up three points today. The 6,743, the Dow is the only major index not hitting a new high. It’s down 26 points to 46,668. Gold is topping $4,000 per ounce for the first time in its history. And gold is up 65 basis points to $4,002 per ounce. Bitcoin is down a little bit today. Bitcoin is down $1,500 to $123.549. And that all-important 10-year is down one basis point to $4.16 today. So welcome to today’s Best Docs Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunnarsson, President Of Gundersen Capital Management, and I’m here with Barry Kite, our chartered financial analyst and certified financial planner. New highs across the board yesterday. In lots of asset classes. In lots of asset classes. We’re in a very speculative phase of the market right now. You have to be aware of that. Because the last time we were in a speculative phase like this was the sugar high of 2021. And I saw today Ken Griffin, who is one of the biggest hedge fund managers around Citadel Funds, which moved out of New York and is down in Miami now. He used the same expression I used, sugar high. Sugar high, yeah. So, hey, you know what? How long will the sugar high? That’s all I know is when the sugar high wears off, look out below because we’re in some pretty rarefied air right now. The only thing that, you know, the good thing going for us is the Fed is in an easing cycle and not a tightening cycle like it was in the sugar high of 2021. So anyways, that’s where we sit right now. And of course, crypto. Bitcoin hit a new high yesterday to 125,317. And yesterday, a lot of sugar was infused into the market with the AMD deal, which Wedbush is calling a game changer. Okay. AMD jumps on a deal with OpenAI. And you also had OpenAI had their investor day yesterday. And, I mean, I think what I read is investors will come away from that giddy. about all of the irons in the fire that private company OpenAI has right now. We’ll talk about that here in a minute. And, of course, we still have the government shutdown. No one seems to notice. Not if the market’s hitting new highs. Who cares? Why don’t you guys just take the rest of the year off? It seems to be what the market is saying. But… Something has to happen because I know this, on October the 15th, eight days from now, guess who gets their paychecks, Barry? Our military, you know, members of our military. And if they don’t get those paychecks… That’s not going to look good for the Democrats or the Republicans. So I would guess… Yeah, that doesn’t look good for America.
SPEAKER 07 :
No.
SPEAKER 06 :
Sorry.
SPEAKER 07 :
They’re the ones that keep us America.
SPEAKER 06 :
Sorry, your paycheck bounced. Yeah, so I think they’re going to get something done. The key sticking point right now is the Democrats are opposed to the Republicans’ plans not to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, which basically the government is subsidizing big time, you know, the lower end of the spectrum, and the Affordable Care Act, which increases everybody else’s premiums big time. And the Republicans want to scale that back. If that were to happen… And if they did not extend the affordable care tax credits for 2026, many individuals who obtain their health coverage through state insurance exchanges are likely to face drastically higher premiums without the subsidies. In other words, they’d have to pay what we’re paying, right, what the regular guy is paying for his premiums. which, you know, obviously we’re paying and subsidizing a lot of those people down in that category. Whether you’re for or against that, we’re paying, regular people are paying a much higher premium than the ones that are getting their health coverage through the state insurance exchanges. So that is the sticking point, and Trump is willing to talk about on that point. And once again, you know, you have this October 15th hard deadline where you’re going to have payroll due to all of our military around the world. So hopefully something can get done, hopefully a compromise. And, you know, I mean, the Democrats are dug in, their heels are dug in on that issue. The Republicans are dug in on their side of the issue, and Trump’s willing to mediate and figure out something in the middle that will make each side happy. That relentless rally in gold is just incredible. It scaled another record high on Tuesday. We’re hitting 4,002. I can remember not that long ago, Barry, it was stuck at $1,800 to $1,900 for the longest period of time. I have a little physical gold. Most of mine was bought in the $1,800 to $1,900 range. So, you know, you’ve got a double in your gold holdings. It just seems like all asset classes are very much inflated right now. Goldman is lifting their 2026 target to $4,900. I don’t know how you predict. It’s like predicting where Bitcoin will go. But that is what Goldman is saying, $4,900. Whether it’s market uncertainty, whether it’s just the sugar high, there’s this move to gold like it’s the safest haven out there.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, and it’s funny because, I mean, For five years, if you look at the 10-year chart, for essentially five years, like you said, from basically part of 2015 all the way to really 2020, July of 2020, it was literally in the 1,000 to 2,000 range. Yes, exactly.
