SPEAKER 01 :
He’s been seen on CNBC, the Fox News Channel, and the Fox Business Channel. His articles can be found on MarketWatch, Seeking Alpha, TheStreet.com, and many other places. He’s the author of the weekly Best Stocks Now newsletter and the inventor of the Best Stocks Now app. He’s president of Gunderson Capital Management. Here is professional money manager Bill Gunderson.
SPEAKER 04 :
And welcome to the Thursday. It is the Thursday, 7th of May, 2026, live edition of the Best Stocks Now show. I am professional money manager Bill Gunderson with Gunderson Capital Management. I’m here with Barry Kydar, Chartered Financial Analyst. And right now we have a little bit of green on the screen after just a monster day yesterday. A monster day to the upside. The Dow is up 75 right now. That puts it at 49,985. 50,000 kind of seems to be that ceiling right now that it can’t quite poke its head through. Right now the NASDAQ is gathering a little bit of steam. The AI stocks are weak this morning, but we’ll have to see if they’re turning around right now because the NASDAQ is now at 97 points. After a monster day yesterday in tech, in AI, AMD leading that charge yesterday, one of our biggest holdings. The NASDAQ up 97 to 25,935. The S&P is flat. It’s up one point right now. The big story today for me is oil. Oil is down to $91 a barrel, and we were up at $106 here recently. I think that’s a good story there. That obviously is pricing in some kind of deal, I guess, being made. Crude is down another 4% today to $91.30, and gold is up 1.5% today. So welcome to today’s Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson of Gunderson Capital Management. And Barry Kite here with us today. And, man, Barry, it was a monster day yesterday in the market. Just a monster day, wasn’t it?
SPEAKER 03 :
Just, I mean, looking across, I was giving some of the chip numbers in April in terms of some of the leading names of the month. And, of course, SanDisk was number one. And just going, I think, all of the top ten were AI adjacent at a minimum. It was unbelievable. It was ridiculous, and they’ve had their best. Chips have had their best 25-day run since March of 2000, which is unbelievable.
SPEAKER 04 :
And that’s about when we put out the compelling buy on the market. And don’t forget, my favorite sector has been the chip sector. So not only did the S&P go up a lot since that compelling buy article, but we’ve been heavily concentrated in the chip sector. It’s gone up a lot more than the S&P 500 over the last four weeks.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, and you called it as the gold rush, right? I mean, they’re the picks and shovels of the data center, really, is what it comes down to.
SPEAKER 04 :
Absolutely. Now, last time I looked, they were under a little bit of pressure today. That doesn’t worry me too much. And I don’t know if they’re turning around right now. I’ll check that out during the break. But huge day yesterday. In fact, the NASDAQ was up 1.87% yesterday. We were up almost 2.5% yesterday. Okay, now, there’s plenty of people out there that like to find the glass half empty, no matter what. is going on in the real world in the sunshine they remain on the dark side of the street where it’s cold and windy and rainy and focus on the negatives in the market despite the market hitting new all-time highs the guy on uh seeking alpha that is just he’s just the worst i’ve ever seen Every single article is negative. Today he says, let’s see, something about U.S. economy continues to come unraveled. Well, U.S. job cuts jumped 38% in April. Okay, that’s the headline. But did you look at the year-to-date total? Down 50%, says the Challenger job cuts report. Now, that’s not really one of the main reports, employment reports, that is watched by Wall Street reports. But it does come out on a monthly basis. And if you’re looking for the glass being half empty, you would say, well, look at that, Barry. Job cuts jumped 38% in April. And then you look at the next in smaller print, while the year to date total across the board is minus 50%. That’s a huge drop. in job cut announcements. Most of the job cuts, I would say, are coming in the AI, companies affected by AI. Where else have we been seeing some job cuts lately?
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, yeah. I mean, really, it’s been really the tech sector. We talked about yesterday when, you know, just about the dichotomy between, you know, What we see on whichever version of the nightly news somebody watches versus what you’re seeing in earnings and what we’re seeing in the economy and jobs. ADP report came out yesterday, and it was a lot better than expected. But the places where jobs have been taken has been in that software space. Yeah, the software space. Essentially that first realm. you know, what I would call the first order of AI jobs, right? It happens to be, ironically, it happens to be the software engineers who helped birth AI in some form or fashion, right?
