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.
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And welcome to the Thursday, May the 21st edition of the Best Docs Now show and it’s getaway day here in Minnetonka, Minnesota where we’ve had a great time and we will be planning our next trip soon. We have to work it around the World Cup in soccer, which will be here in June. So that will have a lot to do with our decision as to where we go in about, let’s call it five weeks from now. Right now, we have a little bit of a downdraft in the market. We’re up very strongly here this morning on the strength of the AI stocks, but Let’s see where we’re at right now. Well, you know what? Things have improved quite a bit since the open. The Dow is now even. In fact, now it’s up six points to 50,015. How do you like that? Back above 50,000 again. The NASDAQ is down 87%. NVIDIA reported stunning results, but obviously it’s already been built into the stock. The NASDAQ may be down 89, but man, I’m telling you what, Arm, Holdings, Nippius, Marvell, The Network, Seagate, Micron, Sandisk, they’re all out of the gate with a rush. this morning gold is down 20 bucks per ounce bitcoin is down 363 and oil probably the bugaboo today it is up uh three percent three point eight nine percent to 102 dollars and 12 cents so welcome to today’s best stocks now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson of Gunderson Capital Management and GCG Advisors, a nationwide firm. We had Joel here Tuesday night at the workshop, and several of his team have been here with me this week. As they view the process that I have put in place in the management of money in the markets today. And we’ve had a lot of fun, a lot of good time returning home today, later this afternoon. Okay, here’s what we’ve got going on. We had a pretty decent day, actually. Let’s see, what was yesterday like? I’ve got to go back and think and remember. It seems like an eternity ago. No, yesterday was down a little bit. It’s okay. Oh, no, actually, it was a little higher. I forgot. Yeah, I had a possible U.S.-Iran deal. And then, of course, right after the close of the market, Jensen Wang does not waste any time. He reported earnings for NVIDIA, maybe the greatest stock of all time. I would be hard-pressed to think of a better one that went up so quickly. I mean, you could obviously make a case for Amazon. You could make a case for Microsoft. You could make a case for Apple. But the meteoric rise to over $5 trillion and into the Dow by Nvidia, I can’t ever remember anything like that during my career. in the market. How are things going between the US and Iran? Well, we’ll get to that in a moment. There are a couple of economic reports out today. This is Thursday. Guess what Thursday is? It’s initial jobless claims. Are you standing in line today to file for your unemployment check? I hope not. I’m not. Nobody from my firm is standing in line to collect unemployment today. We’re Last week, 209,000 people applied and made initial jobless claims. That’s a very, very good low number. If you’re one of the 209,000, it’s not very good, you know. If it’s your neighbor, you know, he’ll find a new job, she’ll find a new job. But overall, this continues to show no chinks in the armor of the jobs market in the U.S. economy. And even though you get a negative spin on almost everything in the other financial media, this is still a very positive economy that we are in. If you’re at the workshop Tuesday night, if you were able to find a seat, if you were able to find a cookie, if you were able to get into the drawing where I gave away an $1,100 prize, actually $1,080 prize, You saw me present the earnings picture for the S&P 500 in graph form. I like bar graphs. Bar graphs, very simple, easy to understand. They show the picture very quickly. And we looked at the current earnings picture for the markets, which remain very favorable. And the consensus S&P 500 target price right now out there on the street is about $8,400. which is considerably higher than we are now. But, of course, we’ve come a long way since my stunning buy call on the market back on April 6th, I believe it was, when I said this is one of the most compelling buys in the market that I’ve ever seen. And, of course, we’re up considerably since then. On the other hand, we do have a little bit of a weak report, but this should not surprise you with interest rates, what they are. I haven’t looked at the 30-year mortgage lately, but it’s got to be pushing 7% because the 10-year today is at 4.61%. That’s a problem. You’ve got turmoil in the U.K., fear of a second wave of inflation caused by inflation. Stubborn oil prices. And you’ve got the rates on the 10-year going up to 4.61% today. That’s a stubborn interest rate, very stubborn. And it’s obvious that bond investors are demanding higher interest rates right now. to make up for the inflation threat that continues to hang out there as oil remains above $100 a barrel again today. It’s back up to $102. It was under $100 when we started the day, but there obviously has been some negative develops maybe since the market’s open. Housing starts fall less than expected in April, and building permits rise more