Join Bill Gundersen as he navigates the tumultuous waters of the current stock market in this riveting episode. With the S&P seeing significant losses, tariffs created by trade tensions bring forth reminiscences of past economic upheavals. Bill and Barry Kite dive deep into the implications of these tariffs, discussing how they remind us of pivotal moments like the market crash of 1987 or the early COVID-19 economic shock. Although markets are experiencing pressure, interest rates are declining, posing both a challenge and an opportunity in today’s financial landscape. In a world where global economies are interlinked more than ever,
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 04 :
And welcome to the Friday, it is the Friday bloodbath version of the Best Stocks Now show. There’s got to be a capitulation in here somewhere. However, we’ll find out at some point in time. This is Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management. And I’m here with Barry Kite, our chartered financial analyst, who’s back on vacation. He should have stayed on vacation. He should have never came home. It wasn’t that long ago that the S&P was trading at 6,200 or 6,100, I want to say. And now it’s at 5,200. So things have gotten a lot cheaper. We’re down 166 points again on the S&P. That works out to 3.1%. As China strikes back with a 34% tariff of their own on the goods that we export to them, which I don’t know that they buy that many goods from us, but it is what it is. The Dow is down another 1,000. Another four-digit drop. It’s down 1,072. It reminds me of COVID. This is not COVID, however. And let’s not forget that that COVID in March of 2020 created one of the best buying times of all in my memory. But the Dow is down 2.7%. NASDAQ down 3.3% right now. Silver lining? The 10-year. Oh, my gosh. Interest rates have plunged. Trump’s been the best president for the bond market we’ve ever had. Now, the jury’s still out on his second term in the stock market. So welcome to today’s Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson. And I’m here with Barry Kite, our chartered financial analyst. Barry wasn’t there in 1987 when… The Dow went down 23% in one day, and then it climbed back within several months of that. But Barry’s dad was there, and Barry remembers what it was like when his dad came home from work that day. Right, Barry?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, you could see it. Put it this way. You could see it on his face. Yeah. You knew something happened? I wasn’t sure what it was.
SPEAKER 04 :
Sometimes my wife will say, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. Well, you know I did. It’s called the NASDAQ, the QQQ. Okay, we’re going to go through this because there’s differing opinions all over the place. I think the best interview that I’ve heard regarding this tariff matter, and even the conservative pundits, I mean the liberal pundits are all against the tariff idea. And even the conservative pundits are against it. I’ve listened to them all, pretty much. For me, the very best interview I heard was Charlie Kirk with Victor Davis Hanson, a fellow Californian, a Stanford scholar. I really liked his take, because he goes back to the old days when America was more of a… You know, grunt labor and muscle labor type of country instead of just software programmers and whatnot. Nothing against them. But I really liked his… I think it put it in perspective for me. We’re also finding out those that really hate Trump and this administration and those that are keeping their fingers crossed. That’s kind of where we are at right now. If there’s a silver lining, crude oil is $61.32 today. Do you know what that’s going to do with the gas pump, Barry? No. I mean, your gas, who knows? I paid $2.99. I filled up Wednesday, and it was $2.99. It’ll be interesting to see what it goes.
SPEAKER 03 :
Now, was that at Costco, or was that at a normal gas station?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, I went to my friend as a big employee at our local Refuel.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. Yeah, Refuel. So I paid $2.99.
SPEAKER 04 :
Am I paying too much?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, you know, I think at Costco with the membership, it’s usually a little cheaper, but anything under $3, right? Okay, all right.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, I’ve got to believe we’re going to see a big plunge in gasoline prices. That’s good for inflation, number one. Okay, number two. He’s been the best president we’ve ever had for the bond market. And, you know, Besant went in there. They obviously have a game plan, all right? And I think right at the top of their game plan was get government spending under control, number one. And number two, get interest rates under control, which would be good for the economy. Do you know that the 10-year right now is sitting at 3.94 with no help from the Fed?
SPEAKER 03 :
And you know what it was in July?
