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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 01 : 0:26

And welcome to the January 2nd. It is the first show of 2026. The Best Stocks Now show with Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management. And I believe Barry is traveling today. So I will be flying solo. Man, we’re off to a good start, a huge start in the markets here so far. And so far we’re in all the right places at the right time. Don’t expect that every day. However, we got the NASDAQ is up 269 points right now to 23,511. That’s a 1.2% move. And the Dow, which was down, has just gone positive. The Dow is now up 86 points. It’s at 48,149. The S&P 500 is up 45 points to 6,890. Over at the small cap Russell 2000, they are up 37 basis points here so far. The bond market is quiet so far. We begin the year at 4.17 right now. And I would also note that the rates on the 30-year mortgage have been coming down here recently. Gold is up. There’s a battle going on in the precious metals pits. And silver is up 3.7% after a huge sell-off on New Year’s Eve. So welcome to today’s Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management. I’m rested. I’m fired up, ready for a new year. in the market. We’re after a huge start here so far with our portfolios. After kind of a little meandering there the last three or four days of the year, it’s all a timing thing. We’re down maybe 1% or 2% there in the last three or four days of the year. It’s just the way it goes. I guess all the buyers went home or on vacation and the sellers hung around. Now they’re all back here today. And we’re off to a huge start with some of the big winners here in the market. ASM Lithography up 8.2%, Micron up 6.7%, Taiwan Semiconductor up 4%, AMD up 4.9%, Constellation Energy up 4.5%, Western Digital up 4.5%, and on and on and on. So it is an AI data center tech day in the markets here so far as we begin a new year of trading. Kind of a weird day this Friday in between all of these vacations and the start of a new year. And I don’t know if we’ll have what kind of volume we’ll have in the markets today. But hey, we’ll take it. We’re off to a good start so far. We begin the year with the S&P 500. The forward PE ratio actually came down during those last several days in the market. Just kind of a drifting lower. Not a lot of buyers, I guess, left in the market there as we went into some thinly traded days. The forward PE begins at 22.19, 22.19. So we have some room to the upside. It seems like 23 has kind of been a ceiling here so far. There’s nothing cast in stone there, but consider the five-year average is 20. And we’re at 22.2 right now, and 23 has been the five-year top. So we’ll be watching that here throughout the year, where those valuation ratios are at. It’s the end of the era yesterday, or I guess December 31st. Warren Buffett, final day as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. What is he? He’s 95, I believe. Yes, 95 years old. Look, I hope I’m still doing the show here when I’m 95 years old. I don’t have to retire. I’d go until 99 if I have to. But Warren Buffett, end of an era. You’ve got Greg Abel. Is he able? Is he ready, willing, and able? I know he’s willing. He’s ready. Is he able? He’s 63 years old. He’s a young’un. He’s just getting started as the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. You know, my problem with Berkshire Hathaway, he’s probably the best investor of all time. But it’s gotten so big and so large and so unwieldy, it’s the same problem that Fidelity Magellan Fund faced as Peter Lynch started to wind down And move on to different roles at Fidelity. He’d pretty much done everything he could do with Magellan. Because it gets so big, okay, it becomes a mathematical problem. And I’m blessed to not have that mathematical problem. My money under management has not grown to… you know, $500 billion. Hopefully someday it will. I always have that goal to always be moving forward, but I can still pretty much go wherever I need to go. And what I mean by that is Magellan got so big, if you’re going to take a 2% or 3% position in your portfolio, and you’ve got several hundred billion dollars under management, you’re limited now to the stocks that you can buy and sell. Many