SPEAKER 04 :
Exactly. They created their own demise with their programming. And, of course, the government is losing a lot of jobs, which, you know, they can’t lose enough as far as I’m concerned. Yeah, a lot of them have been held in the federal state.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, a lot of the added jobs have actually been in health care, which, you know, when we look at health care in terms of a market standpoint, you know, we haven’t been big on any of the health care, health insurers, none of those for an extended period of time. And, of course, they happen to be the place that’s adding jobs. So it’s an interesting dichotomy there.
SPEAKER 04 :
The fundamentals of that sector remain very weak, even though, you know, believe it or not, the health care sector represents between 20 to 25 percent of our economy, which is tremendous. I think that’s the largest sector by percentage in the economy is the health care sector.
SPEAKER 03 :
It makes sense giving an aging population. There’s a lot of reasons why the cost of health care in general. Rising cost. Throw the pharmaceutical industry into the health care sector, right, and you’re looking at a behemoth in terms of dollars. One of the biggest expenses for the government also.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, and for individuals. And in my book, you know, of all the health care stocks out there, representing 25, 22, somewhere in there, percent of our economy, there’s only two good health care stocks. And one is Lilly, and the other one is Novo Nordisk. And they had a big day yesterday. Oh, and both of them have come up with the – Now, how would you like to be the shipper Mayersk right now? The Iran war. Of course, they’re a big container shipping company. I’m the captain.
SPEAKER 01 :
Mayersk.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. The Middle East war has raised fuel costs by nearly $500 million per month at AP Moeller Maersk, which I believe is a Dutch company. I want to say it’s a Dutch company. And the energy crisis will persist even if a peace deal is reached. Well, you know, I mean, Europe has made a lot of mistakes with their energy policies. And they’re saying even with the peace deal, they’re still going to have problems with energy, fueling those big ships that carry the containers across the mighty oceans. And they did report earnings here today, but they also, you know, are claiming, yeah, they’re Danish. They’re Danish. The company’s monthly costs as fuel prices surged from $600 a metric ton to just under $1,000. A metric ton. Remember the guy we talked to that worked on the container ships and the fuel?
SPEAKER 03 :
Isn’t it a solid fuel? Yeah, it was like a sludge that they have to kind of heat up to get it to pump through the fuel pumps. And he said they have a big… Big area in there where, you know, if they ever wanted to, they could retrofit it with a nuclear reactor, kind of like our nuclear subs and nuclear aircraft carriers. But, yeah, it was interesting. I never even knew that. And he was talking about, remember how many gallons of fuel that it took to go from just the West Coast to Asia? Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
yeah huge it was astronomical yeah the ai stocks remain under pressure here today this morning i wouldn’t get too worried about it they’ve been on a roll i mean they have been on a jelly roll like nothing i’ve ever seen before and that you’re going to get rounds of profit taking along the way we’re also in earnings season which makes for some more volatility Most of the volatility, however, has been to the good side. Look at AMD yesterday. What a report. What a move by AMD. And lifting all boats around it in that all-important chip sector. And, you know, so today maybe you have a little bit of reality coming in and a little bit of profit taking coming in. That’s very, very normal. I’ll usually get somebody that writes to me, one of the subscribers, what’s wrong with the chip stocks today? You know what? They go through cycles. They don’t go up every single day. and you have to be able to uh if something goes up 120 percent all of a sudden it’s down eight percent there’s not anything necessarily wrong with the stock you get normal cycles of uh you know buying selling profit taking etc and when you have a lot of profits built up in a sector like that ai sector right now it’s going to be more vulnerable There’s not going to be a big sell-off in the health care stocks, Barry, because there’s no interest in the stock. It hadn’t been a big gain.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, it hadn’t been a big gain either.
