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 08 :
And good morning and welcome to the Friday, November 15th edition of the Best Docs Now show. I am Barry Kite, planner and analyst here at Gunderson Capital Management, taking care of show duties for Bill this morning. He’s had a busy week and he’s been typing away, so we’re going to keep him in front of the computer screen for today. But as far as the markets go, we’ve got kind of a bit of a sell-off or I guess we could call it a pause in the market. We’ve got the Dow down 272 points. That’s 0.62%. The S&P down almost a percent, down 0.9%. That’s 53.5 points. NASDAQ down 276 points. And that’s a total of 1.44% for the NASDAQ. So… Sell-off there, we’ve also got crude oil at $68.32, down 0.5% today. And gold finally getting a bit of a bid, back up today $8 to $2,574. And that’s 0.3%. And Bitcoin cooling off just a tiny bit up at $88,705. So welcome to the Friday edition. It’s November 15th, halfway through the… Halfway through the quarter already, edition of the Best Docs Now show. And we’ve also got Jeff Webster here joining us on the show, Vice President and Advisor here at the firm. Good morning, Jeff. How are you?
SPEAKER 01 :
Good morning, Barry. I’m doing well. It’s an exciting time. It’s been a terrific week and a half since the elections to see – all the activity in the market, all the activity with our existing clients and the new folks that are interested in the various things that we have to offer.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, certainly it’s been a busy time. It’s kind of opened up the floodgates a bit just in terms of market activity. But certainly, kind of like I said, looking at the date today, and it’s kind of hard to believe that we’re – Already halfway through the fourth and final quarter of 2024. Certainly seems like a bit of a cloud has been lifted off the market after the election results, particularly just some of the uncertainty around that. We’re getting close to the 2025 outlook season. Of course, it’s always interesting to see how your big wire house firms will come out with what they’re looking at for 2025. I’m always on the lookout for this time of year for that type of outlook. those types of pieces of research just to get an overview of what people are thinking out there. It’s certainly pretty interesting in terms of seeing the new effect of the administration, how that’s going to affect economic, different sectors of the economy, different earnings projections. And we’ll talk through the quote-unquote Trump trade a little later in the show and Certainly, it’s ripple effects that we’re seeing through the market and really just some optimism out there. I would have to say that’s what I’ve heard as well, Jeff, whether it’s from all parts of our client base and all different industries. Looks like the market took another breather yesterday and looks to be in the red this morning, but it makes two days in a row, I guess, after the market just went on a tear after the election results. I think I was looking at some stats. It’s the… The market was up the highest after a presidential election since the 1930s. So that was certainly a bit of a pop to what’s already been a solid year for the market and for the indices as well. But the market was down. S&P was down 0.6% yesterday. NASDAQ was also down 0.6%. And the Dow was down. Half a percent yesterday, and really kind of, I guess, towards the end of the day, we’ve had some Fed speakers out there. A lot of Fed speak this week, and Jerome Powell mentioned just in terms of the economy not needing to be in a hurry to lower rates. We’ve seen the long end of the curve, U.S. tenure, pop up leading into the election and afterwards. And you’re kind of seeing, and we’ll get into some of the inflation reports a little bit later, That were out this week, but essentially that pace of what the market was pricing in, in terms of those original rate cuts, Jeff, are now, looking at the numbers today, it was a 63% chance now that you’ll get a quarter point cut in December. It was just a month ago, it was 85% chance of a 25 basis point cut. And, you know, if you go back to where we were, you know, three or four months ago in terms of what the market was calling for in terms of rate cuts, it was, you know, we’d be another half percent or so lower, you know, if those would have came to fruition. So it’s pretty interesting just where we’re at from an economic standpoint. You know, do we… Does the Fed need to cut or do they not? And the economy keeps trucking along. I don’t know if you got a chance to look at any of the retail sales before. I know they came out earlier this morning. I didn’t have a chance to look at them just yet.