stocks become unavailable to you. They’re not big enough. They’re not liquid enough for a Warren Buffett or a Peter Lynch to buy. I mean, Magellan, you haven’t heard about Fidelity Magellan for years as it’s passed from one guy to another. Vinnick was the manager that took over for Peter Lynch, but there’s no way he could match the returns. He was dealt a hand that, you know, if you have 5,000 cards in your deck and all of a sudden you’ve only got 100 that you can invest in, you’re going to become pretty much a market performer. And that’s what Buffett has happened to Berkshire Hathaway, and that’s also what has happened to Magellan. That happened to Magellan a long, long time ago. So, look, am I tooting my own horn a little bit? Well, you know what? I’m still a guy that can go just about anywhere I need to go within reason. in the markets because there’s not really many positions that I’m not able to get in or out of with the money I have under management at the current time. I view that as a tremendous advantage. I personally would not be buying Berkshire Hathaway today. it’s not the same animal that it was ten years ago even twenty years ago it was even better where he could go just about anywhere he wanted to go now he’s limited to companies that are a hundred billion dollars or more and when you do a screen on a hundred billion dollar companies or more you’re down to like fifty stocks or so to choose from okay and uh… it’s not good to have your hands tied and to have those restraints and constrictions to have to deal with Well, okay, we start off with trouble in the world. Iran could be a hot spot in 2025, 2026. Something to watch there. There seems to be revolution in the air. As the Bob Dylan song said, there was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air. There seems to be revolution happening in Iran as the protests continue to ramp up big time. The problem is, you know, this usually hurts every dictator, the economy. You know, when people are hungry, they start going to action. And, you know, Trump is warning Iran to let the people have peaceful protest. But I don’t think Iran’s going to put up with it. I think they’re going to try to suppress any kind of protest. uh uprisings there so that is a hot spot in the world that has been uh kind of brewing here and getting worse as as the last couple of weeks have moved on bulgaria joins the eurozone not that that’s a big thing but there is another country joining the eurozone and of course you’ve kind of got the eurozone versus Putin in Russia to begin a new year. I remember when I was in third or fourth grade, by third or fourth grade, I knew all the capitals of the world. I still remember Bulgaria. I remember Hungary was Budapest and Bulgaria was Bucharest, if I’m not mistaken. I still remember the little jingle I made up in my head so that I could remember that. Some big movers in the market today. How about Baidu? China’s off to a big start. Baidu up 12% after the company said it plans to spin off its AI chip unit. Okay, there’s another thing to watch for in 2026, our NVIDIA wannabes. That recipe that NVIDIA has is much like the recipe that Tesla had at one time where they had very little competition. The recipe that Apple had at one time with the iPhones where they had very little competition. And as we enter a new year, NVIDIA, Still has that recipe locked in Jensen Wang’s safe somewhere. But there’s a lot of wannabes, including this spinoff from Baidu, Kunluxin, Kunluxin, Kunluxin. They’re going to pursue a Hong Kong listing, and they’re going to go after NVIDIA so China doesn’t have to depend on those NVIDIA chips that they can’t have. We’ll be right back. And welcome back here to the second quarter of today’s Best Stocks Now show. Let’s go back to that Baidu story just for a moment. Baidu has really been a non-performer. It’s one of the main, it’s one of the, if they had a fabulous seven in China, Baidu would definitely be one. And Baidu is probably their version of Google. That would be the closest U.S. comparison to make with Baidu. Baidu’s search engines, its gaming, its AI, its advertising, and could be chips. And now we know that Google has chips now that are quite powerful. And that gave a big boost to Google here when we heard that Meta