SPEAKER 01 :
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 Gunderson Capital Management. Here is professional money manager Bill Gunderson.
SPEAKER 04 :
And welcome to the Monday, post-Mother’s Day, May 11th, 2026 edition of the Best Docs Now show. I’m live from Manhattan, New York today, and Barry is down holding down the fort in South Carolina. And speaking of the fort, the Dow right now is flat. I mean, it is dead flat, but… We’ve got the NASDAQ now up seven points. We’re up about half a percent so far, Barry. So I’m happy with that. Some good movers here. The S&P 500 is up 10 points right now. The Russell 2000 is up 17 points. And that all-important black gold, otherwise known as crude oil. Crude oil is up 1% today. And that’s, I think, holding the market down for sure. There’s definitely an inverse relationship between oil prices. in the markets right now crude is all the way up to 96.34 which is affecting everything from air travel car travel the big freighters are coming across the ocean etc etc meanwhile we’ve got gold down a little bit no gold’s up now half a percent gold is up half a percent and the all-important 10-year yield has come down some. It’s at 4.38% right now. And Bitcoin, which I don’t really care much for, it is up $215 to $81,209. So welcome to today’s Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson of Gunderson Capital Management, a registered investment advisory firm that I started in 2006. And we are rocking and rolling here today, the day after Mother’s Day. Barry, did you take good care of your mom yesterday?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I did. We got some nails done, cooked some brunch, and did strip scampi for dinner. So we filled them up, put it that way.
SPEAKER 04 :
Ah, you’re a good son. You’re a good son. Well, my late mother is long gone, Lucy. But she was a great mother, and I spent a lot of the day reminiscing about her. What a great mom she was to me. And she was a vibrant thing. She was a redhead. She was a lively thing. Oh, boy.
SPEAKER 03 :
All the ladies in my life have been pretty vibrant. Yes.
SPEAKER 04 :
I’m ready for a calmer one, I think. But anyways, I reminisced about my mom and kind of celebrated vicariously through other people. celebrating their mothers, whose mothers are still living. And as I walked around Manhattan yesterday, it was fun to see all the flowers and the balloons. And everybody I saw and talked to, I said, don’t forget your mother now. And they all gave me a little nod, tip of the hat. So anyways, it was a lot of fun. Okay, we had a really good week in the market last week. I mean, since I made this call like a month ago, this has been one of the best runs in the history of the market after I said this is one of the most compelling times to buy into the market. And I would say, Barry, have you seen an uptick in the people contacting us, the appointments you’re having? I mean, right on down the line, it seems to have caught a lot of people’s attention once again. And our phones have been ringing off the hook here.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I mean, a lot of it’s doing it in a good risk-adjusted manner, right, where we’ve got a good bit of cash as a firm, but at the same time, you’ve been in the right, as you say, the sunny side of the street. You’ve been in the right spots. Micron’s another example. Wow. I know you highlighted it in the newsletter this week, and then, of course… I think it’s up 5% or so today. It’s just been a weird year in the market. Of course, the S&P was negative in year-to-date values. at the end of March, uh, of course. And so, uh, and we were positive. And so it’s a lot about being in the right spots. And of course, you know, that’s what I think clients want is that, you know, if they’re listening to you and listening to us, they don’t, uh, you know, they don’t want to be passive. They want to be active. And, uh, you know, that’s what, uh, and they want somebody that’s on it every day.