SPEAKER 06 :
So anyways, you know, look, a lot of people are feeling pretty good these days with their Bitcoin holdings, with their AI holdings, with their rare earth holdings, with their nuclear, with their quantum computing holdings, their gold, you name it. And there’s a lot of bubbles that have formed all over the markets right now. Citadel’s Ken Griffin, who’s a pretty smart guy. a very smart guy, warned that investors are starting to consider gold as a safer asset than the dollar, calling the trend really concerning. He says we’re seeing substantial asset inflation away from the dollar as people look to de-dollarize or de-risk their portfolios against U.S. sovereign risk, which is all the debt that we have. Griffin said this in a Monday interview with Bloomberg. I’m going to go find that interview and listen to it. That would be very interesting. Gold is surpassing the $4,000 level for the first time in its history today. Helped by safe haven demand. Safe haven demand. A drop in the yen. uncertainty from the ongoing federal government shutdown, well, that’s a temporary thing, expectations of potential rate cuts, and broader concerns about inflation and dollar weakness. This year, investors have flocked to gold. Silver is almost at a new high. It’s $47 and change per ounce. It’s just like 25 cents away from its all-time high. And, of course, they’re flocking to Bitcoin and what’s been dubbed the debasement trade. The debasement trade. I use the same language in the U.S. economy right now. I couldn’t agree more. We’ll be right back. We’ll be right back. And welcome back here to the second quarter of today’s Best Docs Now show. Two other experts weighing in here that I pay attention to myself. Of course, we had Warren Buffett yesterday saying that his valuation gauge hit an all-time high. where the market cap of the market is now two times the annual GDP, gross domestic product of the entire country. And that is the highest that that gauge has ever hit. Paul Tudor Jones is another one that I give a lot of credence to, Barry. He says it feels like 1999. I said the same thing in my newsletter on Friday. Because that’s all you’ve got to do is look at the valuation measures that are in the market today. And the first place you look is the 2021 sugar high. from all the stimulus in the market, but the Fed really brought that party to an end with the 475 basis point hikes. Then before that, you go back to the year 2000, and I’m grateful for that experience to have been there in the year 2000. If you weren’t there, I can tell you what happened. The NASDAQ doubled. between October 1999 and March of 2000. Six months. And Barry, I remember my ultra growth portfolio in the last 90 days of 1999 was up 142% in one quarter. And I still remember that Iomega was one of the biggest stocks of all time. It was a disruptive technology at the time. You could use those iOmega memory, big clunky things that sat on your desk as a boat anchor now. I mean, they’re totally useless. But it was a huge, huge breakthrough. And the NASDAQ doubled in six months. So he says, when he compares today with then, he says, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably not a chicken. And he says that current market conditions feel like it’s 1999. According to Paul Tudor Jones, Tudor Investment Corporation founder and CIO, during a CNBC interview, Tudor Jones said that while the comparison to the dot-com bubble period wasn’t made lightly, All the ingredients are in place for a similar market environment. I’m not saying this is going to happen again, but we’re setting ourselves up. In March of 2000, the NASDAQ topped at $5,300. It then went down 79%. The index, okay, so that means individual stocks within the index, many went to zero, or pennies, they became penny stocks. But there was a difference back then. We didn’t have the profit margins that we have now. We didn’t have the sales growth that we have now. We didn’t have the products that we have now. But the valuations are the same. The valuations, price to cash flow, price to sales to me is especially concerning. We’re hitting an all-time high in price to sales ratio. I think we’re at 5.4 right now, and I think we only got as high. We never even got close to 5 back then. And, yes, you could say sales are different now and things are different today. But I’m just telling you, I’m reading what Paul Tudor Jones is saying. He said investors should position themselves as if it’s October 1999. Well, I can tell you in October 1999, that was a time to be all in, okay, because the market doubled from there. Now, is the NASDAQ going to go to 4,600 from here? It’s currently at 2,300. Well, that’s what happened from October 1999 to March. But it was after that when it went down some 79%. He added that unlike, however, 1999 when the Federal Reserve was implementing rate hikes, today’s market is anticipating rate cuts. So it’s almost as if he’s saying that we’re going to see this bubble expand more like it did in 1999. And it continues to expand, right, on a daily basis. But in 1999 and 2000, here’s another huge difference. We had a budget surplus in the U.S. And what do we have now? How much in debt are we? $33 trillion? $33 something.
SPEAKER 07 :
I go with 30-something now.
SPEAKER 06 :
To me, there’s the big differentiator between then and now, which is much worse. And I think that’s why you’re seeing this massive move into gold. Comparing leverage metrics between now and 1999, Jones notes that current levels might actually be higher than those preceding the dot-com bubble when factoring in leveraged ETFs, which we have now. alongside traditional margin debt. So the debt is extremely high. And what are they saying?
