Join us for another insightful episode with professional money manager Bill Gunderson as we unravel the complexities of today’s financial markets. From the latest developments in the bond market to the ongoing trade tension with China, we’ve got you covered. Understand the significance of recent shifts in interest rates and their effects on industries from housing to tech. Will the recent optimism surrounding a government shutdown resolution hold? Tune in to find out.
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 03 :
And welcome to the Tuesday, October 21st, 2025 Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson. President of Gundersen Capital Management, a fee-based only nationwide firm. And I’m here with Barry Kite, our chartered financial analyst and certified financial planner. Well, we’ve got a mixed market today with a little bit of a negative tone, I would say, after some near records yesterday in the market. The Dow is up 73 points, 46,780. It’s starting to run into its old high that it hit about a week ago or so. We call that resistance. The NASDAQ is down 71 today, so a little bit of risk off. 22,919, however, just a shade from 23,000, and it’s all-time high. The S&P is down 7.77%. The 6727, a lot of sevens in there. That’s your number for the day. The S&P is at 6027, and it did hit an all-time record just a few days ago. The bond market is pretty favorable today. We’re at 3.96%. Gold is down about 70 basis points after its record-setting run. And Bitcoin investors are starting to chew their fingernails a little bit. It’s down again today to 108.789. So welcome to today’s Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson. I’m here with Barry Kite. We had a pretty good day in the market yesterday. I would call it kind of that momentum type of activity in the market. There it is right there. Let me get to my little scorecard from yesterday. We had some new highs yesterday. We had a new high in the Russell 2000. That’s the small cap index. The Russell 2000 hit $2,499 yesterday. And it finally came to play, I guess. Yes. But overall, it’s really a weak asset class. I think it’s up maybe 9% or 10% on the year. And as you analyze that, Russell, 2,000, you could throw out about 1,950 of those stocks because they’re very low quality. But it did hit a new high, as did gold yesterday. Gold hit 4,334. My best guess as to why gold is hitting new highs, there’s a lot of cash floating around out there in the market. It seems to be the ultimate hedge against tariffs, against trade wars, against Russian aggression and other things. China, standoff with the U.S., etc. And it’s certainly kind of proving itself as the ultimate safe haven right now, Barry. And I do know that China’s buying a lot, Russia’s buying a lot of gold, so there’s more buying than selling. That’s the simple answer that you’ll hear. The other thing that caught my eye yesterday is the two-year is starting to go down. The 10 years at 3.95, the two-year went down to 3.44 yesterday. That’s the lowest it’s been in a long time. What’s the significance, Mr. CFA, of us finally seeing the two-year going down?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, what you would normally see, I mean, you would think eventually you’ve got a flattening of the curve, right? So your normal interest rate should be an upward sloping curve, right, in terms of… the short-term rate should be less than the long-term rate. Absolutely. If you’re going to borrow some money today, the rate should be less than if you were going to wind it out 10 years from now. And that’s good for the housing market right now which needs a little boost with lower interest rates yeah and lower interest rates across the board i mean the main thing you know a lot of interest rates are pinned in some form or fashion to the 10-year rate and so that rate has come down it just was also surprising that we’ve got uh you know that you’ve had the two-year rate also You know, kind of come down along with it. So you’ve almost had a whole reshaping of the yield curve.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, I think we have an excellent Treasury Secretary in Mr. Besant from Charleston, South Carolina, and I think he’s done a wonderful job. You can look at the trend of the bond market. Since January of this year when Trump took office, it has been a very solid year for the bond market. And I think Scott Besson, who knows a thing or two about the markets, he comes from that industry. He was very good at what he did.