SPEAKER 04 :
Now, as, as, as we started the new year, you know, right before we started the new year, the last few days of December, uh, That’s kind of prediction time in the stock market, and all the mucky mucks on Wall Street like to list their top picks and their macro outlook for the market in the coming year. And, of course, last year I picked Palantir, and, of course, that was televised there at the NASDAQ. When I picked Palantir as my top pick for the year, and it ended up being the best performer in the S&P 500 last year. It was up over 100%. And this year, I wasn’t on TV, but I was on radio for several weeks prior to that, and I wrote an article about it. And in my newsletter before the year began, I said my number one pick for 2026 was is Micron, MU. And I added a bonus pick this year in Lilly. with their miracle drug, Zepbound. Lilly hasn’t done all that much so far, although it’s starting to perk up. But get this, Micron is now up 165% since the beginning of the year. If that’s not the biggest winner in the S&P 500, I don’t know what is. I mean, what are the odds of a guy throwing a dart at the S&P 500, 500 stocks, and hitting the top performer last year? And the top performer this year, I guess I’m a pretty good dart thrower. And I don’t want to come off as being… braggadocious or it’s just a fact it it happened and i’m just i’m just relating a fact to you micron is now up 165 you say well you said that you mentioned it in your newsletter do you own any well barry i gotta say it’s our largest position uh i i also i eat my own cooking is how the saying goes right yeah and yeah exactly and just trimmed sand disk which was uh you know it got so large yeah I cut it in half, okay? And I may do that with Micron at some point, but this is our second rodeo with Micron. We made a ton of money. I was a little bit afraid of getting bucked off the horse here about a month ago, and I said, you know, I’m going to take a huge profit in Micron because it happened so quickly. And within a week, I think I was back in it again after taking a big profit. And now we’ve got even a bigger profit this time around. And why? You have to say, well, what’s the reason? Why, M-U? Well, there’s only four companies in the world that make memory chips. Micron, SanDisk, SK Hynix over in South Korea. and Samsung over in South Korea. And those two South Korea stocks are uninvestable unless I figured out a way to beat the system. I found an ETF that owns those two stocks. And I think 50% of that ETF is those two stocks. So we’ve also done well with our investments in those two. all right so now let’s get to some big world stuff and then we’ll drill down to some smaller stuff as you know in my profession i have to stay on top of world events because it trickles right on down into your little roth ira and into your 401k at work crude oil continues to be probably the biggest story in the world because it’s linked to the strait of hormuz where you don’t want to go water skiing these days. You might get blasted out of the water by one of Pete Hegs’ patrol boats, or you might hit a landmine planted by the Iran Revolutionary Guard. I don’t recommend water skiing or a cruise that goes through the Strait of Hormuz. But we did get news. There was a proposal sent to Iran. The proposal came back, and I think it was late last night. By the way, I was in Trump Tower yesterday. which was pretty interesting to stand there at the foot of that escalator that brought him down and started his candidacy. And I was also in St. Joseph’s Cathedral. Boy, that was gorgeous. They’re right almost next to each other. So a couple of very neat places to be in here in New York. But Trump said late last night that, you know what, Iran’s answer is totally unacceptable here. And I’ve said this before. Iran has never dealt in good faith. They are so, what’s the word, Barry, when you’ve got your nose in the air, the moxie that they have.
SPEAKER 03 :
I mean, stubborn would be a good word. But it’s, you know, I mean, I just don’t know if they’re capable of making a deal because otherwise they almost have to. They look weak, I guess. And they also have to, I mean, they have to go against their ideology. I mean, to a certain extent. So it’s just, I mean, it’s a. I hear people say they’re tough negotiators. It’s almost like they’re not.
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s like they’re not negotiators. They don’t negotiate. The word I was looking for is hubris. The hubris of the leaders of Iran. Okay, a couple more things on the world stage, and then we’ll climb down, Barry, down to the earnings stage. which to me overshadows everything. The market is all about earnings, earnings, earnings. And I want to give you an update, which it’s almost unbelievable the earnings that we’re seeing in the market right now. And that’s what gives me this conviction that I have in my heart when I know something is right. Prime Minister Netanyahu warned in a 60-minute interview that the war is not over. Well, yeah, I’ll agree with that. There are still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled. There’s the biggest sticking point. How do they think they’re going to be able to continue enriching uranium to build a nuclear bomb? That ain’t going to happen. Talk about hubris. There are proxies that Iran supports. There are ballistic missiles that they still want to produce. Netanyahu said there’s work to be done. Now, if that’s not enough on the world stage, Barry, do you know what’s happening late this week?