was going to spend billions on Google’s chips or Alphabet’s chips. And Baidu was spinning off the company here that makes their version of an AI chip. Baidu over the years, like over the last 10 years, it’s minus 4% per year. But with AI, it’s breathed new life into the stock and it bears watching in 2026 because the stock is up 55% over the last 12 months. That’s as of the close on Wednesday. And with today’s move in Baidu, symbol bidu it’s a 52 billion dollar market cap company it is up 12.6 percent today 12.6 percent today on that news uh that they’re going now just because they’re spinning this company off doesn’t mean that all of a sudden they have a competitor to uh to nvidia’s chip It just means that they’re going to isolate this company separate from Baidu. And hopefully, maybe they’ve got something there. Baidu’s also got Robotaxi. So they’re into a lot of the same things at Alphabet, but they have not grown. There’s been no growth in that stock in the earnings over the last several years. So that’s the caveat there. as you look at Baidu now on the other hand one that we own is blasting off today the chips that Nvidia makes I’ve said this many many times require special equipment high tech equipment that comes from Holland or the Netherlands ASM lithography makes that high-end equipment and ASML It’s nine times the size of Baidu. It’s half a trillion now in market capitalization. And they make the lithography systems that are required to make these chips that NVIDIA produces, that NVIDIA designs. ASML then has their equipment at Taiwan Semiconductors plants in Taiwan. The design is sent to Taiwan Semiconductor, which is equipped with ASM Lithography’s equipment and others, other companies also making equipment along that supply chain line there. And ASML stock is up 7.9% today, or $84 per share. And ASM is one of the stocks that we own in our premier large cap. growth portfolio. So we’re off to a very good start with that portfolio. We begin the year with 21 stocks in that portfolio, 21 stocks in the premier growth portfolio. In that, we’re looking for the very best growth stocks, larger cap, probably 50 billion or more. But I’m not constrained. I don’t have to find 100 billion or more. My universe for the premier growth is quite a few stocks, maybe 250 or so, maybe even more than that, maybe 300 around in there. And ASM lithography, I don’t know how you can not say that that’s not one of the best large caps in the world today. And it is a position in that portfolio, and that portfolio is off to a very good start being helped by ASML. Now, why is ASML up today? Because it’s getting an upgrade. Okay, well, that’s not like, okay, we’ve got a new product here that’s going to take the world by storm. Well, they already have that. But let’s see, who is it that’s upgrading them today? And we, you know, I like it because it fits all of my criteria. ASM’s shares are surging as Aletheia Capital. I haven’t heard of them. Flipped its rating, but I love these guys. They’re the best. They flipped its rating on Chip Equipment Leaders European shares to a buy from sell rating. They had a sell on this stock. Talk about being wrong. Highlighting factory expansions, capacity ramps, and booming EUV lithography demand for AI-driven semiconductors. Well, to go from a sell to a buy, that’s weird that they had a sell on it. But I guess maybe from a valuation point of view. But get this. I would just say that they were behind the curve at Aletheia Capital. They’re upping their target price. From $750, and mind you that the stock is currently at $1,100, they were wrong. Somebody, I think maybe the CEO of Aletheia called in the analyst, Warren Lau, and said, dude, you are way off on your target price on ASM. You’re at $750. This stock’s at $1,100. Well, he upped his target price, okay, all up at the $1,500. Does that sound good? He doubled his target price. Now, that’s very strange that the fundamentals didn’t change or anything like that. It sounds to me like they realized they were way behind the curve. By the way, what is Bill Gunderson’s target price on Aletheia, or not on Aletheia Capital, but on ASML Lithography? He was at $750. Now, I do a five-year target price, okay, so keep that in mind. But my target price on ASML is $2,069.