SPEAKER 07 :
And the bets are higher. That’s the thing. Yes, they’re leveraged. Think about a two-times NVIDIA ETF, for example. Most investors couldn’t have even purchased that. Most of them couldn’t even have margined and bought NVIDIA 15, 20 years ago. The difference is we can all go on right now with no margin agreement. and buy a two-times ETF single stock. You were talking about single stock ETFs yesterday.
SPEAKER 06 :
Those things have really grown. I can’t believe this other one. Of course, we are familiar with GraniteShares, which really started the whole thing. But now there’s an even bigger one that has a lot of stocks in it that are leveraged. And I’m going to have to add them to the app and create my own sector in the app of leveraged single-stock ETFs, which sounds like an oxymoron. It completely goes against the whole concept of ETFs to begin with, where you don’t have single-stock risk. No, you’re not taking single stock risk. You’re taking double stock single stock risk and triple in some cases. All right. And here’s where their warning to not touch with a 10-foot pole is debt. And I could not agree more. Now, I don’t have a problem with single individual bonds investment grade on good companies. But this private debt that they’re pawning on Wall Street, which I’ve been warning about, that’s the hottest alternative asset class out there. That and private companies, private equity companies. Man, private debt, I wouldn’t touch that with a 10th, oh my gosh, it’s radioactive. But, you know, they’re packaging it on Wall Street and putting a nice label on it and raising money and people are pouring money into it to get a piece of private debt. Ray Dalio, who just spoke this morning, he said this is reminiscent of the mid-70s when he’s recommending a 15% exposure to gold and avoiding these debt instruments, which would include bond funds and, in my mind, private debt. Oh, that’s just toxic. Anyways, Ray Dalio agreeing with what I’ve been saying. 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.
SPEAKER 05 :
And welcome back here to the second half of today’s Best Docs Now show. Well, I can say one thing, Barry.
SPEAKER 06 :
I didn’t have the tools available to me back in the year 2000 that we have now. Because, you know, a lot of those individual stocks that are now represent an ETF and they’re leveraged, they have an inverse version of them also. And, you know, there’s a lot of – I didn’t realize that a lot of the little speculative stocks now are caught up in that whole leveraged ETF stuff. It’s not just – You know, it’s not just the great big stocks like Tesla and AMD, etc. Of course, AMDL was up almost 50% yesterday because it’s double AMD to the upside. But they’re getting down with those things into the smaller stocks, speculative type stocks, which could be very interesting. So I have so many more tools at my fingertips today, if needed. It’s just nice to know they’re there. Emergency preparedness, we call it. Just in case, you know, you could just see it. That was going to happen back in the year 2000 that we were way, way too high. But we didn’t have the tools. That’s all you had back then was cash.
SPEAKER 07 :
No, I mean, even in 08-09, those inverse ETFs, they were around, and you’ve talked about them. But the problem is with those, they weren’t designed to be held even overnight. It was like, you know, if you held them overnight, then they would quit tracking the index appropriately. And so, you know, there’s certainly different market tools.
SPEAKER 06 :
Now they’re much more sophisticated, and they do track. And there’s a plethora of them available in order to hedge a portfolio. And I’m just thinking. When debt starts to blow up, especially that private debt and everything, there’s inverse against junk bonds, high yield. HYG, I think, is that one. That could come in very handy at some point in time. Now, when the Fed went on… I still like SARC. I think SARC is almost, you know, look, it’s going to… She’s going to blow up at some point in time. She’s blown up every single time in the past. Why not this time? Because she’s even more out there on the frontier than ever. The only thing she has going for her is an easing rate cycle. Okay, speaking of bubbles, how about Trilogy Metals today? This is the latest one, TMQ. TMQ is a rare earth stock that is up 217%. It’s a triple. Yes, it is. This is a mining company in Alaska. They wanted to build the road up there to it. to extract the rare earth that they thought was there, and the Biden administration shut it down. He blocked the Ambler Road project in Alaska. Well, Trump administration reversed a Biden block and announced a $35 million investment to support mining exploration, making the U.S. government a 10% shareholder. with warrants for an additional 7.5% stake. The 211 mile Ambler Road will improve access to copper, cobalt, Gallium, germanium, and other minerals. And of course, gallium and germanium are both rare earth minerals. I’m familiar with cobalt. As an oil painting artist, we use cobalt blue, which is a beautiful, oh, just a beautiful blue. to mix with a little white to make sky color. We’ve got to add a little orange to bring it down to make it look real. That neutralizes the blue a little bit. The Biden administration had rejected the project, citing environmental concerns. So anyways, Trilogy Metal, TMQ, the stock of the day. It seems like there’s one every day. Okay, now let’s go back. You said bubble. I was about to pull up Colgate Palmolive over here. Yes, exactly. You know, Bubblicious? Do they make Bubblicious chewing gum?