SPEAKER 03 :
We’ve got the meeting with Xi, right?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, Trump is headed to China, which really dwarfs Iran. You know, it is a world power and an economy, etc. But, you know, the last time they met was, well, it’s the first time in the country for Trump since 2017. And, of course, you’ve had this recent ruling about the Trump tariffs being illegal on imports worldwide, as they’ll be talking about the war in the Middle East. And China is one of Iran’s largest diplomatic backers. In some ways, the war between us and Iran is a proxy war between us, And Russia and China, because they are both backers of Iran. That’s what makes this whole thing so dangerous. And later this week, I mean, this is a big deal. Trump will be going to China and the two leaders will sit down face to face. and talk about all of these issues. So, yes, the market will be watching that. In the meantime, we’ve got oil up a little bit, and the odds for a clearing of the Strait of Hormuz, the odds have gone up quite a bit. Okay, now let’s drop back down to what the market, what does the market feed on? A nuclear reactor feeds on enriched uranium. A Boeing engine feeds on jet fuel. And the stock market feeds on earnings, earnings, earnings. Earnings have been going up for the S&P 500 every year since 2009. That was my first macro call was in 2009. I’ve got to go back and find that newsletter. It’s in the archives. When I said a new bull market is being born. That was after the financial crisis of 08 and 09. All the mistakes that were made on Wall Street, stupid moves, packaging subprime mortgage rates, littering the world with them, or mortgage notes, loans, until it all came a-tumbling down. And it took TARP funds and… And some real begging for those TARP funds and bailouts and all kinds of things. But finally, everything kind of worked its way through. And by 2009, March of 2009, the earnings picture would start. By the way, the S&P went down 53% during that period of time, 53%. And that’s why I don’t believe in being an index investor. You know, an index investor stays fully invested through thick or thin. And had you just retired, Barry, and you were an index investor, you would have lost 53% of your nest egg. Yes, it did come back. But if you retired with $2 million in the bank and all of a sudden you got $900,000, that’s a pretty scary deal.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, you would have freaked out. I don’t think you would have rode that out and all the way back up necessarily.
SPEAKER 04 :
No, you would have probably panicked when you were down to $900,000 and not got back in until it was up around $2 million and totally missed the move back up. And that’s why I look to earnings for those clues about the market. So here we are in this current earnings season. We’re almost done right now. We now have, I can’t remember how much, I think about 80% of the companies have now reported in the S&P 500. So over 400, obviously. The earnings growth rate year over year is unbelievable. That’s why the market’s unbelievable. 21.7% is where we’re at right now. That’s the increase in earnings for this quarter. Q2? No, Q1. Q1 2026. We started this whole quarter, this whole earning season out, the estimate was for 12.7. It’s gone from 12.7 to 27.7. I have never seen an increase like that in my entire career in the market. The blended year-over-year revenue growth, that’s top-line sales growth, And, of course, earnings are bottom line profit growth. The revenue growth is 11.3%. And the average over time, the average for the index has been more in the 8 to 9 area. And this will be the second straight quarter that the index has reported revenue growth above 9%. Now, there’s one more big item here. The profit margin. If you take that bottom line profit and you divide it into the sales, which if you’re a CFO, if you’re a CPA, or any of those C’s, Barry, what are you? You’ve got so many C’s, I lose track.
SPEAKER 03 :
He’s a CFP. Certified and charter holder. It depends on which one you are.