SPEAKER 1 : 17:52

$2,069.

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96% upside potential. ASM is ranked number 142 out of 5,186. And the Gunderson app rating is currently buy. That was before today’s big move, I would say. And we have owned ASML off and on a lot over the last several years. And it is one of the top performing stocks in the entire market. And why? Well, it’s right at the center of the AI race. with those high-speed chips. Okay, what other news do we have here today? A lot, actually. Trump delays tariff hikes for upholstered furniture. I’m happy about that. I was not really in the market for upholstered furniture, but he’s holding off on those tariffs, hikes, and kitchen cabinets, okay? So one of the biggest stories of last year was tariffs. I think this year it won’t be as big of a story unless China makes them mad, unless Mexico makes them mad, unless Canada. They probably will somewhere along the way. So those tariffs are always out there. How did Bitcoin finish the year? Bitcoin went from record highs to record outflows. We do not own any Bitcoin. We never did own any Bitcoin in 2025. When I went back to the NASDAQ at the beginning of last year, everybody I was there with, I was with a group of about 25 or 30 advisors and analysts. Their top pick, all of them, to a man or woman, was Bitcoin. I was the only guy going the opposite direction. My top pick was Palantir. How did they do? How did I do? Well, they didn’t do very well. 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.

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And welcome back to the second half of today’s Best Docs Now show.

SPEAKER 01 : 20:52

The annual predictions are out. They sent me an email from Seeking Alpha. I never got around to answering and filling out my questionnaire, but here’s what the guys and gals on Seeking Alpha think. The consensus is about 10% upside for 2026. Now, the good news is, The earnings continue to grow. Earnings, it’s very simple mathematics. You know, so many people make the market seem like this deep mystery that has no logic. To me, as a guy with a very mathematical, statistical kind of mind, I find it to be very logical because it follows earnings. And you just look at the graph. I put in a graph in my newsletter, just a simple bar graph, a simple bar graph from 2006 to 2026. That’s 20 years of earnings. And look at the trend. You can see the trend dropping from 2006 to 2009 of earnings. And let’s define earnings. Earnings are the total earnings for the S&P 500, the 500 companies that make up the S&P 500. That’s a pretty good cross-section of the U.S. economy. Earnings were receding from 2006 to 2009. They peaked in 2006 and a little bit early 2007. Then earnings started to recede and so did earnings estimates and the market followed downwards. into a bear market of 53% S&P 500. Why? Because earnings receded by about 50% or so. And then earnings bottomed in March of 2009. In that year, 2009, earnings for the S&P came in at about $60 per share. And for the sake of simplicity, put a 20 multiple on that. You had an S&P that was worth about $1,200 back then, even though it got down to $670 at one point in time, until those earnings estimates started to stabilize and started to start moving higher. And earnings have been going up since 2009. That’s almost, it’s hard to believe, really, There’s a couple of things. There’s been a lot of innovation along the last 20 years in the market, and there’s been a lot of sharp CEOs out there that know how to keep their company profitable and growing. But once again, that growth represents about 10 or 15% of the companies. There’s a lot of companies out there that weren’t able to continue to keep their profit growing. So my simple formula is to focus on the companies that continue to or are emerging. Maybe they’re in the early years of the growth process, or maybe they continue to reinvent themselves like the Microsofts of the world and stay current. and continue to grow their earnings, and I avoid the companies that have flatlined with their earnings. If stocks and indexes follow earnings, isn’t it just a logical deduction that you want to buy stocks that are growing their earnings? Well, if you’re a growth investor, that’s what it’s all about. I see the stock market. I see owning equities. as more of a growth vehicle as opposed to an income vehicle. Yes, income is going to come from your capital appreciation. And a lot of people overlook that fact. When you look at how much the Dow has risen over the last 20 years, most of that has been capital appreciation. What is wrong with scooping the gravy off from time to time or just setting up a plan where, look, I’m going to take 5% a