SPEAKER 01 :
The high-level things that I’ve seen is that there’s a little bit of an uptick and there’s some optimism that people are willing to spend retail dollars right now. Nothing significant, but I think a positive uptick is what I saw.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, I think, I guess the one thing I saw for retail sales in terms of potential headwind is I think there’s I want to say maybe it’s eight less shopping days, I think, this Christmas season than in years past, I guess. So it’s one of those ways that the calendar, I guess, works for Christmas shopping. So you’ve got less time out there this year to get out. and make those purchases.
SPEAKER 01 :
Did I miss something, Barry? Is Christmas happening on December 15th this year?
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, well, you got Thanksgiving pushed pretty far back, I think, in the calendar for November, which shortens up the time frame. I don’t know how you get eight days, but, yeah, I was thinking maybe seven would be the most you could get, right? Yeah. I’ve noticed that you’ve already been seeing getting inundated with emails and or text messages of 30% off sale. So I guess the retailers are trying to work those extra days back into it somehow, right? It feels like they always figure that out. Right. Well, you know, we’re seeing a little volatility in the market today, which is an un… John, today you’ve got actually $2.9 trillion worth of options expiring. So these days you tend to get a little increased volume or increased volatility. So I think that’s what we’re going to see in terms of some volatility today. We’re already seeing some red numbers, but… Anytime you’ve got, I think it’s $1.4 trillion of S&P 500 options and also another $595 billion of just single stock options that are all expiring today. So about in terms of when you’re looking at volatility in the market. Something else I saw was interesting yesterday just in terms of statistics and to give some global perspective on the markets is I guess it’s official that now half of the global market cap is built within the S&P 500. So when you look at just the global markets, right, now, Jeff, half of that global equity market is made up of the S&P 500. So it used to be, I think, around, I want to say it was around 40% at one point. But you’re talking a big significant piece of wealth in what makes up, you know, 5% of the global population. So, you know, big, I guess, you know, in terms of U.S. exceptionalism, right? I guess that’s an example at least for it in terms of capital markets. Wow. Yeah, and so the, you know, I’ve got to say, I mean, we’ve seen kind of that, you know, that optimism from, you know, whether it’s from clients, particularly after the election. It’s a little, you know, more refreshing. I don’t know. It’s pretty interesting just vibe-wise in terms of you know pre-election and post-election i think we’ve seen it in the markets and we’ll talk through uh you know other some other economic reports and we’ll talk through the trump trade here later on uh in the show but this is the best stocks now show we’ll be right back And welcome back here to the Friday, November 15th edition of the Best Docs Now show. I am Barry Kite, planer analyst here at Gundersen Capital, taking the wheel for Bill today. And we also have Jeff Webster on the show, vice president and advisor here at Gundersen Capital. Looks like we’re going to end up probably end up in the red at this point, at least where we’re at in the show. We’ve got the Dow down. 0.58%. S&P is down a little over 1%. And NASDAQ down 1.81%. We’ll get into some of the reasons why here a little later. But like I said, we’ve got a good number of options expiring today. So these types of days, you get some noise built into the tape a little bit here. But anyways, we’ve got certainly markets taking a pause from the lift that it’s had since the decisive decision a couple of Tuesdays ago. But the rest of the world economies are a bit unnoticed. And, Jeff, it seems the rest of the world, from an economic standpoint, seems certainly on a little less strong footing than the U.S. is currently. I just mentioned about the S&P 500 being more than… half of the entire global equity markets, which is pretty astounding. But from a Euro GDP standpoint, I mean, they came out with their Euro area GDP today, expanded 0.4% on the quarter over the last three months. It’s actually the strongest growth rate in two years. So I didn’t really realize that 0.4% was the strongest growth rate in two years. I guess they’re hanging their hat on that. And following a 0.2% increase, you know, last quarter. So, you know, there’s not much room for error there. And I saw where… If you potentially put in some of these tariffs, you could end up with negative GDP or zero GDP in the Eurozone just based on the potential tariffs. I don’t know if you saw any of that particular piece of the story, Jeff, in terms of what their go-forward potential expansion is in terms of GDP. And the U.K. isn’t far behind. I mean, their GDP rose at 0.1%. um, for the quarter. So, you know, barely, uh, you know, barely on the positive side. So it’ll be interesting to see how these other, you know, how the, uh, you know, some of these other economies that are, you know, almost kind of between a rock and a hard place in terms of, uh, in terms of the effect that we could potentially have right, uh, on, uh, on other economies with tariffs, even, even, even tariffs that aren’t, uh, aren’t, aren’t, aren’t, you know, very sizable could make a big difference, particularly for something as fragile as growth in the Eurozone.