SPEAKER 04 :
He’s a CFA, and I’m just a mucky muck. I’ve got my double M’s, mucky muck Dunderson. Okay. and a junior i got a junior behind there too so you got it yeah you’re barry kite junior cfp cfa blah blah blah i’m just i’m just william fred gunderson just simple gunderson now the profit margin is 14 per 7 that’s the highest profit margin since we started keeping records on the s&p 500 the high That means, you know, like a Walmart or a McDonald’s maybe has a 3% or 4% profit margin. On every dollar, they make $0.03. But right now, overall, the S&P 500 as a whole… Every dollar that comes in, they’re making almost 15 cents. That’s just unheard of. And of course, some companies are making 60 and 70 cents. So number one, you have record quarter-over-quarter growth, year-over-year growth, judged by the quarterly. You have record revenue growth, and you have a record profit margin. And I would say what’s driving the bus there is AI. That’s what’s driving the buzz. 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. Yes, there is something in the air. Next Monday it will be in the air. I’m headed for Minneapolis, Minnetonka to be more exact, Minnesota, at the Minnetonka Marriott. We arrive Monday. We usually have a team dinner Monday night. If possible, Barry, we usually get in at different hours of the night and whatnot.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I was just looking. I was just figuring out the whole flight information not long ago. Yeah, me too. Well, we’ll try to get on the same flight. I’ll make it by dinner, Bill. I’ll make it by dinner, Bill.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay, all right. I’ll buy you a burger at Wendy’s. I’m going to the nice steakhouse down the street. You know, I’m looking forward to it. And we’ve had to add an extra day because of the demand. And if we get more demand for the workshop, which is Tuesday night at 7 p.m., where you get to see me present what I know about the market, at this current point in time because it’s changing all the time and if we need to do a second show on Wednesday we’ll do a second show on Wednesday night I’m up for it but our day begins early Tuesday after we get there I still have five radio shows to do that week and the workshop, and then appointments all day, all day long, one-hour appointments, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And that’s one of my favorite things that I do in this industry because I really like people. And I really like… Did we lose Bill?
SPEAKER 03 :
All right, I think we’ll get Bill back here in just a minute. But, yeah, we’re looking forward to getting to Minnetonka, Minnesota at the Marriott there. We’ll be there a week from tomorrow. That’s Tuesday, May 18th. Wednesday, actually, no, it’s Tuesday, May 19th, 20th and 21st. And then, as Bill said, if we need to hang around for a little bit on Friday, we’ll probably work that in as well. Looking forward to getting back up there. We had, I think, Bill dropped off here for a moment, so we should get him back here in just a moment. That signal in New York will let you down here and there. Well, as we’re looking, market-wise, we’ve still got a little bit of green on the screen. Looks like kind of a flat day out there in the market. We’ve got the S&P up 10 points to just over 7,400. The Dow’s up slightly, up 39 points. That’s about seven basis points at the moment. The NASDAQ just went a tad negative, down 26 points. Crude, I think we started the show, is up a percent. Now it’s up 2%. I don’t know if we’ve got any new news or a new true social post or something there in the crude oil world. Of course, gold. A little bit positive here. We’re starting to get a bit of a bid, but where interest rates are and with the stronger dollar, just not helping gold very much. Of course, as we work towards this week, we’ve got some more earnings coming up on the schedule. Last week we had a plethora of earnings, again, as Bill crunched the numbers this week. We’ll probably get into, when we get him back here in a moment, we’ll get the information on what his S&P outlook was. I’m sure we’ll get the grading for how earnings have been this quarter. Of course, on the jobs front, we’ve got a lot of economic news last week. We had the ADP payrolls on Wednesday that were well ahead of estimates, and we also got a good non-farm payroll on Friday where we came in pretty significantly above consensus. Of course, we’ve talked about this dichotomy in the market and in the news where we’ve gotten a lot, Just kind of this disconnect between, of course, our nightly news, a good bit of it being with the negative bent. Of course, economically, as we continue to say, and as Bill has mentioned, with earnings and earnings growth, I think we’re around 17% earnings growth so far this year with the S&P. I think we started the year where the consensus was going to be in that 9 to 11 range. And so we’re well, well ahead of those earnings estimates. And as, uh, you know, the mantra mantra here at the firm is, uh, you know, stock prices, uh, follow earnings and earnings expectations. And we’ve seen those, uh, we’ve seen those continue to rise here, uh, as we, as we get through, uh, this, uh, you know, for a quarter, first quarter earnings and reports. And of course, so like I said, the, the non-farm payrolls, um, exceeded consensus in April. Uh, you know, the, Payrolls grew by 115,000 jobs in April. Consensus was 63,000. So that’s a pretty solid beat there. We had the unemployment rate was around 4.5%. Okay, Barry, I’m here. Oh, we’re back. All right. Yeah, we’re good.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, I’ve got to be honest. New York City is a difficult place to do a live radio show. There’s big buildings all around, right? That’s the worst thing you can have. Radio waves need a clear pathway to navigate through. And all of a sudden, I’m talking away, I’m blabbing away, and everything goes dark on my screen. But I have to call in. here to finish this. So did you get done talking about Minnesota there, Barry?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I did. We got the dates in, and I explained to the folks that if we’ve got to stick around for a little while on Friday, we’ll get it done.