year from my portfolio, and most of that’s going to come from the capital appreciation. People try to build their portfolio for 5% dividend yield or income. Well, then you’re sacrificing the growth to do that. That’s just the way I’ve seen things over the years. I think the best source of income… The stock market is from capital appreciation, for heaven’s sake, because that’s where most of that appreciation comes from. And what drives the capital appreciation in the stock market? Growth in earnings. And who are the companies that provide the most of that? Companies that are growing their earnings. It’s just pretty logical to me. So anyways, the consensus out there is about 10% in the market this year. I’m sure there’s some perma bears out there that are negative and calling for a market crash and grabbing the headlines and trying to get the reads of their articles that they try to get with their doomsday headlines and whatnot. But I just look at it from a mathematical point of view, okay? Now you’re looking at almost $350 per share in earnings out there in 2027. Versus $60 in 2009. Use that same 20 multiple on $350 in earnings and you get $7,000. From $1,200 back then to $7,000. Does it not make sense? It’s just a logical mathematical equation. Now, there’s changes. That’s why I’m on top of it every week. The earnings estimates have actually been going higher. Even in this year of tariffs, it has not impacted earnings estimates for the S&P 500 at all. In fact, they’ve moved higher. And I’m looking at 2027 now. That’s what the market’s looking at. It’s already priced in 2026’s earnings estimates, which are about 310, 308, I believe. 308 right now are the estimates for 2026. That’s already priced in. How do I know that? Because 20 times 308 nets you about a 6100 S&P 500. We passed 6100 a long time ago. We’re at 6,800. So obviously the market is pricing in at this point in time, 2027 earnings estimates. And then of course you have that multiple in the middle, the multiplier, which is very interest rate sensitive. It has a lot to do also with the sentiment of the market, and we’ve been ranging in multiple from 20 to 23 over the last several years. When the market’s feeling good and interest rates and the Fed seems like they’re going to continue to lower interest rates, you see that 23 multiple. And when the Fed hedges and hums and haws and Jerome Powell hiccups like he did in, I don’t know, was it November or so? Well, then the market contracts to 21 times earnings because it’s thinking we’re not going to get those interest rate cuts. The big thing that’s going to happen this year is we’re going to get a new Fed chairman. And in my opinion, it couldn’t happen too soon. I do think Jerome Powell was way behind the curve. The fact that he had to raise interest rates by 75 basis points at four meetings in a row shows you how far off they were in raising rates. And the inflation that went to over almost 10% also shows you how far off the Fed was. And now I believe that they’re behind the curve once again in lowering those interest rates as inflation seems to have disappeared from the landscape. So anyways, I look for a friendlier Fed, but not until Powell is gone. And that’s where we’re at. Ed Yardini is one that I look to. I think he looks at the market very similar in a very similar fashion to me. He has a 7,700 target price, which would be up 11% from these levels. And of course, he’s putting a multiple, a pretty high multiple, probably in the 22, 23 area. on that three hundred and fifty dollars in earnings for 2027 and he comes up with 7700 okay it’s math it’s not like you know you stick your finger in the air and see which way the wind is blowing no there’s numbers that back this up and you say you can’t rely on the analyst then why every quarter do companies come in and it’s almost exactly where the analyst predicted And I’ve said time and time again, 80% to 85% of the companies beat the analyst estimates. If anything, the analyst estimates are on the low on the conservative side because companies have become very good at sandbagging the analyst so that they can come in and beat their earnings. Now, how about the economy? How about our underlying economy? Apollo Global Management. I like Torsten Slocke. With a name like Torsten, I think he might come from where my paternal side of the family comes, the Norwegian side. But he’s usually right. He sees the U.S. economy starting 2026 from… A position of strength. And I totally agree with that. I think a lot of those factories that were announced, they’re coming online, they’re being built. And we do. We enter 2026 from a position of strength. When we come back, J.P. Morgan’s top picks for 2026. I can hardly wait.