SPEAKER 04 :
I mean, we’ve got a 10-year under 4. I mean, it’s at 3.96, the two years at 3.45. Yes. And so, you know, all down the curve, I mean, you’ve had lower rates across the board. You know, it’ll be interesting to see where, you know, kind of some of the mortgage rates end up falling in line now that we’ve got a sub-4 10-year somewhat.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, okay, with the elephant in the room, one of them continues to be the trade war with China. And Trump’s top three priorities in this order, number one, rare earth, number two, soybeans. You know, you’ve got to talk. You’ve got to get a resolution on soybeans and fentanyl. Those are the three. He says, I don’t want them to play the rare earth game with us, but I don’t see any way around that. And he’s pushing them to restart their purchase of soybeans. And I’m sure for China it’s that access to the semiconductors, the advanced semiconductors, which Jensen Wang would love to sell his Blackwell chips, which can be made in the U.S. in a pinch over there in Arizona. And they will be meeting later this month. And there is some optimism there that things can work out. And we heard yesterday from Kevin Hassett that maybe this shutdown will end this week. Okay, I’m sure there’s a lot of people that would be happy to see the government shut down. and get it back up and running, and there’s a little optimism around that right now. You’ve got a new leader in Japan who seems pretty business-oriented, and there’s a big rally going on in Japan. And also we’re seeing stock surge in China today. with kind of an easing, a little bit of an easing of the tensions. Now, here’s the news item that makes me madder than anything. Any of the articles I’ve read today, this just makes no sense at all. The EU agrees to phase out Russian gas imports by January 1st. 2028, Barry. On the one hand, they’re after Putin for what he’s doing to Ukraine. They’re sending weapons. They’re threatening Russia. And on the other hand, they’re buying his oil. How ridiculous is that? And, of course, with an economy in Russia that is 80% oil-driven… Europe is basically funding a big chunk of his war. Why in the heck would they not say, we’re done buying Russian oil now, but maybe by 2028, Barry, will we still be alive? 2028, that’s quite a ways out. We don’t even have earnings estimates yet for 2028. We have 2027 and 2026. Oil drifts to a new five-month low. I paid $2.93 in Charleston. And, in fact, the average gas price in the U.S. falls below $3 a gallon on average following OPEC.
SPEAKER 04 :
I want to know if we’re doing any kind of refilling of the Strategic Oil Reserve. Remember how they said how long it would take to refill it?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I think it’s better that they don’t let us know. I think it’s better that they keep that a national secret. Probably. Otherwise, you’d get a run on oil and drive prices up. I got to believe that they’re refilling. Of course, President Biden drained it to bring oil prices down. And it is the strategic oil reserve in a pinch. A pinch is not driving oil prices down. But that’s how he treated it. And I got to believe in the background that they’re refilling it. But we’re not hearing anything about that. Gold prices, you know, it’s parabolic right now. If somebody asked me, would you buy gold right now? No, I would not buy gold right now. You have a parabolic chart right now, which you can easily see in a one-year chart of gold. And we still have a fairly good exposure to gold. I wish we had more. This has been the year for gold. It’s the number one asset class out there. Actually, silver is number one and gold is number two. And I would say this before we go to break. In my newsletter on Friday, the headline was, Is Bitcoin in Trouble? And as I was in Florida last week, I talked to a lot of Bitcoin fans and big investors in Bitcoin, decided to write an article about it. And those technicals on Bitcoin do not look very good to me. We’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 07 :
I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 03 :
And welcome back here to the second quarter of today’s Best Stocks Now. So what have we learned about Bitcoin this year? And I’m on record, and I think you know, I won’t buy it for clients. They can do whatever they want, you know, on their own dime and play around with Bitcoin. There is some buying coming into Bitcoin right now. It was down almost 3,000. Now it’s down to 684. But it began the year in that $100,000 area, and it had a hard time getting through that. And we learned how it handles periods of market duress, you know, when the trade war began and the S&P 500 started reeling. and went down to $4,800. We had a 20% sell-off in the S&P during that period of time. And then I wrote that article on April the 8th, the bottom of the market, and I said, I think the tariffs are going to work and the market’s going to come back. And it has, and then some, obviously. But Bitcoin did not hold up very well during market duress, Barry. It went down from $103,000 down to $74,000. So I don’t see it behaving as a safe harbor like gold did, okay? Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
I mean, the only thing, if you look for Bitcoin in terms of if you want to find something that it’s been correlated to, right, probably the closest thing it’s been correlated to is as the dollar goes down, Bitcoin has performed kind of as a decent hedge against a dollar that’s weakening. But other than that, gold also benefits from that. And above that, you’ve had just natural demand from gold. Central banks buying gold, also gold kind of acting as a safe haven during any kind of tariff threat or malfunction, right? Yes. It’s just worked better as an actual hedge.