SPEAKER 04 :
We’ll get her done. Okay, I want to go back to the earnings for a minute. Eighty-nine percent of the companies have now reported their earnings, so we’re down to like You know, these numbers that are coming in are pretty much the numbers that we’ll end up with. We may get above 30% this week. We’ll see. But most of your important companies now have reported earnings. And I just want to give you a year-over-year look right now because this is what’s incredible. This looks like Mount Everest. This chart looks like Mount Everest going up the hill and peaking and peaking and peaking and getting higher and higher and higher. And we’re not to the summit yet. I truly believe that. I don’t believe we’re to the summit yet because there’s no sign of any chipping away at that summit. Okay, so last year, 2025, the market produced… The S&P produced $271 in earnings per share, $271. This year, we’re looking at $334. That’s unheard of. That’s a 20% plus increase versus last year. But wait, we’re not done yet. Next year, we’re looking at $382. If you didn’t slap a 20 multiple on that, you’re at $7,700. And that’s the next thing I want to talk about is the current multiple of the market. We got as high as 23. And then we had the sell-off in the market, and it went down to, I think, 19.77. 19.77 was the bottom of the market when I made my macro call. I said, this is one of the most compelling buying opportunities I’ve ever seen. That was about five weeks ago. We’re looking at $382 in earnings. And the current multiple of the market is 21. The high has been 23. So we have some room to navigate. And in fact, the consensus one-year target price for the S&P 500 is $8,400. That’s why I say we haven’t reached the summit yet and planted the flag on top of Mount Everest, which would say, this is the top. No, I don’t think we’re at the top yet. I think we have further to go. But having said that, Barry, have you ever seen a more narrow market? And tell the folks what I mean by a narrow market.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I mean, we talked about being in the right places this year in terms of the amount of, in terms of the earnings growth. We’ve got two of the reasons that we’re getting the earnings growth that we are, particularly on the NASDAQ side, is simply two names. It’s Micron and it’s NVIDIA in terms of earnings growth. And SanDisk, I don’t think, is in it. Yeah, I don’t believe they are. The numbers where I saw where they were pulling apart where this earnings growth was, they didn’t throw SanDisk in there. In some form or fashion, they should be included because they’re another source. Seagate as well, by the way. You look at this market this year, there hasn’t been a ton of places to – it’s not like it’s a broad – You know, every sector is firing on all cylinders. It’s primarily, you know, AI and AI-adjacent names. We had some, you know, you had some growth in the metals early in the year. Of course, that train kind of, you know, kind of subsided.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, I want to go back to the Best Docs Now app here for a minute. Let’s just look and see if it reflects the real world right now. The number one ranked… Oh gosh, I’ve not logged into it. Doggone it, I’ve got the free one. But I can tell you what they are. The number one ranked sector in the market today is the semiconductor sector. Okay? And really and truly, that’s what’s driving the growth and most of the gains in the market so far. And I’ve told you before, you can own the semiconductor sector or you can own the five best stocks in the semiconductor sector. And I don’t keep it a secret that nvidia hit a new all-time high it’s now a five trillion dollar company that’s never happened before in the history of wall street we found nvidia when it was i don’t know well i don’t know even know that it was a trillion back then barry when we started writing about nvidia being the best stock in the market now and of course nvidia’s had a lot to do with our growth as a firm over the last several years. The number two ranked stock, best stock out there, is AMD. AMD, and it’s no, those are kissing cousins. I don’t know if they kiss. They’re cousins. Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD. And what’s in video?
