SPEAKER 01 :
And welcome to…
SPEAKER 04 :
What is today? Wednesday. It’s Wednesday already. Long week. Yes, and Trump’s in China, just landed in Beijing, and that should be interesting. The semiconductor stocks are on fire. This morning, we have two big winners here this morning in Nibius and what’s the other one? Tower. Tower Semiconductor is doing well. But the markets overall, the Dow’s down 164 right now. That’s a third of a percent. The NASDAQ is up 12 points, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s that little slice of pie that we’ve been talking about that has the cherry, the whipped cream and the cherry on top. It’s that AI and it’s that semiconductor. And today the two big winners are NBIS, Nebius, which we own in our ultra-growth portfolio, which is sizzling this year. And we own Tower Semiconductor, which is also, I think one’s up 15% and the other one’s up 17% today. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is down five points. The gold market down is pretty much flat. Bitcoin is down a little bit. And crude oil is up 61 cents. No progress being made in the straight of her moves from what I can tell. oil’s at 102.79 but the big story is trump uh touched down in beijing oh maybe a couple hours ago so welcome to today’s best stocks now show with professional money manager bill gunderson president of gunderson capital management and i’m here with barry kite our chartered financial analyst and barry i made the comment yesterday to our subscribers uh the chip stocks were down About 4% to 5% on average yesterday, AMD, NVIDIA, all the usual suspects, ASM lithography. And the reason for that was there was some hubbub out there, some murmuring out there that the trip to China would be bad for the chip stocks. And I wrote at the end of the day, I said, you know, that’s kind of like assuming a lot here to sell these things off 5% today because you think there’s going to be a bad outcome in Beijing for the chip stocks. Isn’t that funny how the market gets ahead of itself on the downside, and it does get ahead of itself, too, on the upside. But I just said, that’s kind of a strange conclusion to make this early on.
SPEAKER 03 :
It was because Jensen wasn’t going to make it. We talked about him getting snubbed potentially on the trip. Oh, he’s on the plane. And guess what? He made it. And so since then, that’s what you’ve seen this pop.
SPEAKER 04 :
Do you remember that video of the plane leaving Afghanistan and all those people running after it with their suitcases and trying to climb onto the plane? Well, that one of those with Jensen Wang this morning going, wait for me, wait for me, don’t leave without me. And yes, he is on the plane. I don’t know if that’s what set the semiconductors in motion here today with Wang being on the plane, the Wang effect. Or there were some strong earnings from Tower Semiconductor. Holy cow, TSEM’s up like 17%. And then, of course, Nibius, their sales growth was just incredible, like sevenfold growth. Sales growth, which is absolutely incredible. So you had a rough day in the market yesterday, especially in the AI. The Dow was up a little bit yesterday. And the only sector that worked yesterday, which sector do you think it was with oil up 3.25%? Yeah, if you owned oil stocks yesterday. So if you want to own 100% oil stocks, which I don’t recommend, you had a good day yesterday. We own maybe four or five oil stocks. And VG did very well yesterday. Venture Global signed some big, big contracts. And that was a big winner for us. But… it was more than offset by the down day in the chip stocks, which are the number one sector in the market. So they’re going to be the most vulnerable when you get some profit-taking and some sell-offs that come into the picture. And we saw that yesterday. I’ve seen so many sell-offs in the semiconductor sector during my 25 years in the business, I’ve lost track. Okay? Right. I can’t even, yes. How about the PPI? Anything in the PPI today, Mr. CPA or CFP?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, well, that’s what put kind of a cold water on the futures this morning. So it started out that Jensen’s on the plane. And so the chip stocks were way up. Yeah, and futures took off. And then, of course, I think around 830 or so, the PPI came out pretty hot. I mean, month over month jumped 1.4%. uh, consensus was a half a percent. So, you know, pretty much doubled, uh, consensus. So, uh, as we, I mean, as you would expect, right? I mean, a lot of these input costs we’ve talked about going up. I don’t know who makes the consensus for that, but, uh, you know, half a percent would have seemed pretty tame in my opinion, but, uh, But, of course, you look at it, I think it’s the highest reading since March of 2022 in terms of the increase. Of course, year over year, PPI is around 6%. Consensus was 4.8%. So, I mean, we’ve talked about PPI kind of can be a precursor to CPI going up. Either companies are going to pass along these costs or they’re going to eat them one way or the other. And so it’s either going to affect earnings or it will affect CPI. So we’ll see how it plays out and how long it plays out.