SPEAKER 03 :
And Bitcoin has worked very well in a rollicking good market where everybody is having a good time. In a risk-on market. The animal spirit is out there. Yes. Okay. Now, all right. Now, I’m just looking at it. It is down from 125. As of Friday, it was down 14.7% from its all-time high. 15% is considered a correction. 20% is considered a bear market. I think it’s vulnerable down to $100,000, just looking at the chart. And I think $100,000 should give it really good support. But if it were to break $100,000, I’d… I’d start getting really nervous, right? My left eye would start to twitch. My right eye would… I don’t have any. I have a little short position and an inverse ETF during this correction here. But I think $100,000 would be the real test. I think it would really test the investors out there who think it’s easy money, and all of a sudden they’ve seen that easy money getting whittled away. It’s at $110,570 right now. So in my opinion right now, it’s a hold. And if you’re a big Bitcoin aficionado and holder, I’d wait for a cheaper entry point. I think it could get down to $100,000 myself. But anyways, it’s fun to watch.
SPEAKER 04 :
I think we hit around $126, I think has been this top.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, that’s the high.
SPEAKER 04 :
Just hit it in like a week and a half or two weeks ago, by the way.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. Okay, earnings, earnings, earnings. That’s what drives the stock market. Today we’ve already had Coca-Cola. Netflix is going to report, I believe, after the market today. That’s one of our holdings. We’ve also, GE had a nice report. And then a lot of soggy stocks have reported. And I’m just going to go over their long-term returns of 3M today. which I consider to be soggy, stodgy old growth giant of yesteryear. GM is in that soggy category. You’ve got Philip Morris, it’s reported, PM. You’re going to get Texas Instruments. We’ve had Halliburton. And then tomorrow is Tesla. Oh, boy. I can hardly wait for Tesla to report. It is one of the big reports. And then sogginess in the afternoon, AT&T, IBM, Lamb Research, a pretty good company, Alcoa, a few others. And then on Thursday, we’ll get an update from Intel. on their turnaround efforts. Ford Motor, soggy. Freeport-McMoran, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Honeywell, Union Pacific. We’ll call it Soggy Thursday. Baker Hughes, Alaska Air, Tractor Supply. Friday we get one of the kings of sogginess. Procter & Gamble will report. And so that’s the earnings week. By the end of the week, we’ll have, I want to say, 37 S&P 500 companies. And we’ll have about 20% of the earnings reports in. And I always give an update every week in my newsletter. Okay, on the nuclear front. EOS, you can put this one now on the outskirts of town in that nuclear sector. E-O-S-E surges on a deal with Talon Energy, which we own, to power Pennsylvania data centers. And, you know, that’s all the buzz is how much these data centers, how much electricity that they need. A windmill on top of the data center is not going to do much, and solar panels all over the data center aren’t going to do much, would hardly touch it with the air conditioning and the chip power that’s needed. So let’s just take a look at EOS here today. I didn’t have EOS on my radar. Tal and I definitely do. It’s one of the major players in nuclear. And right now you’ve got a look at a chart of EOS here. E-O-S-E. Oh, yeah, that’s a pretty good chart. It’s up 13.1% today. It’s a small cap, $4.4 billion. Headquartered in Edison, New Jersey. How do you think he got the name Edison, Barry? I wonder how. I think that’s where one of his labs was or something like that. Did he ever know that nuclear energy would be… Something to do with some electricity. Yes, I think so. But Eos, anyways, is now all of a sudden a player. And I’m looking at their sales were up 999% this past quarter. The quarter before that they were up 58%. And all of a sudden you have a stock chart that is starting to launch. EOSE up 13.2%. Now we’ll look at Talon, which is a much bigger one, much bigger player in the nuclear, which I’m a big believer in because they want their power. They can’t live without their AI. Talon’s been a little weak lately. It’s in a little bit of a correction. Talon is down 3.2% today, but a major player. In nuclear. Okay, what else do we got? Oh, I love to talk about rare earth. We’ll save that for when we come back. It’s always fun to look at these rare earth stocks. You’ve got three more started at Outperform at Blair with room to run higher. All about rare earth. 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 06 :
Call out the instigator because there’s something in the air.