SPEAKER 01 :
Certainly intriguing. Certainly intriguing. And one thing that caught my eye this morning is it looks like Warren Buffett is ordering pizza. You saw that one too. Yeah, he took out a bigger steak and Domino’s pizza, and he’s going to sit by the pool as he’s invested in Pool Corp as well. Those are two companies that I certainly am familiar with. It would be interesting. We have no position in either of those, and I’m not certain that they match up with the type of criteria that we look at, but it’s interesting to see what the oil is doing out there, and he’s going to sit on his lounge chair by the pool with some pizza, I guess.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, it was interesting. I was thinking Kraft didn’t go very well for him, so I guess now he’s throwing the cheese on a pizza. Let’s see if we can repackage it up, right?
SPEAKER 01 :
Doesn’t he have more dry powder than he’s ever had as far as…
SPEAKER 08 :
available cash and he’s probably looking to deploy it right and i mean the tricky thing for for that business right is you know either he has to you know buy publicly traded stocks right which you know he can get more money into them get more of that cash to work faster but you know really where their bread and butter is is obviously usually in the private business space and and Obviously, it’s a lot harder to deploy $300-something billion to private markets. You almost have to be. You almost have to be in the public markets to move some of that cash around. But it certainly caught my eye this morning with the dominoes move. We’ll see. You kind of keep track of those pretty closely, so you’ll have to keep an eye on how that works out there. Will do, absolutely. Well, from an equity market standpoint, it could be, like I said, it could do some bottom feeding, I guess, maybe in some of the European markets. We’ve got, it’s interesting because when I say they’re in between a rock and a hard place, you’ve got from a, From an inflation standpoint, they’re in a better position than we are, at least when you look at the actual numbers. France, their inflation rate was 1.2% in October. Spain was 1.8% in October. The problem is on the growth side. They’re going to be in a position where they will need to… uh, lower interest rates to, to, to, you know, to help spur growth. Uh, the problem is there is, you know, um, you know, by, by, you know, by lowering that interest rate, it’s going to make their Euro, um, you know, weakened compared to the dollar. And so, you know, we’re in a spot where we kind of can, can hold off, you know, lowering rates, which, which hurts the Euro. And then also when you, when you build in tariffs, it’s going to, it actually hurts the euro as well. So it’s just an interesting dilemma in terms of other countries that are kind of in a reactionary stage in terms of how the administration plays out and how things in the U.S. work out from an economic standpoint and thus almost dictating to the rest of the world in this particular situation, especially when you talk about slowing growth. China is still not really taking off, and Japan has always had a pretty minimal GDP over the last decade or more in reality. Very, very interesting from that perspective. And you had Powell yesterday, like I said, mentioning the fact that they’re likely not going to have the ability to pause or not raise as quickly if they want to. That’s only going to create more problems for the rest of the world in terms of a strong dollar. So you’ve seen one of the pieces of the market that’s increased since the election is the U.S. dollar. It will be kind of interesting to see how those ripple effects work, not just from a U.S. standpoint, but also from a global standpoint and demand for products around the globe. Well, we’re through the first half of the day’s Best Stocks Now show. We’ll be back for the second half here in a moment. Stay with us.
SPEAKER 07 :
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 04 :
We got to get together sooner or later.