SPEAKER 04 :
The bottom line is for me, in an income statement, when something extraordinary happens, that becomes a footnote in the income statement as an extraordinary item. That won’t happen in the future. And I just wonder if you shouldn’t look at this Iran war and this big spike in oil like that, that this is an extraordinary event, an extraordinary item on the PPI. And likely a temporary one, right?
SPEAKER 03 :
And likely a temporary one. So we used the word temporary yesterday instead of transitory, but it should be. You know, this is something at some point it’s going to open up, right? I mean, the street’s going to open at some point. It’s going to be in the world’s best interest to do so. And it’s going to be in money’s best interest to do so, whether we like it or not. Eventually money figures out a way to flow, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
And I got to believe that Iran is going to come up in the discussions in Beijing. Oh, very much so, yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. And I think that’s why we haven’t, you know, while Trump has kept the ceasefire essentially in place, even though it’s kind of been violated a few times, and, you know, wanted to keep this open until these discussions. And then discussions don’t go well. I would expect, you know, bombs to start flying again, actually. I mean, we’ll see what happens.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. You know, Trump didn’t even know that Wang had not been… Some head’s going to roll over there in the White House Corps. Trump called the NVIDIA invective and asked him to join the trip. A source familiar with the situation told… Imagine that trip flying on Air Force One to Beijing. What a fun time with all those head CEOs on there.
SPEAKER 03 :
So Wang flew to Alaska. I’m thinking, like, are they all on the same plane? Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
No, they sat down in Alaska, and Wang flew from his San Jose perch up to Alaska and joined them on Air Force One. I don’t know if he had his bags packed and his little toothbrush ready or what. In a social media post, Trump confirmed that Wang was aboard Air Force One and denied reports that the NVIDIA boss had not been invited. He added that opening up China for U.S. businesses would be his first request to Xi, and Trump is bringing more than a dozen U.S. executives to Beijing this week, where he’s going to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping Thursday and Friday. It’s a quick trip. It’s a round trip. Imagine what the gas cost at today’s price to fly all those folks in that big jet airliner to Beijing and back. Round trip tickets are a little bit more these days than they used to be. In the meantime, China is criticizing the U.S. chip equipment bill. So you’re jawboning right now in front of the meeting. You’re airing your grievances in the public so that it gets into the ear of the other person. China is pushing back against a proposed U.S. legislation that would restrict its chip makers in the AI race. A move that highlights Beijing’s concerns. The proposal called the Match Act, that’s a big one to watch over the next couple of days, is likely to be raised in discussions this week in China alongside a meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping. Trump has not imposed new rules on technology exports to China despite national security concerns. And, of course, he’s got all that big delegation of 12 people with him. The MATCHAC intends to close gaps in sales of chip-making equipment to China. So that’s the equipment. That’s Applied Materials, Lamb Research, KLA, those kinds of companies. Now, show what chip rally or what chip correction canceled the chip sector panic alarm, which I heard a little bit from some subscribers yesterday, at least for now. After Tuesday’s sharp intraday plunge, they were down about 5% or 6% at one point across the board. I think Qualcomm was down like, which is a crap stock. Qualcomm was down 11% at one point. The SOX index was down 3% yesterday after falling as much as 7% intraday. And that was the other thing, Barry, that I see. By looking at all the charts like I do on a daily basis, I can see when the dips are being bought. And the chip stocks actually recovered quite a bit from their lows in the last two hours of yesterday’s market session. And I said, you know, that’s really good. That’s really bullish that they’re still buying the dips. And you know what? These people that short the chip sectors, oh my gosh, that’s like walking on a landmine in a field of landmines trying to short the hottest sector in the entire market. And I’m sure there’s been a lot of that here going on lately. And that does seem to exacerbate, make the moves look a little more accentuated than they really are. And as I look across the board today, I’m going to look at some of