SPEAKER 03 :
And welcome back here to the second half of today’s Best Stocks Now show. Gold is under pretty heavy pressure today. Gold ETF that we own is down 5.8% today. And you’re also seeing a little bit of selling pressure in the nuclear stocks. And in the AI stocks, Amazon is the one that surprisingly is having a good day. They had a big outage yesterday. And it’s up today, go figure, but it’s definitely a little bit of a risk-off day here right now in the markets. Okay, Rare Earth, which, look, I don’t think these stocks are ready for prime time. They’re definitely not. If the market’s all about earnings, earnings, earnings, most of these stocks, if not all of them, don’t have any earnings yet but they’re believed to have large deposits of rare earth and some of it could be mingled in with the coal that they’re mining some of it could be mingled in with the gold and the silver but a lot of it seems to be associated in the areas where lithium is abundant. U.S. Rare Earth had a big day yesterday. It got an upgrade from William Blair. That’s U.S.A.R. American Resources, A.R.E.C., is another one. United States Antimony. We talked about antimony and how important antimony is and has many different uses. And Neocorp NB is another one. These were all upgraded today at William Blair. But in my book… You know, you begin with the big blue chip, so-called blue chip stocks where you’ve got the GEs and the 3Ms of the world. Then you go down a shade below that and you’ve got the Amazons and the NVIDIAs and the, you know, the CrowdStrikes of the world. Then you go down another notch. And then you go down another notch into the emerging growth companies that are starting to see explosive earnings. And then you get down into the realms that we don’t really put our clients into. Occasionally we do. Like we do on MP Materials in our emerging growth portfolio. because it looks like earnings are imminent there.
SPEAKER 04 :
But it’s one that you sit there and literally watch tick by tick sometimes as you’re seeing how far you’re going to hold on to that one for a period of time.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, and the one that is very close to MP Materials in the same geographic area there on that California-Nevada border is Lithium Americas. It’s been pretty perky here recently. They received their first $435 million loan drawdown of $435 million from the Department of Energy. So the United States government has a stake in this Lithium Americas loan. mine in the Thacker Pass which is very close to where Elon Musk has a big battery plant there and of course MP Materials is up there in Mountain Pass Lithium America CEO said we are excited that Thacker Pass is progressing rapidly now here’s something Barry if you’re out there your kids looking for a job that they are hiring workers At the processing facility, they’re building that. It’s underway. And workers are already living in the housing facility built in Winnemucca, Nevada. I’ve been to Winnemucca, Nevada. It’s an Indian word that means rare earth baby, I think. But anyways, if you’re looking for work. Winnemucca is a swinging little town just north of Elko, I think, or south of Elko, not too far from Tonopah, an interesting part of the world. But now all of a sudden, now remember when we had the shale boom? That was happening in Oklahoma and Nebraska, or not Nebraska, North Dakota. Fargo. Fargo was the destination. People packing up, loading up their little trailers and moving to Fargo, North Dakota for the shale boom. Now it’s Winnemucca, Nevada for the rare earth boom and other ones that pop up here and there. It seems to be where there’s lithium, there’s rare earth. Kenview asked the FDA not to change the Tylenol label on the potential autism risk. You know, I don’t know what to think on that. I mean, if there’s even a hint that it’s involved with autism, I’m not going to take it, you know, especially if I’m a pregnant woman. And Kenview does not want a label on there, even though, you know, Kennedy, RFK, and his crew seem to have some kind of link to autism. And the taking of Tylenol. It’s become a political issue. It’s not a science issue anymore. It’s a political hot potato. And we’ll just let it all work out. But should Tylenol have a warning, which I think the government’s going to do, and Kenview, which was spun off from Johnson & Johnson, I don’t know, several years ago, is a big maker of Tylenol. Okay, now, around the corner comes the tuba, here come the elephants, here comes the music, the marching band, earnings parade is now underway, and we have some big ones reporting here today. We’ve got the baton twirler, Larry Culp, right, the CEO of GE.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, he’s done a great job. I mean, yeah, go ahead and give him a round of applause.