SPEAKER 04 :
4.8%. He’s brought it down 100 basis points. Now, that’s good for real estate. That’s good for the automobile market. That’s good for credit cards, et cetera, anything that’s interest rate sensitive.
SPEAKER 03 :
Good for the interest line on our U.S. budget. Well, yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
I mean, he can refinance a lot of our debt, right, at a much lower price, which I think is what they’re aiming to do.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s what I think they’re shooting for. I mean, what’s easier? Like I said a few weeks ago, what’s going to save more money, cutting 30,000 jobs at the federal level or reducing interest rates? We know our interest costs, and you know the interest costs. They’re huge.
SPEAKER 04 :
So, yes, okay, he’s been the best president I’ve ever seen for interest rates so far. But, obviously, the jury is still out on what he’ll do for the stock market his second time around. That’s all I can say was I never saw a better stock market in my career in the business other than the first few months of 2000 and late 1999 during the tech boom. Before it crashed, I never saw a better stock market than during Trump’s first administration. So the jury remains out on that, but I think you can look to the success that he had in his first term as president and hope that he’s getting all of this out of the way quickly, ripping off the bandage, so to speak, evening the trading playing field, and others are against him. Ben Shapiro is against what Trump is doing. Charlie Kirk had on Victor Davis Hanson. And I’ve listened to them all. Of course, CNBC is calling this a COVID moment. I mean, they are likening what’s going on in the world and the economy right now to the morgue trucks pulling up in COVID and loading the dead bodies into the freezer trucks, right, and everything. The economy has not come to a halt.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, yeah, look at the jobs report this morning. It’s hard to take. You’ve got to kind of peel, and it’s hard to do. And you’re touching all the bases, right? You’ve got to pull all the kind of political angst out of it. But all the news we get, most of it is obviously fed through that political lens.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, and I think people that have listened to me for any period of time know that I’m a numbers guy. And yes, this is going to have an impact. I do believe that the earnings for the S&P 500 are going to take a temporary hit. There’s going to be a material hit. What do you think this does to Gap Stores? What do you think this does to Abercrombie & Fitch? What do you think this does to Home Depot, to Walmart, etc.? And on down the line, I mean, it’s like this will probably put Kohl’s over the top. I don’t know how much of their stuff comes from China, but… Inverse ETFs against retail are doing pretty well right now. The VIX, you can buy the VIX. That thing’s up to 38.5 right now. So, you know, we’re going to… The companies that have offshored things… are definitely in the spotlight right now. And I think that really showed up big time yesterday with the sell-off in Apple.
SPEAKER 03 :
Restoration Hardware was an interesting one. Do they offshore? They have a lot of Chinese. I think a lot of their stuff comes from China, and they dropped 44% yesterday.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, okay. So, all right, they’re being punished big time. If you offshored… Well, you know, I mean, look, GM and Ford and those, they don’t have their hands clean. A lot of this stuff was offshored. In the San Diego area where I live, Fallbrook, California is the avocado capital. It was the avocado capital of the world. You know, the mountains of Fallbrook were covered with avocado trees, and then along came the EPA. The Water Authority, all the regulators in California, etc. And then came NAFTA, which pretty much was the final nail in the coffin of the avocado. groves and now you’re getting avocados at walmart for 78 cents or whatever the case may be they’re not the big beautiful ones like we had in fallbrook the fuertes or the zutanos but uh you know they they were a lot cheaper so there’s a lot to discuss today uh goldman sachs says tariff risk for industrial this is going to be an interesting earning season How many companies, Barry, in their earnings calls will mention tariffs?