our holdings here and see what I’m seeing right now. I see this. I see Nebius Group, NBIS, up 15.2% today. I see Tower Semiconductor, TSEM, up 17.6%. We have two major winners in the market today, and we are having a very, very good day in the market. I see the South Korean ETF up 4.0%. Let’s see how DRAM is doing today. DRAM is the memory stocks. In general, kind of the memory index, I suppose you could say, DRAM, even though there’s really only four core memory. Yeah, it’s up 5% today, and I think it was down about 5% yesterday. I see Micron up 4%. I see Marvell up 3.3%. And by the way, AMD disclosed an investment in Marvell. And we’re working on an article on, well, I can’t probably say it here on the air, but one of the major chip companies. I’m trying to get it polished off and submitted over to Seeking Alpha. Micron, Marvell up 3.3. And, of course, Marvell is really associated with the fiber optic chips, which, again, you’ve got the best of both worlds there, Barry. You’ve got fiber optics and you’ve got chips all in one stock. for those data centers dell’s having a good day it’s up 2.6 core weaves having a good day it’s up 3.6 nvidia is breaking out to new all-time highs and i think wang jumping on the plane at the last minute he threw his suitcase onto the plane and harrison ford reached down and oh Lift him into the plane.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, you know he had the bomber jacket ready. So, I mean, he was ready to go on a plane at any point in time.
SPEAKER 04 :
And Harrison Ford was wearing his bomber jacket and his hat, and he grabbed onto Harrison’s whip, and he slung him up into the plane, and he landed right next to Jamie Dimon and said, Hi, Jamie, how you doing? I just got to see that. There’s got to be a movie.
SPEAKER 03 :
In Alaska. Talk about a road trip. You know what I mean? Like you said, it’s got to be pretty amazing just to be on the plane.
SPEAKER 04 :
They probably have a little McDonald’s hamburger stand on the plane so that Trump can have his French fries. You know they’ve got Diet Coke. They’ve got Diet Coke.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
I think that stuff’s bad for you, though. I don’t know. I don’t know about that Diet Coke. Okay, let’s take a look and see what else is happening today. They did disclose Marvell in focus as AMD discloses a stake in the company, which is interesting, okay? You know, NVIDIA’s got a stake in a lot of companies. A lot of companies, as Jensen Wang invested in. And he’s one of the big reasons that this whole chip sector and this whole AI universe is so hot right now because of all the investment that’s being made. And they have all this money to throw around on these people that make the picks and shovels in this industry. Okay, I still remember the day Alibaba went public. And I remember Jack Ma, I was watching CNBC that day. I don’t know why. I must have been really hard up for entertainment. But anyways, he was going all around the floor shaking hands with everybody. He’s just a little guy. He’s not like an imposing figure or anything, Jack Ma. And he was the toast of the town here on Wall Street. I want to say it was 15 years ago. I just was looking here at the… But, you know, here’s the deal. It wasn’t long after that he disappeared and Hong Kong was taken over because Jack Ma was from Hong Kong. Alibaba was basically the Amazon of Hong Kong and China. Alibaba has been a horrible, a horrible stock. Over the last 10 years, 6% per year is all you’ve made by investing in Alibaba, symbol B-A-B-A. The S&P is up 26%. In fact, all the Chinese tech stocks, Tencent Holdings, JD.com, PDD, some of those names we’ve owned in the past, but not recently. Over the last five years, Alibaba’s been going down by 9% per year, while the market’s been going up 15.7%. And if you look at the last 12 months, Alibaba’s up just 9%, while the market’s up 31%. So it’s a stinker big time. And just for fun, while we’re here with – and it is a $300 billion company, a third of a trillion. If we go look at Tencent Holdings, which is probably maybe the number one stock in China from the tech standpoint, Tencent has done a little better – Tencent’s 10-year track record is 12.3, which is one half of the S&P 500. So why would you invest in a Chinese stock where you’ve not only got accounting risk, political risk, currency risk? Usually they’re behind the U.S. with their technology. And you’re just taking a lot more risk, in my opinion, and you’re getting half the return of the S&P 500. That doesn’t make much sense. And if you look at the last 12 months, 10 cent, which is T-C-E-H-Y, it’s down 8%. Well, the market’s up 31%. So… I can’t remember. Can you remember the last Chinese stock that we owned? It’s been a long time.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, it was, I mean, maybe, was it App, A-P-P? Was that there?