SPEAKER 03 :
This is one of the greatest turnarounds of all time, you know. They tried to bring in many people to clean up the mess that GE was, and several tried it but couldn’t succeed. And Larry Cope comes over from Donaher and spins off the nuclear part or the energy part of it, spins out the medical part of it, keeps the aerospace separate. Look at this report the Aerospace had today, Barry. Their sales were up 24% year over year, and their earnings were up 44% year over year. And for that reason, we own GE Aerospace in our premier growth portfolios. I got 25 spots on my dugout for players in that premier growth portfolio. Right now, I have some openings, by the way, if you want to nominate somebody or scour the minor leagues for a player that we could bring up into that premier growth portfolio, but Meta’s sitting there, and GE and NVIDIA, the ones that I consider to be the best ones, the all-stars in today’s economy, and I certainly, GE, It’s just phenomenal what has happened under Larry Culp. They were making 85 cents a share back in 2022, and they’re looking at $7 next year. Over the last five years, the earnings growth has been 62% per year, Barry, 62% per year. And if the old axiom that I teach all the time is true is that stocks – follow earnings as earnings growths as earnings go up the stock goes up and even when earnings anticipation goes up the stock goes up if they say we’re going to come in and beat earnings the stock will go up immediately because those anticipated earnings have gone up so I remember we had folks at clients and then folks at the workshops here and there who have
SPEAKER 04 :
who have worked for GE and were finally going to give up on the stock after it was getting run in the ground. And then they finally figured out that Larry was coming to save the day. And they had experience with him in the past and were like, hey, I’m going to hang on to it for a little bit longer.
SPEAKER 03 :
And how have they been? Yes, how have they been rewarded? Over the last five years, while the earnings have been growing by 62% per year, the stock has been going up by 53.5% per year. So you see how that works? Over the last three years, the stock has been going up by 93% per year, and so far this year, GE is up 82%. CEO of the year? Well, you know, I mean, it’s a different animal. It’s a comeback. The comeback kid. I mean, NVIDIA is pretty hard to beat Jensen Wang. But I can’t emphasize enough how important the management of a company, the CEO that sits at the top. has gotta be a visionary he’s gotta crack the whip he’s gotta cut overhead he’s gotta grow the company he’s gotta take what they’ve got make it better keep it relevant it’s not an easy job and you see very few old companies that have been around for a long long time like GE become so relevant and vibrant again I mean, others can’t do it. ATT can’t do it. Johnson & Johnson can’t do it. But GE, wow, what a performance in this stock. We’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 07 :
And welcome back here to the final segment of today’s Best Stocks Now show. Just a little bit more color on GE.