SPEAKER 03 :
Jensen White. Yeah, Jensen.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, Jensen in his leather jacket, right?
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s all I can think of when I hear that name is that leather jacket.
SPEAKER 04 :
That leather jacket. And Jensen and Lisa are cousins, and they run the two most powerful chip companies in the world. And then, of course, there’s a common connection. They’re both Taiwanese. And there’s an intermediary there that’s Taiwan Semiconductor that makes 80% of the chips in the world. And they make chips for AMD and NVIDIA. NVIDIA does not make their own chips. They design chips. AMD does not make chips. They design chips. And they send those designs to Taiwan for them to fabricate the chips. Then, obviously, the other big chip stocks in today’s world, Broadcom, Micron, obviously. SanDisk, obviously. SK Hynix, obviously. Did I say Samsung? Yes. And if you want to throw it, well, there’s two more. The Netherlands company, ASM Lithography. These chips couldn’t be made without ASM Lithography’s proprietary equipment that nobody else has. It’s good to have a system. It’s good to have a process. it’s good to have a product that nobody else can replicate. And that’s what Taiwan has, that’s what NVIDIA has, and that’s what ASM Lithography has, and to some extent AMD. So we’re going to throw in one more chip stock, it would be Marvell Technology. because their chips are involved with the fiber optics and the networking that goes on within these data centers. And really, if you want to expand it out a little bit more, most of the action in the market and the gains in the market this year have come from data center-related stocks. Now, that even gets out into air conditioning stocks, believe it or not. A.O. Smith, A.O.S., is one of the hottest stocks in the market today. Because they make air…
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, and boom energy would be another one.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes. And I see Halliburton is making a big investment into an energy startup. And we know that even an oil stock like Halliburton, these data centers have to be powered. Solar and wind is not going to do it. It won’t do it. It takes power. And it’s coming right now from liquid natural gas. It’s coming still from coal-fired power plants, and someday they hope to run these data centers via nuclear with the small modular reactors. So that’s all it. Now, if I go down my list here of the top-ranked stocks in the market right now, they’re all within this kind of universe. that I just described. And from an ETF point of view, that would be information technology, that would be semiconductors. It would be, there’s some AI-centric ETFs, such as Roundhill Generative AI. You’ve got Global X AI and Technology, which is AIQ. You’ve got Global X Data Center and Digital, which is DTCR, if you’re more into buying the ETFs. This is the center of the universe right now. Here’s one, Generative AI, WISE. Now, every year changes. The center of the universe in 2022 was completely different from the center of the universe today. It moves. It’s a moving target. And that’s why I invented an app that is relative. It takes a look at the market on a relative basis, one against another, and tells me where the strength of the market is. And I can also drill down Once I find a good neighborhood and find the best home in the market, the best condo, the best place to stay, and on and on and on. So that’s the whole theory behind the best stocks now. If it didn’t work, it would not produce results. I make no guarantees. But you can get a four-week trial to the newsletter by going to GundersenCapital.com. And testing it out. You get the app and you get the live trades for four weeks. It’s the most generous offer on Wall Street. We’ve been flooded with new people wanting to try it out. You go to GundersenCapital.com. And if you look at your portfolio and you see Disney and you see Procter & Gamble and you see Kimberly-Clark and you see AT&T and you see Verizon, just know that you own soggy stocks. They’re stodgy old growth giants of yesteryear. Look at where the center of the market is today and how far those stocks are from the center of the market, and it’s reflected in the performance. Over the last 10 years, Disney, 1% per year. 1% per year is what Disney has returned, when NVIDIA is 72% per year. So that should give you some clues as to where the center of the market is and how close you want to be to the center of the market. All right. If you want to sign up, call Edie. I’ll stay another day if I have to. While we’re in Minnetonka, Minnesota, talk to Edie at 855-611-BEST, 855-611-BEST, or go on to our website at gundersoncapital.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.