SPEAKER 04 :
No, that’s not Chinese. App Lovin’, no, no, no. I can’t even remember. I’m going to say maybe P-D-D. 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 GuntersonCapital.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. And a little bit of the steam has come out. A little bit of the starch has come out of the shirt. of the semiconductor sector, but it’s still pretty strong here this morning after the big sell-off. that we saw yesterday. There are a few other earnings that have come out. There is a lot of controversy and drama going on in the UK right now. I don’t know if you’ve been watching that, Barry, but the current guy, the leader, Kier Sturmer, he’s under heavy fire. From all sides.
SPEAKER 03 :
From all sides. All the coal, yes. The Brits are interesting in terms of how they, I mean, if they have some prime minister in there, it doesn’t matter if they’ve been in there for 30 days. If they don’t, if something changes or they don’t like the way things are going, it’s like, all right, let’s get another one. Switch them out.
SPEAKER 04 :
And, you know, one faction wants to keep raising taxes higher and higher. and they already have a very, very high tax structure in the U.K. J.P. Morgan, Jamie Dimon warned that he would scrap building a giant headquarters over there on, let’s see, what was it, Canary Wharf. I’ve never been to London. If you’ve been to London, he’s reconsidering plans to invest billions, in a new London headquarters at Canary Wharf. So hey, J.P. Morgan announced plans in late November to construct what is expected to become London’s largest office building in the Canary Wharf Financial District. And then all of a sudden they talked about raising taxes on the banks. Diamond’s comments came after calls for Sturmer’s resignation have intensified after Labor suffered heavy losses in last week’s local elections with dozens of Labor, which obviously tends to the liberal side, MPs, and several ministers reportedly urging him to step down And he asked whether J.P. Morgan might revisit its office plans amid the resulting political uncertainty. And Jamie Dimon made the bank’s position clear. It’s not the political instability, says Dimon, that’s making us rethink our plans. It’s the hostile banking. If they become hostile toward banks again, we’re out of there.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, and they used to be the financial capital of the world. Sure, London. They still are to a certain extent, barely. But the deal there is that they’re… simply shunning what got them there. In reality, what made them who they are, they’re essentially turning their back on it and regulating themselves to death. Their bond yields, I think, are the highest they’ve been. Horrible. I want to say since the mid-90s. I have to go back and look at it. They’ve had a significant move in their borrowing cost, and for them, When that happens, I mean, panic breaks throughout their entire system.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, you know, and Jamie Dimon says, you know, we haven’t damaged the U.K. in any way. We probably paid $10 billion in extra taxes by now. I don’t think that’s right or fair. If it happens too much, we will reconsider. And as you said, the bond markets have reacted very negatively to the prospect of Sturmer being ousted. amid concerns that a successor could shift the government further left with higher taxes and increased public spending, which is kind of what’s going on here in New York these days. Okay, the Golden Dome over America, which I think would be kind of nice. I might sleep a little better at night now that I’m covered by a Golden Dome. I don’t want to be hit by a ballistic supersonic missile at 2 a.m. A new estimate from the Congressional Budget Office suggests that the cost of building and maintaining the proposed Golden Dome, which Israel has, obviously, could reach roughly $1.2 trillion over two decades. far exceeding the $185 billion figure cited by Pentagon leadership. The ambitious program aims to significantly expand existing U.S. missile defense infrastructure. bolstering ground-based interceptors and upgrading sensor networks and enhanced command systems. So there’s a big price tag on that, but, you know, you’ve got to wonder how much is it worth to have that Golden Dome in place in case some rogue nation, in case Rocket Man over there in North Korea gets upset over a bad case of the flu or something like that. Disney highlights its dominant position in football at Upfront. Well, you know what? You can have your dominant position in football, the media giant says. You’ve returned to shareholders 1% per year. So I just look at this. I find that companies that aren’t very good and have produced lousy reports, what they are good at is press releases. Like this. Press releases. She says, when you combine NFL and college football, Disney will deliver 40% of the football impressions this coming season. That puts us in a position that no one else can match. Well, the question is, are you making any money?