SPEAKER 08 :
And welcome back here to the second half of the Friday, November 15th edition of the Best Docs Now show. I’m Barry Kite, planer and analyst here at Gunderson Capital, serving as relief captain for Bill today. Giving him a break this morning and I’m joined here with Jeff Webster. on the show, and we’ll quit looking at the indices because NASDAQ’s down about 1.9%, and a lot of red on the screen at the moment, so we’ll focus on a different part. We’ll take a look at the Trump trade here in a moment and just kind of, you know, just think it’s an interesting kind of exercise to go through and watch how different parts of the market react on various news. And we’ve seen some different signals in the market, so it’ll be interesting to look at there. And of course, you can stay up to date with our thoughts and Bill’s thoughts on the market. Of course, you can get the newsletter at GundersenCapital.com. You can also go there and get Four free weeks of the live trading subscription, which you kind of get a play-by-play from Bill during the trading day. Go to the website, GundersenCapital.com or If you’d like to talk about your portfolio allocation or kind of positioning, we’re always happy to do so. Welcome to give us a call at 855-611-BEST. That’s 855-611-2378. Well, you know, I don’t know. I keep, as we get, looking at the calendar today, being so close to the, you know, almost end of the year here, it’s pretty wild. And so as we get kind of closer to 2025, you know, you’re going to hear more prognostications regarding you know, what the coming year has in store for the markets. And, you know, I kind of like, and you’ve heard it a bunch lately too, Jeff, is I like Bill’s analogy referring to, you know, the new, you know, kind of Trump’s victory kind of ushering in a new page, turn the page on the market, and we kind of have a blank canvas to, to work with, and, you know, you’re going to see, I don’t know, I just kind of find it, you know, pretty interesting and fascinating in terms of the various effects that you’re seeing with some of these decisions, you know, almost like, I guess, brushstrokes, if you will, right, as, you know, these different announcements begin to have different effects on different parts of the market. You’ve kind of been kind of a play-by-play along the way, wouldn’t you say, Jeff? Yeah.
SPEAKER 01 :
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think, you know, part of me as I look at what’s going on in the market, you know, I see some things going down. I think the good news is there’s a lot of people out there that were holding until the election took place to figure out where they wanted to potentially redeploy. I think this is giving investors an opportunity to see prices come back down to more normal ranges so they can, in fact, invest. You know, the last several days have been very expensive. So I think it’s going to create some opportunities out there. And I think what I’m seeing, at least, is the greatest volatility right now is just some of the more speculative companies in biotech, in energy, Although I look right now, some of the uranium companies are way up right now. I mean, one of the top gainers, an organization I’m not familiar with, Uranium Energy, they’re up over 10%. A company that we’ve been involved with in the past, Cameco, they’re up today as well. And so while some of the alternative energy companies in the nuclear space you know, are a little volatile today. Some of their uranium companies are way up. So I think you just have to understand those perspectives as you take positions in those organizations.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, and I think these appointments, number one, these appointments affect market sectors, right? And so essentially creating or adding momentum to some sectors and certainly causing headwinds for others. And that shows up in the prices of the underlying stocks affected by, you know, the latest legislative, you know, kind of reshuffling of the deck, if you will. And, you know, for those active in the market, it really does provide an opportunity in terms of creates, you know, opportunity in new individual stock selection universe, whether it’s, you know, different sectors that haven’t been a laggard or, you know, if it’s giving additional boost to places that have already had some momentum as well. But policy change certainly creates winners and losers in the market. And so from an active management standpoint, it’s really kind of looking at it as an opportunity in terms of being able to find some differentiation and certain sectors being certainly more attractive than others at certain parts of the time frame. And you’ve seen, I think, the overall market opinions from an overall market perspective have certainly been net positives. I’ve read some note from From Jeffries in terms of they expect the Trump administration to get off with a fast start this go-round and kind of expect that to be kind of a next leg up for the markets. Barclays