SPEAKER 03 :
I think we had a record number last time. Yeah. The question is, I want to know how many of them will be able to keep giving guidance.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, I think they’re going to give guidance, you know, on the worst-case scenario. Yeah. And we’re going to really expose the companies that have offshored a lot of their goods. And, you know, and I do think that this will all settle out. Do you think China needs… Us? Well, there’s six freighters right now in our port unloading Chinese goods. We’ll be right back. And welcome back here to the second quarter of today’s Best Stocks Now show. Well, Barry, you weren’t with us yesterday. You had some well-deserved time off. But we went through the tariffs that other countries are charging us, okay? And if you figure, of course, now they’re doubting the math and everything because Trump also included in their currency manipulation and trade barriers tariffs. But China is at 67%, the European Union 39%, Vietnam 90%, Taiwan 64%, Japan 46%, India 52%, South Korea 50%, Thailand 72%, Switzerland 61%, Indonesia 64%, and the list goes on and on and on. And, of course, Trump has countered with half of that. in his reciprocal formula that he used. Now, how badly does China need us? Okay, so I remember at the bottom of tariff, I mean, we’re talking like February, March of 2020, and it seemed like the whole world was going to end. We were going right off of a cliff. and two-thirds of the world’s population would die from COVID, blah, blah, blah, and on and on and on. Okay, well, we called. Eventually, the market realized that it was going to get through it. Markets are pretty resilient, to be honest with you. And we had called an all-in buy in March of 2020. You go back in Seeking Alpha and look at that. It was one of the best buying opportunities of all time. How would you compare, Mr. CFA, this Trump tariff turmoil? It’s self-inflicted, okay? That’s the hard part.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s the hard part for me to digest, right, is the fact that it is a self-inflicted wound. Now, is there a larger plan, and is everything going to work out in the end? I have hope and hope that that’s the outcome. Do I wish we got a little more clarity and paint that picture for me? Sure. But it’s much different. You talked about – I was thinking this on the way back. You were talking about the white switch, right? It was the economy. Yeah. You knew in COVID that the economy was coming back on, right? Yes. So it basically flipped a switch, right? And you had that V-shaped recovery there. I guess this one would be, you know, if you’re using the light switch analogy, maybe it’s more of a dimmer switch.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, keep turning the lights back on very slowly, right?
SPEAKER 03 :
But the economy is still going. I mean, basically, you know, essentially the economy came to a halt. Yeah, we shut down.
SPEAKER 04 :
We couldn’t leave our house. I guess we could order from Amazon, which gets 70% of their stuff from China.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, couldn’t leave the house. I remember, you know, the only folks that, you know, a lot of folks at least around here that could move, certainly medical professionals, but it was really the ports, you know, folks who moved truck drivers, folks who moved some goods around. And other than that, there wasn’t a lot of, you know, everything else is pretty much, if you were driving around, you better have a good reason for it.
SPEAKER 04 :
or a permit you know and let’s not forget europe okay i if you import if china wants to sell an ev in europe a byd uh 17 percent tariff on that car so china is kind of squeezed wherever they look because everybody’s charging tariffs on them and how much does china depend on us. I’m sure you saw some freighters in our port loaded with containers.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, yeah. I mean, that’s one or the other. It’s harder to calculate, right? But obviously, we import more than we export, so you do… The old adage, US sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. They need us as a trade partner, or at least have historically.
SPEAKER 04 :
The second point I’d like to bring up, the first quarter was the golden quarter for European stocks. And I talked earlier this week, maybe last week, about how that’s all come to a sudden halt because they’ve woken up to a world, a whole new world, and it’s even worse than they thought that it would be, okay? So that European safe haven is definitely gone. And, you know, I thought for a while, I thought China might be a safe haven because they basically, like Alibaba just sells to China mostly, right? uh no tariffs there at all but what’s this going to do to the chinese economy and the chinese consumer how much of their economy is dependent upon manufacturing and exports a big chunk i’m guessing 80 percent well they’ve been trying to build you know they’ve been trying to build their you know quote-unquote middle class right to be more of a
SPEAKER 03 :
consumption economy more of a service economy like we are right using us as an example but you know certainly covid set that back and they’ve you know i mean it’s hard to build a middle class in a communist society by the way so yes it’s very right so that’s that they haven’t been successful at that so they are still very much dependent on manufacturing and exporting whether it’s to us or other countries so i mean they can lash out
SPEAKER 04 :
today this morning which they did i mean they’re putting a 34 percent tariff on anything they import from america which i doubt that there’s very much that they import from america yeah i mean more high-tech side of things right i mean it’s not like you know they’re not uh you know they were supposed to buy a bunch of our farming products right yes they haven’t they haven’t No, and they haven’t come through with that. So soybeans and the grain and things like this and our oil and natural gas. But they’re not importing model train parts and bicycles and pressure washers from us, right?