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We’ll be right back.

SPEAKER 01 : 31:39

And welcome back here to the final segment of today’s Best Docs Now show. By early next week, we should have a date for Houston, which will be our first trip of 2026, sometime late January. I’m thinking probably early February now because there’s some kind of convention or Schwab meeting, something like that, the last week of January. But, Houston, we’re coming your way for a visit Tuesday, Wednesday in early February for a workshop. We’ll have a lot of fun. We’ll be out there at the Galleria. We’re going to nail that down, too, by early next week. And then two days of appointment opportunities that you’ll have with the team, including myself. I love these trips, and I’d love to get out and interface with the folks out there in America. Okay, now let’s take a look. I totally agree with J.P. Morgan’s advice. Overall theme, I suppose you could say, for 2026. Let’s get to that here. But I don’t agree with a lot of their picks. They give their top 50 picks, and we’ll just feature a few of them here. Okay. Number one, the report from J.P. Morgan highlights three major thematic drivers for the upcoming year. AI and data center expansion. Well, okay, I can’t argue with that. Whether you like it or not, they’re building data centers all across America, wherever they can put one. And they’re arming them with air conditioning and luxury accoutrements and nice things and NVIDIA chips and Arista networks and all kinds of different goodies inside those data centers and a lot of Micron, a lot of Micron chips, number one. That’s their number one, one of their themes. Infrastructure and electrification. I couldn’t agree more. And I think that electrification is going to continue to be, I think nuclear is going to continue to be a driver. And we’re already off to a good start. You know the nuclear stock. We’ve talked about it many, many times. And number three, quality and resilience and a shift towards quality growth. So yeah, I mean, that leaves out the quantum stocks. That leaves out the rarer stocks. They don’t have quality growth yet. They’re hoping to have quality growth someday. And of course, you won’t find those stocks in my two major growth portfolios. They would be down in my little emerging growth portfolio where we’re looking at companies that are on the cusp. I think MP Materials would be a good example of that, where there’s a lot of big-time investors in that little company. Apple, the U.S. government, et cetera. Somebody else, too. I can’t remember another big company. And the Rare Earth. But that quality… Growth has to either – I mostly invest – 90% of what I have, 95%, is in quality growth, I would say. All right? The other 5% is companies that are on the cusp. Maybe it’s 90-10, something like that here at Gundersen Capital Management. And their third theme for this year – Well, strategic focus, be selective. I couldn’t agree more. Watch capital actions. Look for M&A activity and capital returns, dividends, and buybacks. Now, here’s some of their picks. Allstate. Well, you know, that doesn’t fit any of what they just outlined. I’m not a fan of Allstate. But their second pick here, they’re in alphabetical order, is Alphabet. It pretty much checks all the boxes, okay? Then they’ve got Arista Networks. It pretty much checks all the boxes. And then they’ve got AT&T. I don’t know what it is with AT&T. It’s got to be on all the Wall Street lists. Then they’ve got AutoZone. I don’t see where that fits. Then they’ve got Avery Dennison. I don’t see where that fits at all. That’s like labels and things like that. Then they’ve got Boeing. Yeah. Boston Scientific, Broadcom, bingo, finally they hit one. Canadian Pacific, Kansas City, which is a railroad. I’m not with them on that. Carvana, I’m not there. Caterpillar, I can see Caterpillar being the picks. It is the best industrial out there. It’s the picks and shovels to the rare earth industry, right? Then they’ve got CBRE. I’m not there with them on that. That’s real estate. Then they’ve got Celsius. No, not there with energy drinks. Citigroup I’m there with. I’d like a few financials, a few chosen financials. For me, the two best financials are Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, okay? And Robinhood. Then they’ve got CRH, which is a cement plant. I’m not there on that one. CVS, no. Dana, no. Devon Energy, no. Digital Realty Trust, no. Disney, no. DraftKings, no. Lilly, bang. Not a data center stock, but… it’s that gop1 then they’ve got enter g exxon mobil forget about it then they’ve got ge vernova bang they hit another one there kla corp i’m with you on that one uh globe life a life insurance company lending club and mccormick spices and mohawk carpet palo alto network’s ppg industries ralph loren revolution medicines roku no salesforce no schlumberger no starbucks no synopsis no williams company no thermoscientific no vertiv there’s one more winner on their group so yeah you know maybe uh i like 10 of the stocks that they like I’m even more selective than a J.P. Morgan, but J.P. Morgan is a huge institution. They’ve got to spread it around. They can’t focus on 10, 15, 20 stocks. They’ve got to bring in a lot of these other stocks like Magellan had to do, like Warren Buffett had to do, and that waters down returns from my point of view. That’s what I’ve watched over the years. Well, that was a fast-moving hour. Where did it go? We are off to a very good start in the market today. The growth stocks, the premium, the best stocks now are leading the way, at least on day one, knock on wood, of 2026. Make it your year to really focus and try to, you know, remodel a little bit if you have to. Update the kitchen, the portfolio if it’s time. You know, time moves on. We’re in a different day and age than we were 10 years ago. to get a four-week trial to the newsletter, become educated on the markets and the best stocks in the markets now, the best growth stocks, according to Bill Gunderson, obviously. Go to GundersenCapital.com. Plan on attending one of our workshops this year. We plan on at least nine visits around the country, different regions. Hopefully we’ll have some webinars, too, for the whole nation to join in, the whole world to join in. We’re going to try to do those on a monthly basis. Also, to set up an appointment with us. Online, Zoom, telephone, 855-611-BEST. 855-611-BEST. Have a great day, everybody.

SPEAKER 03 : 39:47

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.