also kind of chimed in that they kind of feel like the election outcome will continue to drive um you know continue to drive uh the market trend uh upward uh as you know in other words the election doesn’t change right the current trend um and you know it’s funny even you know we’ll get into some of the selections here in a moment but even you know some of the non-choices have even you know biggest you know non-choices for cabinets almost have as much uh market-moving capability as actually, you know, who’s getting picked for these positions. I was, you know, thinking about, you know, of course, you know, Jamie Dimon from J.P. Morgan, you know, not going to be the Treasury Secretary. So, you know, even, like I said, even a choice with someone, you know, they didn’t pick, right? You know, could you imagine if they did pick him in terms of what kind of market-moving effect that may have, you know, particularly in the banking sector, right, with the potential power grab that would be at, uh, you know, at the helm of, of JP Morgan. And so, um, you know, even, even selections of people that don’t get chosen for the, you know, for the cabinet have a, have a big, you know, potential market moving effect. Um, of course you had, you know, RFK junior, um, you know, yesterday in terms of being the, uh, you know, we’re going to, I guess going to be named as a official, I guess it’s going to be named as the department of health and human services. And of course, uh, You know, that’s certainly not a fan of big pharma. It’s one of the reasons, you know, Bill kind of read the tea leaves and we got out of some Novo Nordisk and Lilly positions simply because, you know, in that environment, it might not be the best place to be, right, regardless of if, you know, constructive… outlook for GLP-1 drugs or what have you, you still have that potential headwind of who’s in charge. That’s one piece or one place that may make sense to sidestep. You’ve seen it in the first place you saw it was in some of the vaccine makers. I think BioNTech, which is BNTX this morning, I think was down over 7%. Novavax, it’s NVAX, down 7%. And so, you know, these, whether folks are in those markets or not, right, these decisions certainly create, you know, winners and losers across markets. So, It’s just interesting to watch how some of these different choices will kind of ripple out through various pieces of the market. In some places, it makes you want to be there. In other places, it makes you want to kind of stay away or at least know the risks that are out there. Funny story in terms of RFK not being a fan of food additives, right? I came across an interesting story. It just happened to coincidentally come out. I don’t know if you saw this one, Jeff, but Kraft Heinz has got to face a class action lawsuit over – false mac and cheese claims um and so they they made the false claim that uh that the i guess the macaroni and cheese was uh um had no artificial flavors preservatives or dyes um and so there uh there there’s a clash action lawsuit uh that was able to be filed against craft so Those are things, parts of the market where other places, food dyes, things of that nature. In Europe, they already make Froot Loops with beet juice or who knows what they make it with. Those are kinds of ripple effects that we’ll see through the markets and potentially on our table at some point. We’ll be right back for the last quarter of the Best Docs Now show. And welcome back here to the Friday, November 15th edition of the Best Stocks Now show. I’m Barry Kite, planner and analyst here at Gunderson Capital, finishing up the week for Bill today. And we’ve got Jeff Webster on the show as well, vice president and advisor here at the firm. Of course, if you want to stay up with Bill’s thoughts on the markets and certainly the S&P outlook, especially as we’re going through earnings season, and he’s updating that weekly, feel free to reach out to us at GundersenCapital.com. You can sign up for the newsletter, sign up for four weeks of the live trading subscription. You know, just kind of now’s a good time to plug in, particularly when, you know, when you have a change in the markets. You’ve got, you know, certain trends are going to end. Certain trends are going to begin, and then some trends are going to potentially accelerate. So, you know, use this as a resource. Go to GundersenCapital.com, or you can always give us a call at 855-611-BEST. And, you know, these are the times, Jeff, I think where, you know, certainly, you know, where opportunities for active management or just, you know, opportunities for, you know, some form of management, particularly when you’ve got the environment moving potentially as fast as it is out there. And, you know, some folks just don’t have the time or don’t care to do this. Of course, their day job is keeping them busy. busy and it’s just now I think as much time as any is just having that ability to kind of stick and move right with what the market’s bringing.