SPEAKER 07 :
I think they make Dawn, you know, Palmolive dish soap.
SPEAKER 06 :
A lot of bubbles in that. Yeah. There’s more bubbles today than in dish soap. AMD rating, quant still sees by, but SA analysts are on hold. Well, the one that holds more weight than all of them to me, Jefferies, upgrades AMD and raises their target price to $300 from $170. Wow. Okay, so AMD today is 214. It’s up another 5%. And the Jeffries analyst wakes up, or yesterday after he sees the deal, says, hey, we’ve got our target price at 170. It’s 214. We better revisit it. He saw enough there. In potential earnings, AMD is looking for $6 per share in earnings next year from 385 this year. And when he did the math, I have not upgraded my target price yet. I’ve got to go in there today. and check where my growth rate is because it takes a while for the consensus growth rate to catch up. So I have to overwrite those consensus growth rates from time to time. Jefferies obviously did that, and they come up with 300. If that’s the case, you know, at 215, it’s still a pretty good buy. according to jeffries okay uh and i saw another one i had to be wedbush saying that you know what this this is a game changer uh this deal that they made with open ai which is all the buzz in uh silicon valley these days barry we should have went to their investor meeting yesterday It’s like the gospel of artificial intelligence there in that Silicon Valley. They’re basically worshiping NVIDIA chips and chat GPT and getting all their answers from it. So that’s OpenAI’s Developer Day. Wow’s Wall Street with partnerships and more. Bank of America analyst Justin Post said the revelation that chat GTP now has 800 million weekly users, up from 700 million in August and 400 million in February, is a sign, a lot of religious lingo being thrown around here, that OpenAI is expanding its ecosystem at a rapid clip. Now having said that, I’ll just give you an interesting interview to listen to. You know, it was the Tucker Carlson interview with Besant, who’s now the commissioner of the IRS, although he just hired a CEO over the IRS. Tucker Carlson had that interview when the S&P was at 4,800. And to me, it was like an aha moment. I realized what they were doing, and I said, this is going to work. And you can’t argue that it’s not working. every asset class is hitting an all-time high since then and uh… our trade deficit is dropping okay i listen to another interview uh… tucker carlson had a guy on i don’t remember his name he’s kind of an ordinary guy really is a filmmaker But he was making a film on the occult and rock and roll music when he realized that the Silicon Valley and this OpenAI has the same kind of cult-like relationship. So very interesting interview. Whether you believe in it or not, it’s something to weigh in your mind. But he’s calling OpenAI the Antichrist. So anyways, if you get a chance, listen to Tucker Carlson’s interview. What’s his name, Greg? Conrad Flynn, that’s it. And he’s making a movie called The Flynn Something. But I just found that interview, it’s about an hour and a half long. I just found it to be kind of jaw-dropping, really. So anyways, OpenAI. Of course, you know, Sam Altman is the leader of OpenAI, which is going to probably come public at a trillion dollars at some point in time. It’s just unbelievable. And the money flowing into Bitcoin ETFs these days, Barry, the second highest inflows since their launch amid crypto rally.
SPEAKER 07 :
I saw something where they’ve got the most options, so the most open interest options on the call side, you know, I think ever in terms of for Bitcoin. And I think, you know, kind of going around, I don’t know, 140 grand, 147 grand in terms of the call prices, so. Pretty interesting just in terms of the amount of optimism and the amount of money getting put to work there.
SPEAKER 06 :
Unbelievable. And, of course, it has to come from other asset classes like CDs in the bank and even bonds and even stocks. It’s being sucked up by crypto. And let’s not forget the energy that all of this needs to stay alive. We’ve got to feed the beast, I guess. We’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 04 :
We’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 06 :
And welcome back here to the final segment of today’s Best Stocks Now show. Amcor soars 12% after increasing Arizona investment plan to $7 billion. breaks ground at a new chip campus. Okay, I guess you could say that there’s a lot of stuff being built in the U.S. here these days. And a lot in Arizona.