SPEAKER 03 :
They’re not importing too many Dodge Rams, I would imagine.
SPEAKER 04 :
So anyways, they’re going to come to the bargaining table, just like COVID eventually left the shores, and it wasn’t as bad as everybody thought originally. But I will say this. If you listen to CNBC right now or read the Wall Street Journal or listen to Bloomberg, you would think that this is worse than COVID. In fact, I heard one of their guys yesterday. I listened to them all. You know, I try to take it all in and try to discern for myself where the truth lies. UBS especially hates Trump. They haven’t done this yet, but I think they’re going to put a zero target price on the S&P 500 before it’s all over. So anyways, they’re playing into the panic, I would just say. There’s no question about it. Not that there’s not disruption. Not that Gap Stores isn’t in trouble and Kohl’s and others that depend on cheap China goods to keep the lights on and the doors open and the consumer coming in. But there’s going to be some heavy, big, the first shot, the first salvo has been fired today. And I truly believe that just like COVID, we got through it. Just like 08 and 09, we got through it. And in fact, in March of 08 and 09, that was one of the very best buying times of all time, if you look at what the markets have done since then. Now, are we there yet? No. I mean, the first salvo has been fired. We are sitting in a lot of cash, but we still have exposure to the markets. Maybe, I don’t know. I have to look where we’re at right now. 60-40, 50-50 cash equities. But anyways, I do truly believe that we will get through this. 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. Now, back to the second half of the show.
SPEAKER 05 :
And welcome back here to the second half of today’s Best Docs Now show.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, Trump says he is open to tariff negotiations if he’s offered something phenomenal. Typical Trump language. That’s where he begins the negotiations at. Now, let’s look at the fallout, okay? Nissan, big-time problems to halt U.S. orders for SUVs built in Mexico after Trump tariff shock. Okay, now, I’m not sure. I think it’s, is it May 2nd when the tariffs actually will be on the sticker price, or is it immediately?
SPEAKER 03 :
I think it’s May 5th. I thought it was May 5th. I know there’s some that kick in tomorrow. I thought there was some on April 5th. When they actually show up on actual sticker prices, I’m not exactly sure. I know some of it’s going to be up to, obviously, up to the company, what they pass on.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, well, they can lower the price of the car, but they can’t lower the price of the tariff. It’s going to be in there. Nissan said it will maintain its Tennessee plants Rogue production. That’s where they make the Rogue. After announcing in January it would end one of the two shifts this month. And that plant’s been there for years. And they also have a joint venture, does Nissan, with Mercedes-Benz. It will stop accepting additional U.S. orders for the Infiniti QX50. That’s a pretty car. And the QX55, which are produced where? In Mexico. Oh. Okay, so, oh, no, it says the global truck and tariff took effect on Thursday. Oh, okay. It is in effect now over there at Nissan. Okay. copper and aluminum prices plunge against again as tariffs spark worry over global growth slowdown well i’m just going to say that that would seem to offset the inflation fear from the tariffs maybe not entirely but it seems to me that you know the u.s buyer consumer is not going to pay the tariff
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s still the lumber. Yeah, it’s the lumber down 8% today. I mean, everything, input costs, right? What you’re referring to is input costs have been going down.
SPEAKER 04 :
You mentioned oil.
SPEAKER 1 :
$62.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s one of the major input costs. It’s in everything, all right? Copper, aluminum, absolutely diving, which to me is offsetting the… The tariffers, even though UBS says they’re predicting 5% this year in inflation, and it’s pretty obvious that UBS is looking at this as, you know, we’re going to get this guy Trump, we don’t like him, and a lot of people don’t like him, I understand.