than consensus today. I talk to a lot of Minnesotans about the home market with Lennar building new homes, mowing down farms and land, and putting up housing tracts. They paved paradise and they put up a parking lot, said Joni Mitchell. Nowadays, it’s they paved paradise and they put up single-family homes with 7% mortgages. And obviously that’s a problem. A lot of these home builders are eating it on their end to finance these homes themselves to get that payment down, to get those interest rates down. And that obviously squeezes their profit margins. But the new home market and the resale market and the refinance market still continue to be very, very rough. And I would say that that is the weakest part of our economy right now, along with bricks-and-mortar shopping centers and bricks-and-mortar office buildings in downtown locations, which are mostly vacant right now. Quantum computing is the latest U.S. government equity bet. Okay. Well, since Trump’s been in office, we’ve seen an investment in Mountain Pass, which is MP Materials now. It used to be Mountain Pass, which is a rare earth stock. We’ve seen an investment in USA, rare earth, U-S-A-R. And we saw a massive investment into Intel by the Trump administration, which has been a pretty good bet, has been a pretty good return on investment. Quantum computing stocks rallied pre-market on Thursday after a Wall Street Journal report about the Trump administration awarding $2 billion in grants to nine firms in deals that include government equity stakes. This is something that really has not been done before. It has to some extent. but not to the extent that the Trump administration has taken it to. Global foundries is up 10.8%. They’re expected to receive $375 million. While companies like D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti, or is it Rigretti? No, it’s Spaghetti. Rigetti Computing is going to get somewhere in the neighborhood of, let’s see, $10 billion. Inflection, INFK, the deals have not been finalized. But the government is also investing more money into Vulcan elements, a magnet maker, and MP materials, which I just talked about, which is the rare earth stock. The report gave a boost to quantum computing stocks across the sector with some of the biggest pre-market gainers, including Regetti up 12.7%, IonQ up 6.8%. We are off to a very strong start here today. At Gunderson, Arm is up another 9.9% today. Nibius is up 10.6% today. Marvell is breaking out. Arista Networks, Seagate, Micron, SanDisk, Argan. Mountain Pass, Coreweave, USA, that’s a USAR is USA Rare Earth, and Carmel, which is the Greenland Rare Earth stock. That’s a long shot, critical metals. They’re all off to a very strong start here this morning, and that’s a good thing for us. UX exceptionalism may be back. Well, that’s an interesting thing because it’s kind of been lacking recently, right? U.S. exceptionalism may be back, at least tactically, as AI momentum. And America’s relative insulation from the global energy shock support continued outperformance, according to T.S. Lomberg. I couldn’t agree more. The European continent is suffering mightily from an energy shock. Bad policy. Bad decisions. Listening to the wrong people. Now you’ve got UK with a huge energy shock. You’ve got Germany. The motor behind the European engine with a huge energy shock, Italy, on down the line, they are hurting for energy. And we don’t have that problem in the United States because we have Texas, because we have Louisiana, because we have West Virginia, because we have the Bakken Shale, because we have the Permian Basin, because we have Houston, etc., etc., etc., we are positioned very, very well to also become a net exporter of the abundance of energy that we have, especially LNG, liquid natural gas, and companies like Devon Energy and Chenier, etc., are well positioned to be exporters of this badly needed commodity to run this badly needed business. Or is it badly needed? I guess it is, this AI engine, because it takes a lot of energy to drive the AI bus. And, of course, we are ahead of the rest of the pack. with nvidia with anthropic with open ai as it relates to the ai race and that is a u.s exceptionalism the second advantage for the u.s oh that’s the energy exposure we talked about that uh and I would say the one thing that we need to shore up is the rare earths, okay, the rare earths, and I would say the nuclear. Those are the two things that will ensure American exceptionalism going forward. This comes from T.S. Lombard. I actually knew a guy in Del Mar that started Lombard Securities in the Bay Area. He did very well for himself, thank you. He started it many years ago, and it was really the very first discount broker, which became a big thing, obviously. Now you don’t pay anything for trades. He was a major disruptor in my industry, and he was in our church, and he was in the Del Mar area. I can’t remember his name, but he started Lombard Securities. Of course, San Francisco has Lombard Street. That’s where it was located. And from Lombard Securities came many discount brokers. I remember TD Waterhouse in San Diego. I remember, of course, E-Trade. I remember several others of the discount brokers. Scottrade. I was with Scottrade. They had $7 trades. Would you pay for a trade now? Nada. Nothing. Crude oil plunged below $100 this morning on U.S.