SPEAKER 01 :
Absolutely. I mean one of Bill’s greatest principles that he emphasizes is that earnings drive stock prices and I think As we’re in these times where there’s uncertainty, how is this cabinet secretary going to affect this industry and what’s going to happen when all these options are called or what have you at the end of the month or today, I should say. That’s where it’s important to be able to lean on an organization that has very deep experience that can help you analyze what your options are, help you determine, you know, which of the choices that you have would be the best one relative to, you know, your objectives and the goals that you’re trying to achieve, help you analyze, you know, different positions, and to give you, you know, straightforward, unbiased feedback on what’s going to be best for you. I mean, that’s, you know, as a fiduciary, That’s our obligation is to do what’s in their best interest. And as we talk to people, I think they’re greatly appreciating the information they’re getting from us. And we’ve had literally hundreds of people sign up for the live trading subscription for the next four weeks. A number of those folks have reached out to us and said, hey, you know what? I might need some help here. And they’re having honest, transparent conversations about what they’re trying to accomplish and what they know and what they don’t know. And it’s a great opportunity for folks in our organization to provide some value and steer people in the right direction.
SPEAKER 08 :
yeah it’s it’s it’s you know we’re we’re a decision maker right it’s like uh you know a lot of times especially you know passive strategies right there’s really not many decisions uh being made um you know a lot of times one decision and then that decision you know goes on for for an extended period of time um but you know we’re we’re you know bill’s a you know The decision maker has to decide if it’s a name we want to continue to own, a name we want to add to, a potential target for one of our portfolios, really valuing those things on a daily basis. um you know the uh the the paralysis by analysis is real right where you know there’s a lot of information out there and um you know you can put it all together and then you’re still um you know as an individual investor you still got to you know kind of pull the trigger on it right from a um you know from a you know from a kind of in terms of implementing your analysis and so that’s where But, you know, it also kind of comes into play in terms of, you know, directing on that decision-making and, you know, offering up, you know, a particular choice. Hey, this is what we’re doing and, you know, and letting that be known and transparent. So it’s a changing landscape out there, and these are times where, you know, you have, I mean, you have an outside – change to a particular trend, right? If you just look at lines on a screen, right, you can see a trend in markets, and then you’ll have this kind of shift or a move. of the line. And that’s usually, you know, some event, right. That took place. That’s outside of, um, you know, outside of the purview of, you know, of, of, of kind of what was currently going on. Right. And that can be good or bad. Um, and so you’ve seen, you know, you kind of see, you’ve seen that shift, uh, in the market. You’ve kind of seen that shift in certain sectors. And, um, you know, those are, those are the opportunities that, uh, that bill sending out messages on. So,
SPEAKER 01 :
Yep. I mean, Barry, you look at, you know, some of the things that we’ve talked about. I mean, I’m just looking at some of the top gamers that we all might recognize. I mean, Palantir, they’re right up at about 9% for the day. App Lovin’, you know, one of my favorites. You know, I call it the app that keeps lovin’. They’re up. So there’s, you know, there’s good things happening out there in the market as we see some normalization taking place. And again, I think we are in a position to be able to offer sound advice and to help people make good decisions that will allow them to grow their wealth.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, and it’s really been interesting, and you named off a couple of software names. It’s really kind of that next we talk about in terms of AI. It’s kind of that next realm right outside of power, chips, data centers. Eventually, you’ve got to use that computing power for things. for some form of application, right? And that next tier is going to be, you know, winners and losers in the software space. So, you know, kind of, you know, other pieces of the trend and market trend that are changing on a daily basis. And that’s what, you know, that’s what builds, you know, strategy in terms of the app and, you know, just performance. Creating a screening stocks is very much driven by that momentum and particularly sector momentum. And we’re seeing that some momentum in certain sectors and momentum just beginning in others. So keep up with us. Feel free to go to GundersonCapital.com or certainly you can always reach out to us. Give us a call at 855-611-BEST. That’s 855-611-2378. And have a great weekend, everyone. Be well.
SPEAKER 05 :
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 SIBC and FINRA.