SPEAKER 03 :
And how have you seen, Bill? I mean, you’ve noticed in terms of earnings estimates. I mean, I know you’ve been doing the newsletter. You haven’t seen any changes in earnings estimates from the street yet.
SPEAKER 04 :
No, but I do think probably by this, when I look at the earnings estimates today, Friday and Saturday morning are my day when it’s nice and peaceful, nice and quiet. I can think straight. The market’s not… being in jiving all over the joint you know i can think straight look at those earnings estimates i i don’t think that they’ve really been factored in i don’t think that they could really factor them in yet right but i would not be surprised to see a 15 percent hit to this year’s earnings estimates by next year i think everything will straighten its way out well we’ve already taken a 15 percent hit in the market i mean the market has already factored in a 15 percent hit to earnings this year 2025 And so, you know, it should be all up from here. I mean, I think it’s already been priced into the market. But it will start showing up now, especially Gap stores. You know that Starbucks, I mean, how much coffee do we grow in America? Do we grow any?
SPEAKER 05 :
Any?
SPEAKER 04 :
Does North Carolina have coffee trees? I don’t know. Does Colorado? Maybe Jeff knows. I don’t think so. And I think they’re going to have to make exceptions for certain items that we don’t produce.
SPEAKER 03 :
And they announced, I saw something where you announced a list of different items. I think it was yesterday evening when I was traveling. But it does create a lot of confusion, particularly if you’re the one that’s cranking out some Excel sheet with earnings estimates.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, Starbucks, all their product is imported for the most part, okay? Right. Now, Canada’s, I know we had a good jobs report, came in higher than expected.
SPEAKER 03 :
Blowout.
SPEAKER 04 :
But I see that Canada’s unemployment rate rises to 6.7%. Now, here’s the number that caught my attention. Do you know that the participation rate in Canada is 65.2? What are the other 35% of Canadians doing?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, they have a higher participation rate than we do. I think ours is about 52. No, ours is higher than that. I’ll tell you in a second. It’s pretty low. I’ve always been kind of a get-you. It’s like, what are the rest of everyone doing?
SPEAKER 04 :
What’s everybody doing? Well, they’re not manufacturing train parts and exporting them to China. TradeWeb. Post record volume, that’s a good little stock T-definition.
SPEAKER 03 :
62.4, so that sold us a little short.
SPEAKER 04 :
I thought so. Check out the VIX. The VXX is 38.5. That’s incredible. It normally runs at about 15, 16. So obviously investing in volatility has been a winner since Trump’s come to town. VXX is the ETF that you can invest in. I mean, the one sure thing right now seems to be volatility. Dan Ives at Wedbush, obviously not a Trump fan. He says, dark days ahead. Of course, they’re all tech, pretty much. Tech trade crushed by tariff. He’s calling it Armageddon. Hey, maybe Armageddon’s a trade war and not a nuclear standoff. Who knows? Trump’s tariffs are not priced in, says UBS. Inflation could rise to 5%. I call BS on UBS. I don’t see that, not with these commodity prices falling. And it’s pretty obvious that they are overstating things. CNBC, the Wall Street Journal is overstating things. And who knows, maybe on the other side they’re understating things. Bill Gross says investors should not buy the dip. It’s like catching a falling knife. But I’ll tell you, the guy I like, and I’ve followed him since I’ve been in the business, is Ed Yardini. Your dad probably followed Edward Yardini. He is a common sense numbers guy like myself. And just looks at the real world and the real numbers and tries to cut through the noise. Yardini, now maybe not today, no. Yardini sees great buying opportunity after terra-fueled stock market crash. He says, I think some buying opportunities are being created here. The founder of Yardini Research, which does a lot of what I do in the newsletter every week. It’s very similar to what I do. I’m just not as well-known as Giardini. I’m a complete unknown, like Bob Dylan was when he left Minnesota and arrived in New York. I still got to watch that movie. I can’t believe I haven’t watched it yet.