-Iran optimism and three more super tankers exiting the Strait of Hormuz. Can somebody out there maybe fly a drone over the Strait of Hormuz? Do we have any listeners that live near the Strait of Hormuz? Fly a drone so we can watch the movement of the tankers? Because that’s having a big impact on the stock market right now. A big impact on the stock market. But right now we’re back up above $100 per barrel. We’re at $102 per barrel. But Trump says that we’re nearing the end of the war. Okay, well, all right. Some 10 ships have crossed the Strait of Hormuz in the past 24 hours. It included small cargo ships and a chemical tanker crossing into the Persian Gulf, according to data from Kepler and satellite analysis from data analytics specialist Synmax. So maybe you go to their website, S-Y-N-M-A-X, Synmax. They’re providing this data analytics on the ships going through the Strait of Hormuz, which has a big major impact on the stock. Devon Energy is the biggest buyer in a record $4 billion U.S. government oil and gas auction. We do not own all AI stocks at Gundersen Capital Management. We have some exposure to liquid natural gas. And I have always found about maybe three or four or five stocks what I consider to be the leaders in that area. And Devin is definitely one of them. Devin is down a little bit now. But with an eye to the future, as I said, Devin is the biggest buyer in a record $4 billion U.S. government oil and gas auction. This includes drilling rights on federal lands, which obviously Biden banned in New Mexico and Texas. It was held Wednesday by the US Bureau of Land Management. The sale of 74 parcels covers 33,530 acres, primarily in the Permian Basin, which is Texas. and is another sign that President Trump’s American energy dominance agenda is delivering results, said Secretary of State Burgum. And Burgum, obviously, was the governor of North Dakota, home to the Bakken Shale, home to the great discoveries there in the continental shelf there, Continental Resources, Harold Hamm. From Oklahoma, Enid, Oklahoma, who invented, pretty much helped invent the horizontal drilling process. I had Harold Hamm on my show many years ago, and he was in my book, Best Stocks Now, many years ago. So Devon Energy buying a lot of that. Samsung surges today after strike averted, but some bonuses raise concern. Well, this has been going on for a long time, which has narrowed the supply chain down from four suppliers of memory chips to just three suppliers of memory chips. 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. Obviously get to NVIDIA’s earnings after the close last night. They continue to put out some of the most phenomenal earnings reports I’ve ever seen. But obviously, you know, a lot of that has been built into the stock for now, although I still think there’s plenty of upside potential going forward with NVIDIA. But you look at all the stocks that are in the NVIDIA universe today, like Arm, like Nebius, like Marvell, like Arista, like Seagate, like Micron, like SanDisk, et cetera, et cetera, CoreWeave. They’re all doing phenomenally well because they’re riding NVIDIA’s coattails. Okay, you know what? I don’t own all AI stocks. There’s a whole universe out there. But I will say that the market is pretty focused and concentrated right now in just a few areas. You know, it’s not much different in fishing. When I lived in San Diego, I kept my boat in the harbor. I was in Oceanside Harbor. I had a 38-foot egg harbor. So I sat up high as the captain of the ship, you know, And down below was the staterooms and the dining area and the little kitchen that I had. And on the back was a nice big teak wood deck to fish off of with a live bait tank. And I had radar on my boat, and I had depth finders, and I had autopilot on the boat. And when the tuna migrate off of San Diego, usually it begins about the 4th of July. The Portuguese that I grew up with used to say, light a firecracker and then go tuna fishing. And that’s when they would leave for their multi-week trips to fill the holds with tuna to bring back to the tuna cannery in San Diego. But, of course, the sport fishermen, like me, we fish closer in, maybe 50 to 100 miles offshore. And I used to get, you had to leave about 10 o’clock at night to get that far out, especially when it was 100 miles. I went clear down to Ensenada one day in my boat. I barely made it back. I didn’t gauge my fuel very well. Came back on fumes, was sweating all the way. Barely made it across the border. Or I may still be in Mexico. You know, you never know. I could have been confiscated by the federales down there. Somehow God was looking over me and brought me home. But those fish, those schools of tuna were concentrated in a very small area of the ocean. And not only that, they traveled very, very quickly. They could be in one area for a day or two, and the next day they could be 100 miles away from there. So the tuna fishermen, you know, they had several ways of tracking the schools. They had boats out there as scout boats. But if you’ve ever seen a tuna boat, that was a major industry in San