SPEAKER 03 :
What are you going to do with it?
SPEAKER 04 :
Is it making you money? It’s one thing to have 40% of football going through your media, but is it making any money? Okay, here’s one. You know, Seeking Alpha, they have a quant system. I have a quant system. My system is Best Docs Now app. It was way before Seeking Alpha’s quant system. But I keep seeing, you know, and I’m a pretty regular writer there and I use pictures from my app in Seeking Alpha. I continue to see their quant system. it looks a lot more like mine i’m not blaming anybody for anything but the stocks are coming up with are not very good they’re missing something so they have a new screen a plus momentum stocks where have you heard that before momentum grades so i have the same thing i have i have a list there’s usually about a hundred or two hundred a plus momentum stocks every day These are the strongest stocks in the market regardless of valuation. It takes valuation out of the equation and it looks just at the performance of the stock. And here’s their top five. Franklin Resources? Are you kidding me? That’s Ben. That’s Franklin Funds, mutual funds, which are way behind the times. Then they’ve got the Chicago Board of Exchange. And then they’ve got First Cash Holdings, which is a pawn shop operator. I’ve had him actually the CEO on my show before. They’ve got Galaxy Digital, which is a Bitcoin company. And they’ve got State Street Corporation. Those aren’t the top momentum stocks. Let’s just go to the Gunderson app and compare my list versus their list. we’ll go to that that screen is right at the bottom if you click on stocks and then you click on uh right there the best moment daily a plus momentum stocks what’s the strongest stock in the entire market just from a performance point of view right now well if the internet will work here and these you know the internet’s kind of wonky here in new york city with all there we go The top momentum stock right now is Datadog, D-D-O-G. Well, that’s a lot different than State Street. The second one is the South Korea Index, and why is that? Because 50% of that stock or that ETF is those two memory stocks, Samsung and SK Hynix. It’s the number two momentum stock. Number three, the United States Oil Fund, USO, which basically tracks oil. Number four, Synovus Energy, which is CVE. That’s a refiner, a smaller one. Number five is Qantas Services, a stock that we own. We own, yeah. And it’s an infrastructure AI stock. Number six is United States Gasoline Fund. Well, how about that? Investing in gasoline has been a big winner, UGA. And then you’ve got the Norwegian Semiconductor Company, BE Semiconductor Industries. And then you get Arm Holdings is number nine, ten. And then you get Comfort Systems, you get Corning, you get Marvell, you get CrowdStrike. That’s a way different list of stocks than what Seeking Alpha is reporting. So they obviously have a different formula than me. And I’ll let you be the judge of whose formula is better. I don’t like the stocks that they’re coming up with at all. Monday, we’re all flying out for Minnesota. And Tuesday, the action begins with all-day appointments for four straight days. A workshop Tuesday night. And a good nap on Friday, Barry, on the plane coming home. I’ll be pretty tired by then, but it’s fun. I like it.