SPEAKER 03 :
The improved outlook highlights the momentum under Chief Executive Larry Culp, who has reshaped GE into a pure play aerospace company following last year’s breakup of the industrial conglomerate, and they’re crediting jet engine demand. As a big, big driver of growth. Now, as I landed and took off from the Charleston airport, we flew right over Boeing’s worth. I couldn’t believe, like from the road that goes into the airport, you only see a part of the planes that Boeing has parked ready to deliver or close to delivery. When you fly over it, you get a different view. And I saw a whole lot more planes than our… We get all the different colors and… Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, another key part of that statement right there was the, you know, where they said a pure play, right, on aerospace. And that’s because they broke them up, right? And so that’s why we own GE Vernova, because they do the turbines for… for power companies in terms of the gas turbines. And then of course, the GE portion now is the aerospace piece. And by breaking that conglomerate up, They’ve actually been able to unlock value in each part of those companies.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. Remember President Trump went to the Middle East and visited Qatar and a couple other countries? Well, GE has gotten several major engine deals, including its largest ever wide-body order, more than 400 engines for Qatar Airways. And I think that deal, you know, was made while Trump was over there visiting Qatar. And there it is. I mean, it translates right to, right on down to a publicly traded company in America with workers, boots on the ground, now have an order for 400 jet engines for Qatar Airways. Okay, GM. You know, it’s pretty soggy, very soggy. Tough business out there. It’s a tough business out there, and I’m not a fan of the automobile business, investing in it especially, other than Tesla. But GM is having a wonderful day here today. GM is up 14%. Now we just talked about GE’s sales and earnings growth. GE’s sales were up 24% year over year, which for a $329 billion company, that is really amazing. And their earnings up 44%, that’s another amazing number. You don’t see numbers like that from General Motors, but apparently they beat the expectations. GM’s quarter, by contrast, their sales were up 0%. same exact sales that they had in this comparable quarter last year and their earnings were down five percent okay that’s not very good and uh you say why is the stock up today well obviously they beat uh some pretty grim expectations and maybe there was some short interest built up in the stock i don’t know but it’s up 14 percent here today now As we look at the returns of GM to investors, would this be one of the stocks that you would want to own if you only had 20 spots on the playing field, on the plane? You’ve got to taxi this team around from city to city to play, to fill your lineup with. The performance of GM over the last 10 years under Mary Barra, 8.2%. 8.2% over the last 10 years. The market is 23.2%. Over the last three years, it’s improved. It’s gotten better, 21% per year over the last three years. The market’s 28%. And year-to-date, it’s up 9.8%, while the S&P is up 14.5%. Overall, in my ranking system, it’s ranked number 1,851. out of 5,161, the track record is pretty mediocre. It gets a performance grade, an overall performance grade, when I compare it with all the other stocks out there, it gets a performance grade of B. because it has done fairly well here. But still, I don’t think enough to make a 25-person roster. And then I look forward to the valuation. If you take what GM is expected to make this year and extrapolate that out over the next five years, the growth rate on the street for GM is, I think, 6%, 7%, something like that. Let me see what it is. It’s not very good. I mean, this is not a growth stock, obviously. They got 11.8. I think that’s too generous. Really do. I think it’s more single digits. It’s got about 50% to 60% upside potential. That comes in at C minus value grade and a B performance grade.
SPEAKER 04 :
And there’s a lot of variation that can happen in that space. I mean, we saw what with Ford. Remember, you had the aluminum fire, the aluminum factory, which is going to kind of keep production down.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yep, and the tariffs on some of the parts that they have to import and things like that. It’s not a good industry to invest in. Okay, and then there’s just a couple others here. We’ve got one minute left. 3M has reported. Philip Morris has reported. Those are soggy stocks. Raytheon has come in with a very good report, obviously, with their missile shields. It’s up 8.1% and hitting a new all-time high. It is the best defense stock. Their sales were up 12%, earnings up 17%. So I would say it’s a pretty good day for earnings so far, and that’s going to show up this week when I update the earnings scorecard and how we’re doing. We have not had a bad earnings season in a long time, and that bodes well for the future of the market. We have not an earnings problem. We have more of a multiple PE, high-rich valuation problem. Okay, to set up an appointment with us, if you’re stuck in a bunch of soggy stocks, not moving much of anywhere, you can get an evaluation, portfolio evaluation from us at 855-611-BEST. And to get a four-week trial to the newsletter, the live trading alerts, and the app, go to GundersenCapital.com. That’s GundersenCapital.com. Have a great day, everybody.
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.