Diego. And some of the richest people in Little Italy and in the area where I lived, the Medinas of the world and others that I grew up with that owned these massive tuna boats, they had a perch way up high. They called it a bird’s nest. I think it was called a bird’s nest. But it was like a watchtower and somebody would climb up the ladder way up there. And what did they look for? They looked for birds on top of the water feeding. Because if the birds were feeding on top of the water in the middle of the ocean, they were there for a reason. Because underneath there was bait. Earnings drives the stock market. Bait drives the fish. The fish follow the bait. It’s as simple as that. Just like we follow food and restaurants and buffets and things like this. Those tuna, those 200, 300 pound tuna, some of them have to eat their weight. They have to eat 200 pounds of food a day to maintain. They don’t need Lily. No, they don’t need those antagonists in that weight loss drug in those late stage trials. But if they spotted the birds up high… They would say, birds ahead, and they had binoculars out and everything. And we did this too in our little boats. And later on, of course, they had helicopters that were searching the ocean. When the tuna come to the surface to feed, they make a commotion. And there’s white, frothy water. If you’re traveling in a boat and you’re 100 miles offshore and you see white, frothy water ahead, your heart starts to thump like it’s going to come out of your chest because you know you just found a school of tuna, feeding tuna, that you’re going to travel into any moment and yell, hook up, which there’s no more exciting sound than to hear the reel sing, zzz. Hook up all four poles bent over and four tuna on the rod. What’s this have to do with the stock market? Those tuna were in a very small area of the market. You had to find them. The ocean is massive. The Pacific Ocean is massive. Those tuna would be in an area maybe a mile by one mile. And there were other schools, maybe 25 miles away there was another, but usually they were pretty concentrated as they migrated. The tuna migrate off of San Diego in August, July, August, September, and then they migrate up off of San Francisco, even up to Oregon, and then they swoop over by Alaska, and then they go clear across the ocean to the other side and make a big giant circle, eventually landing down in South America again and making their way north. And those fish, once you’ve found them, the market is not a whole lot different, especially this year, where the fish… The lively stocks are in about a one-mile square of the entire market. The birds are circling overhead. Anthropic money is being thrown at them. SpaceX money is being thrown. That’s the bait that’s bringing the fish to the surface like the Nibiuses and the… Astera Labs and the Arm Holdings and the Core Weaves and the Argan’s etc etc etc and until that bait dries up and that money being thrown at these companies dries up that’s going to continue to be the hot spot of the market I got on the elevator here with a couple of guys that were they have conventions here all the time companies here all the time mostly it’s United Healthcare which is right behind us They worked for the spinoff from UnitedHealthcare, which I believe is Solventum or Optimum or something like that. And I just kind of thought to myself, they’re not in the lively area of the market at all. I think UnitedHealthcare needs to get into data centers somehow because that’s the hot area of the market. But I thought to myself, these poor guys, they’re working for a losing company, a bad stock. But, hey, that’s the way it is. It’s a job. So I just would point out that this continues to be, and really the leader in this industry that is feeding and creating this bait and this massive migration into data centers is NVIDIA. NVIDIA was a game changer in the market. It brought chat GTP to the public. Microsoft was a game changer with chat GPT, which is on the open AI engine. And I think in the future you’ll see OpenAI and Anthropic and NVIDIA just dominating this whole, and Google to some extent, just dominating this whole AI craze that is taking place. And that is where the frothy white water is for now with some schools out there in the oil and energy patch. Lilly and the GLP-1. Lilly has a new agonist. which causes up to 28% of weight loss. So think about that. You weigh 200 pounds. That’s 56 pounds from this new, and I’ve talked to people that work at Lilly. They say, wait till you see the next generation of obesity therapy. That’s incredible. That targets glucogen triple hormone receptors. Oh, you didn’t know that. Yes, those dastardly glucogen triple hormone receptors that kick in after you eat a slice of prime rib and a baked potato with everything on it, they cause up to 28% weight loss in over 80 weeks. Well, that’s not that long. Lose 56 pounds in 80 weeks. That’s a year and a half. Not bad. So I continue to like Lilly as a non-AI stock, a non-data center stock. Okay, CoreWeave in focus as GF Security starts it with the buy rating. Our article has been published. If you go to seekingalpha.com and you type in Bill Gunderson and you follow me, you will be notified. We