SPEAKER 03 :
I enjoy it. We’ve got a three-day weekend. Yeah, we’ve got a three-day weekend afterwards. I think it’s Memorial Day weekend, so the market will be closed that following Monday. So you get to rest up a little bit.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay. All right. That helps. That makes me feel a little better. I want to look. This whole nuclear thing, it’s been a slow start. And there’s really only one nuclear stock right now that has done much, and that’s GE Vernova. Remember that report that GE Vernova had? I’ve got an article on them, too, that I’ve got to polish off and get done. We wrote an article about GE after they had that monster report. But I’m looking today at, let’s see who it is here. Somebody’s recommended, I know this stock well, BWXT. I think there might be an I at the end. It is a nuclear infrastructure stock. And today you’ve got Anonym Capital Management, an activist investment firm, said BWX Technologies could see its share price climb sharply. in the years ahead if it successfully brings an older nuclear reactor design back to life to meet surging global energy demand. So they’re having the big sewn investment conference here in New York where I’m spending the week. Alex Silver outlined the firm’s bullish case for the company, which it has held in the portfolio for several months. Now when I look at it though, I don’t see much there myself. maybe down the line okay well if you’re going to invest down the line then you’ve got to be patient and you’re subject to a lot of whims of interest rates and rising and falling in the market as i look at the track record of this stock in the app i want to look at the track record it gets us it gets a performance grade of uh overall performance grade of let’s see Oh, it gets an A+. Okay, so an A-plus performance grade because it is up 92% over the last 12 months. And over the last three years, it’s delivered 47% per year. So, okay, I’ll give it that. It has had some good performance. But when we get to the valuation, that’s where I get concerned about it. The valuation grade right now, it’s got 73% upside potential because it’s only growing by 12% or 13% per year. 12% or 13% per year. And that’s just not enough for me. And Barry, as we look at Vistra, as we look at Constellation, those have been some duds. And you look at Oklo and you look at Nano. I mean, I know all of the nuclear stocks. And there’s just been a lot of duds here recently. And I haven’t really seen.
SPEAKER 03 :
Bloom’s about been the only player that’s done well. I don’t know that it’s nuclear. It really isn’t.
SPEAKER 04 :
And Rolls-Royce hasn’t done very well either. So this was once a very much kind of like the quantum stocks. It was Vogue. It was the miniskirt coming back and the boots. And it was the fad and the twiggy haircut, just like here on the fashion district in New York City. Fashion comes and goes. Fashion comes and goes on Wall Street. But at the end of the day, if earnings don’t kick in, If you’re not making money on those mini skirts, if you’re not making money on those twiggy haircuts, profitability, then the fad is going to eventually go away and they’re going to go somewhere else. And nuclear is a huge fad. It was a huge fad. Even the startups, even the fuel, the ones that were going to do the fuel, none of them have really panned out except for one. And that would be GE Vernova, G-E-V. So those are my comments right now on the nuclear. They even came up, I’m pretty sure, wasn’t there a nuclear ETF? No, there’s a quantum ETF.
SPEAKER 03 :
If you can invest in it, they’ve dreamed up an ETF for it at this point.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, I thought, someone asked me once, I had a friend that worked for an ETF company, and she asked me if I wanted to start an ETF. And she said, come up with a theme, because we’re creating all these theme ETFs. Hers was lithium. She created the lithium index, and they created a lithium ETF. And now there’s a rare earth ETF. And I actually came up with a few ideas, but I never did pursue it. I’ve seen so many new fads come along in recent years. You’ve got, well, now all of a sudden the memory. DRAM, yeah. DRAM and there’s another one too. I can’t think of the name right now. And I remember when the meme stocks, there was a meme ETF. And they come and go, and pretty soon all the money starts moving out of it, and they shut it down. I have a shirt that I wear at home. There was an ETF called Wear, W-E-A-R. Remember when we had all the wearable technology? Oh, we’re going to be like wired. We’re going to walk around wired with all this stuff, technology, blah, blah, blah. That thing lasted about a year. I still have the shirt. That’s all that’s left of that ETF, right? You’ve got to get at least about $50 million into an ETF just to break even. And if you get a billion, okay, two, three billion, then you’re making some pretty good change in those ETFs. So that’s that. We’re out of time. If you’d like to make an appointment with us about money management, I just read one today. He said, man, I’ve been listening to you. I’m ready to send some money your way and have you guys invest it. You can go to the website at GundersenCapital.com, GundersenCapital.com. Or you can call us at 855-611-BEST from anywhere in the country, even Alaska, if you’re watching Jensen Wang hop on the plane and Harrison Ford yanking him up right at the last minute. His feet were dragging on the ground. Did you see the sparks coming off his… Come on, Jensen, you can do it! And they closed the door just in time as Air Force One took off 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.