SPEAKER 04 :
No, there’s no big gains.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I mean, I can’t really put my finger on it, like you said, except some profit-taking. The only thing I did see is Arm reported good earnings. The one thing they mentioned was soft or potentially soft cell phone demand, and who cares? It would be my take in terms of… How is that – if someone’s equating that into moving some of these AI data center-driven names, then I guess so. But it didn’t seem too dire when I read the ARM report today.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, and ARM has been pretty volatile with or without. It always is. Now, this next story is, yes, this next story is non-AI and chip-related, and it’s something that is brewing underneath the surface of the market, and I’m just here to warn you that eventually, like a deadly iceberg in the North Sea that took down the Titanic, I’m afraid this thing is going to grow and all of a sudden rear its ugly head. BlackRock Asia private credit fund is being tested after a China loan turns sour. Their Asia Pacific private credit fund is facing a key test after a Chinese borrower defaulted. on part of the loan raising questions about how resilient the region’s private credit market is amid growing market stress. Would you invest in a private credit China fund? I wouldn’t touch that with a 10-foot pole.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I’d like to know what the investor makeup is. Are all those U.S. investors or a lot of them Chinese investors? Are they from other parts of the world? In my book, it would be… It’s hard enough to know what a publicly traded Chinese company is doing versus a private credit placement in China. Who knows what you’re really looking to. I don’t know. Oh, my gosh. It seems like a stretch.
SPEAKER 04 :
They raised $435 million, and they’re charging a big fee to manage this fund. And this Metcold that went cold was a $52 million lending. So it’s about a 10% position in this portfolio. And Belly Up, they’re pursuing with their lawyers. But, you know, Belly Up is Belly Up. And that’s not good. Amazon to offer Novo’s Ozempic pills via same-day delivery. And I think that Lily already has that in place. Call up in the morning. You’re going out to dinner tonight. Get your pill delivered before dinner, and it’ll kill that appetite. But you know what? The pill… I don’t know. Is the pill daily? Maybe the pill is daily.
SPEAKER 03 :
The shot is once a week. It sounds like it is. It sounds like it’s daily. I think it’s daily. I actually haven’t seen it, but the way it kind of plays out, it makes sense that it would be daily over time versus a shot.
SPEAKER 04 :
So anyway, what other business is Amazon not in? The biggest disruptor of all time now will deliver weight loss pills to your door. Same day delivery. And shoots you to the moon at the same time, right? Yes. And you can also get that Ozempic pill delivered right along with the French cheeses and whatnot from a Whole Foods market. That’s right.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I almost forgot about that one. $149 per month.
SPEAKER 04 :
The starting dose is $149 per month. I can give you $10. Testimonial stories that I have personally witnessed of people losing massive amounts of weight on one of these weight loss pills, the GLP-1s. Dutch Brothers, this is an interesting one because I have one of these. They converted seven. clutch coffees into dutch bro dutch bros dutch bros and one is just down the street from right down the street right and i watched the dutch bro yeah dutch or uh the clutch coffee was doing a pretty good business they came in there maybe i don’t know six months ago and i thought they were building a pretty good following you know you’re up against starbucks in that space and then all of a sudden i saw it shuttered and the fence around i go what the heck is going on Well, they got bought out by Dutch Bros. That’s a North Carolina company, the Clutch Coffee Bar Shops. And all of a sudden, they changed all the signage and the colors and everything like that. During Q1, the chain reopened seven converted Clutch Coffee Bar Shops, one right by me. And I have noticed that the traffic looks pretty good there. They say the early response has been incredible. Lines are forming. Communities are buzzing. I haven’t heard any buzz in my community. other than JP Morgan opened a bank right in front of the entrance to my community. I heard a lot of buzz about that. And our brand is showing up in a big way, says Christine Barone, CEO. I’m not a fan of drive-thru coffee. They’re a dime a dozen. Dutch Bros, you know, the interesting thing about Dutch Bros, they get more traffic in the afternoons than they do in the morning because what they’re really pushing is not so much the coffee, it’s the energy traffic. mixes, cocktails that you can get in the afternoon when it’s like a drive through Red Bull or something to drag. Yes. And now the other thing is this is setting the ball in motion. They’re all going into this. Now I see Sonic, which is on the corner, has afternoon energy drinks. Taco Bell has afternoon energy drinks. McDonald’s has afternoon energy drinks. Nobody’s going to be able to sleep at night the way this is going, but that has become a big segment of, yeah, everybody’s going to have insomnia. Why can’t I sleep? Well, because you’re drinking a bunch of caffeine at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. 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 GundersenCapital.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. Uh-oh, did I, are we still here? We there? Yeah, we got the music. Yeah, okay, and it went dead. All of a sudden, everything went dead. I thought, oh, no, not again. All right, here we go. Here’s what I want to talk about next. I want to talk about Disney.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, we didn’t. Gavin and I, we didn’t touch Disney yesterday, so you can’t fire away.