have four more articles lined up on the runway that will be probably coming out every day for the next four days. We’re never out of ideas. We obviously have to write an update on our NVIDIA coverage after last night’s big earnings report. But the one that we have today is a large cap stock with a market cap of $155 billion. I’ll give you a hint. It’s a stock that I remember my grandmother in Bakersfield, California had in her kitchen. And it’s every bit as relevant today in another way than it was back then. And I also have on my little model railroad HO version a little car. I think it’s a covered car or a, what do you call it, a box car with their name and logo on the side of the car. this particular stock. It’s been around for a long, long time. That article is out there, and I’m sure the guys already sent out some kind of an email blast to everybody in our database with the link to the article. Now, sometimes you can view it, sometimes you can’t. If you can’t view it, then go to the Seeking Alpha website. And type in Bill Gunderson and see today’s article. We’ve been pretty good with the articles that we’ve written over there at Seeking Alpha. And you can read this one, which is the ink’s still wet, as they say, on this one as it goes out today. And another one will go out tomorrow on a stock that is up today. 10.6%. That news article will go… It is a godsend for me to have a… guy that can write at my direction under my tutelage these articles they don’t they’re not they don’t come easy you remember the ringo song it don’t come easy you know it don’t come easy i like ringo he was a character he’s still going strong in his 80s he looks great lives in la i i never saw ringo’s all-star band but he had that song it don’t come easy and it articles do not come easy I used to write research reports and take them up to the Bay Area. They took two or three days to write. And sometimes you would take them to the Bay Area and go around to the various institutions up there and pitch your idea to them, and nobody would bite. You would drag that lure in front of them, but if they bit… Back in those days, there were some pretty big soft dollar rewards for analysts like me that found big winners for these mutual funds, and they would reward you handsomely. Those were some of the biggest commissions I ever received in my life back in those days when I was writing research reports. But you know what? It wasn’t really my favorite thing ever. It wasn’t really my favorite thing. So anything. Let’s see here. Okay. All right. So we’ve got that going on in the market right now. Let’s see. What else are we going to do? Let’s see here. I’ve got to look at this. I’ve just lost my train of thought. There we go. It’s easy to lose your train of thought on live radio sometimes. Core, we even focus as GF Securities starts with this. We also have SpaceX seeing a total addressable market rivaling the size of the U.S. economy. What? What? The SpaceX addressable market rivaling the size of the U.S. economy. Can you imagine this? SpaceX self-assessed total addressable market of $28.5 trillion would, if realized, approach the entire output. of the US economy and SpaceX notes that for illustrative purposes of sizing our addressable market opportunity they are excluding China in Russia which would make it even bigger So they’re saying that the addressable market for SpaceX is bigger than the U.S. economy. And I’m not a fan of SpaceX. Critical Metal secures rare earth offtake deal for 15% of the Tan Breeze Phase 1 production. Well, they’re the first to market in the mass called Greenland. that’s crml but i just want you to know that’s a very very very speculative stock usa rare earth selected for up to 19 million in the department of energy funding airbnb is trying to become a a and a little amazon airbnb is going to offer hotels car rentals grocery delivery luggage storage all kinds of things on its app And SoftBank jumps 20% on OpenAI and SB Energy IPO pipeline. OpenAI could be the biggest IPO of all time. And Anthropic signs a $45 billion deal with SpaceX to secure AI infrastructure. Okay, well, we’re out of time. On this Thursday, Barry will be back, maybe doing the show tomorrow with one of the junior analysts, as I will be working on the newsletter on Friday, as I normally do. In the meantime, if you’d like to set up an appointment with us to talk about your topic, portfolio and how it’s doing you can call us at 855-611-BEST 855-611-BEST or you can also go to our website at Gundersen Capital Management and request an appointment with us I’d like to have you review I’ve said many times I think Barry’s one of the best financial planners that I’ve ever seen And that’s not my thing. I know it. I understand it. But I don’t want to be doing financial plans. That’s not my specialty. My specialty is managing the portfolios that he puts into those financial plans. That’s my passion. That’s what I get up early for every single day of my life to get four free weeks to the newsletter, the app, everything. Go to GundersonCapital.com. GundersonCapital.com. Have a great day, everybody.
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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.