SPEAKER 03 :
As long as you last as long as Ed.
SPEAKER 04 :
As long as I’m in there when Ed’s still in there. He was on Bloomberg, who doesn’t like… Now, you’re getting slanted news. There’s no question about it. CNBC has it in for Trump. Bloomberg has it in ever since Trump called Bloomberg when he ran for president. A long time ago. There’s nothing worse than calling a short guy little Mike. They never get over that.
SPEAKER 03 :
No matter how big their bank account is, right?
SPEAKER 04 :
No. NVIDIA takes part in the three. Now, if I was going to invest, if you could pick one person to invest in today’s world, who would it be? Barry. One CEO. Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
I was thinking, in terms of what you’ve got to do is look at the people that are closest to Trump at this point. It’s not going to be Tesla. No, it wouldn’t be Musk.
SPEAKER 04 :
I would invest in Jensen Wang. I don’t think there’s a more brilliant CEO out there.
SPEAKER 03 :
And whose product is going to be needed. That’s the other thing, too. That product, right? No one else is replacing that product. No one else is going.
SPEAKER 04 :
AI is in its infancy right now. Now, would I own an apparel stock right now? Well, I own a little tiny bit. I think I own 32 shares at the whole firm, and I own them. In Deckers, okay, we thought that Vietnam, we got bad information that Vietnam was going to be treated very lightly in the tariff. Instead, they got whacked. Oh, man, I’ll tell you, VF Corp., which is Lee and Wrangler Jeans, Gap, Switzerland’s On Holdings, which makes shoes, Skechers. Now, you know what? I had this debate with my sister yesterday down in Florida. She says, well, corporate investors like corporate profits, and that’s why they offshored everything. or companies like Big Profits, but I also came back to it. I said, yeah, but consumers have driven that because they like cheap shoes and cheap clothing and have been a big part of that buying stuff that’s made in Vietnam. So anyways, there’s a lot to be debated here. I think it all works out in the end. Just give it some time. Like COVID, we’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 02 :
On a winter’s day.
SPEAKER 06 :
Go where you want to go. Do what you want to do.
SPEAKER 04 :
And welcome back here to the final segment of today’s Best Stocks Now show. VF Corp makes more than half its merchandise in Vietnam and Indonesia. Gap Stores makes 29% of its apparel in Vietnam and another 18% in Indonesia. While Vietnam is responsible for 35% of Skechers footwear, Swiss-based On Holdings makes all of their popular sneakers in Southeast Asia with 90% made in Vietnam. Who would have ever thought Vietnam? I mean, look, I grew up during the Vietnam War, and something’s happening here, and four dead in Ohio and all of that, and here, Vietnam. But Vietnam has the nerve to charge us a 70% tariff on everything that comes into Vietnam. From America. So I think they’ll come to the table rather quickly because they’ve become a big, big, big hub.
SPEAKER 03 :
uh of manufacturing and when i think about this in my head i mean that they almost have to come to the table right there has to be some resolution because what we’re never going to do we’re never going to make we’re not making nikes here anymore we’re not going to make hoka shoes here anymore we just aren’t we don’t have you know we’re not a we’re not a textile so that’s a that’s i mean they’ve been making textiles for how long So in terms of, you know, throughout history. So we’re not going to be a textile hub, I don’t believe, anymore, right? So, you know, so some resolution has to come.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s all they’ve got to do is lower their tariffs on things that they buy from us. And everything will be hunky-dory and they can go on. with their bustling little economy in Vietnam. Now, the carnage, Wayfair down 28.5% since this began. Five below is about 20 below right now, 28.2 below right now percent. Kohl’s is down another 23.3%. I’ve got to believe this is the death knell for Kohl’s. Gap Stores down 21.7%. Victoria’s Secret down 21%. American Eagle Outfitters down 18.5%. Boot Barn down 18.2%. Elf Beauty down 15.9%. Abercrombie & Fitch down 15.8%. Okay. And, of course, Apple in the eye of the hurricane. Now, here is one that they are. They’re lowering their EPS forecast for Apple for fiscal year 2025. So here’s your first shot fired across the bow. This comes from Needham. and Needham’s numbers are taken into account when they come up with that consensus estimate, they’re lowering their earnings from $7.32 to $5.22, 28%. That’s a significant drop because Apple offshored. And if you buy an Apple phone that was made offshore, I don’t know if they make any in the U.S. I doubt that they do. Now, they’re hoping for an exemption for Apple. In my opinion, I don’t think Trump’s going to hand out an exemption to Apple. Do you? Is Apple a necessary item, or is he going to punish Apple for moving their – does he want them to build them in Austin, Texas?