SPEAKER 07 :
I was looking at, saw some map of different states that are in, you know, contraction economically and ones that are in expansion or ones that are just kind of fledgling along. And Arizona was one of the ones that was Certainly in expansion mode and building tons of data centers and other things.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes, and don’t forget we’re getting Rolls-Royce here in Aiken, South Carolina. Yeah, we were in expansion. Yes, and I’ll tell you one other thing about this foundry, which Amcor is a chip company. The Trump administration asked Taiwan Semiconductor, if they would build half of their chips here in the U.S. And they flatly said, no thanks. I mean, they’re making their chips in Taiwan.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, they also need it. So, I mean, to me, you know, they’re using that as a carrot for, you know, hopefully some protection for the rest of the world to join them in case China does invade because, hey, you’ve got to help me. We need these chips, right?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, and that’s my thought here. You know, I’m a guy that absorbs a lot. I listen to a lot, and I’m like a sponge. I also listened to an interview with – Ah, let’s see. Oh, I got it. I’ll pull it up. The guy who they took over for Rush Limbaugh. Yeah, Clay Travis and Buck Sexton. Okay, Buck Sexton went to Taiwan. He just got back from Taiwan. And he interviewed the president of Taiwan. It’s on YouTube. It’s about 16 minutes. Definitely, if you get a chance, listen to that. Because he, talking about China… and how they are increasing exponentially their dominance, not just around Taiwan, but they’ve been buzzing Japan and that whole Southeast Asia area. They now have the biggest Navy in the world. And Buck Sexton asked the president, if you could tell Mr. Trump one thing, he said, I’d tell Mr. Trump that China, you better be careful. You better be aware of what they are up to over there and how. Big, they are big. You know, we sound like we’re talking all negative here today. I’m just a guy that listens and tells you what I’ve heard, lets you digest it, lets you mull it over yourself. But these things are happening. In the world, and we really don’t get it. If you’re watching the major news channels and whatnot, you got to dig a little bit deeper than just the headlines. But yeah, I mean, he’s pretty worried about Taiwan. It didn’t sound like anything was imminent. But just think what an invasion of Taiwan by China would do to the global economy and, you know, to technology. When we couldn’t get semiconductors during COVID, remember that? And they couldn’t build cars. These were low-end semiconductors. Couldn’t get baby formula. I mean, come on.
SPEAKER 07 :
I mean, let alone chips.
SPEAKER 06 :
So anyways, look, I think part of risk management is knowledge. And the more knowledge that you can soak up and absorb and mull through your brain, not through an NVIDIA Blackwell chip, but through a human brain. And they’re saying, you know, that’s the one thing that AI cannot mimic, which is human emotion. And human, I guess you would say, intuition. It can’t mimic that.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, or even human irrationality, right? Yes. We always hear about in finance, right, it was the efficient market hypothesis, right? All investors are rational.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, one thing we know is that they’re all not rational. No, and the markets are not efficient. And, you know, some areas of the market are more inefficient, right? than others so yeah and it’s everything out there in the market is known in the price of the stock okay it wasn’t known about amd was it it was up 25 and one day yesterday all of a sudden there was a repricing of amd so anyways uh you know that’s all it’s an interesting world that we live in And I think the more informed we are, the better the choices and decisions that we can make.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, just the amount of news sources that you view when you wake up in the morning, right? You’re not just taking it from one fire hose, right? You’re equal opportunity across the globe to see what’s going on.
SPEAKER 06 :
Several of the talk shows, the interviews, YouTube are all sources that are deeper. I’m not a big ex-Twitter guy myself, but I do know that Buck Sexton’s interview, he sounds like a sharp guy. The president of Taiwan is a very, very intelligent man. And Sexton’s interview is on X, if you want to listen to it. And, of course, the late Charlie Kirk. I used to listen to him, too, a lot. But Tucker Carlson, his interview with this Flynn guy, And AI, it is absolutely riveting. And it’s an hour and a half. It’s definitely worth the time. I use TuneIn Radio. TuneIn Radio has all the talk shows out there. And I could choose any one that I want. I’ll listen to several in a day. My wife will listen to a couple that I don’t. She has her favorites. One of them is not Best Docs Now, by the way. She says, I hear enough of you at the dinner table and all around the house and everything like that. She has other favorite talk shows. Anyways, we’re out of time. I’ve got to quit talking. This is becoming a talk show. But I think this is really important, really, really vital. Valuation, bubbles, AI, and everything that’s going on in the world, China, etc. Very important knowledge to mull over in your brain at this time in our history. Well, if you’d like to set up an appointment with us, we don’t stay the course with the 60-40 asset allocation, nor do we have one to begin with. We take into account things that happen in the world besides you becoming one year older and needing 1% more in bond funds and 1% less in stock funds. I think that’s too simplistic of a way to invest. To make an appointment with us, 855-611-BEST to get a four-week trial through our newsletter at GundersenCapital.com, GundersenCapital.com. Have a great day, everybody, and stay informed.
SPEAKER 02 :
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 SIPC and FINRA.