SPEAKER 03 :
I got to go back to, you know, I believe they did have, didn’t they have, I think he did put a few exceptions in place for them the first time around. But they haven’t done it yet. Not in this administration.
SPEAKER 04 :
Without an exemption, Apple would be, if he exempts Apple iPhones, that would be one heck of a buy at the current level because Apple, Needham’s priced in a 28% drop in earnings for this year. That’s based on where the tariffs are right now. Stellantis lays off workers temporarily in Michigan and Indiana amid auto sector tariff disruption. And we’re going back. I can’t wait to go to Bloomfield Hills. We’ve got it scheduled, I’m hoping by the end of this month, actually, to go there if Detroit’s still open for business. I mean, the last time we went there, we heard horror stories.
SPEAKER 03 :
About EVs, yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
They just hated EVs, number one. And number two, well, all of the closed factories and whatnot, right?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and it had to do with the, you know, had to do with all the, you know, kind of the new fuel standards were coming up. Oh, that was it. Yeah, number one, it wasn’t just EVs. It was also the fuel standards, which were engine development, all kinds of different changes from that standpoint, so.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, and China’s going to strike back in many ways. They’re doing an investigation into DuPont. Okay, there’s an American name if there ever was one. The pride of Delaware over alleged antitrust violations. Musk could be fined $1 billion plus for breaching EU’s DSA law. You ever hear of that one?
SPEAKER 03 :
They got a lot of laws over there.
SPEAKER 04 :
Then our companies are their ATM machines for Europe. Amazon launches a buy-for-me AI agent that shops on other sites for you. Okay, I don’t know what that’s all about. And what about the toy makers, Mattel and Hasbro? Maybe Hasbro’s going to change their name to Hasbin, but obviously, I mean, they build everything. Do you think they’re making Barbie dolls in Iowa?
SPEAKER 03 :
They are not.
SPEAKER 04 :
No. But, you know, look, I mean, this is all where these negotiations begin. And Goldman Sachs flags tariff risk for industrials ahead of Q1 earnings. They call out companies with strong ties to Mexico, such as Stanley Black & Decker. Okay, are you happy getting your hammer and your tape measure cheaper that’s made in Mexico? Are you willing to pay a little more? Can Stanley Black & Decker move their operations back to Mexico, or will there be some kind of negotiations? That seems to be the most likely scenario. Carrier air conditioners built in Mexico. Lenox air conditioners. Maybe Americans will start buying American-made products again. Only. And boy, you know what? I’d never buy another MTH train locomotive built in China. I took it back yesterday to the FedEx store. MTH gave me a return slip paying for the freight. That thing was a lemon. Totally messed up. From the factory. Brand new. You know how excited a guy is to open up a brand new steam big boy locomotive and it works like crap? I spent like two weeks trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. And I found out it was their manufacturing. My Lionel trains work just fine built in Concord, North Carolina. Thank you. Anyways, this has been a lot of fun, I guess. We’ll come back and do it again on Monday. We will get through this. I’m going to leave you with that message. Just like COVID, just like the financial crisis of 08 and 09, we will get through this. And those were some of the greatest buying opportunities of all time. We’re not quite there yet, but we will get through this. GundersenCapital.com, 855-GUNDERSEN. 611 Best. We are American-made. We’ll be back on Monday.
SPEAKER 01 :
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.