SPEAKER 04 :
He leaves that one for me because he knows how I love to knock Disney. Okay, an investment in Disney over the last 10 years. has averaged 1.1% per year. 1.1% per year. That’s what you’ve made in Disney. Between the dividend yield and the capital appreciation, you’ve made 1.1% per year, which is incredible. I mean, over the last five years, you’ve lost nine point four percent per year going the wrong way and yet it’s one of the iconic companies that is in almost every wall street portfolio and over the last twelve months while the s&p’s up thirty percent disney’s up eighteen point six percent and if you look at your portfolio wherever it may be and you own disney in there i’m just telling you the truth okay That’s why I invented the Best Stocks Now app so people could find the truth about the stocks that they own, that their advisor has them in, or the ones they’re considering. for purchase okay would disney be on my list at all to be one of the 20 or 25 stocks in my large cap growth fund no not at all okay all right so there’s there’s my there’s my disney dig for the day it has not gotten any better at disney uh and uh you know there’s talk the trump administration you may not realize this But the Trump administration is considering removing the FCC license from Disney. And Disney, that’s a big chunk of their empire, is ESPN and ABC and everything like that. What would Disney be like if they lost their license, which would be awfully controversial, obviously, I mean. You get down into freedom of speech and everything. But if they’re using FCC licenses to become a political weapon, I suppose that’s something else. I don’t know how that all works. But something else to consider with Disney. Now let’s just look at how Disney stock has reacted here since yesterday’s earnings announcement. Disney. Disney, the chart, you know what, it got a little pop. But it’s in a long-term, number one, sideways trend. That’s the truth of the matter, going nowhere. Like it’s gone nowhere in the last 10 years, and what makes you think it’s all of a sudden going to be a winning stock? Now we go to the next big, soggy stock. that has reported today and very dull report very very dull chart we’re gonna look at mcdonald’s okay c d mcdonald’s over the last 10 years has delivered and now this is another one barry how many wall street firms portfolios have mcdonald’s in it all well it’s it’s yeah pretty much percent of them Okay, over the last five years in investment in McDonald’s, you’ve gotten a total return of 6.2% per year, while the S&P is 15.4. Over the last three years, the S&P has delivered 26.1% per year. while McDonald’s has delivered 1% per year. You know what the institutional ownership is?
SPEAKER 1 :
74%.
SPEAKER 04 :
100%. Okay, 74% of the shares are owned by Wall Street. Right. And good luck with that because over the last 12 months, the S&P is up 30%. The S&P or McDonald’s is down 8%, down 8%. Now, look, okay, one thing is you’ve got a massive inflation problem with McDonald’s. It’s not cheap food anymore. The big arch is $11, $12 for a fast food burger that is cheap. you know adequate at best they’ve got that okay and they’ve got all the competition coming in and now they’re starting to do the energy drinks in the afternoon to try to perk things up the food is very inconsistent from my point of view and it’s not cheap and the Competition is fierce and none of the competitors are doing well. You’re in a lousy sector in the market when you look at Wendy’s, when you look at Chipotle, when you look at Jack in the Box, when you look at Kava and all the other publicly traded restaurant stocks. They’re going through a very, very difficult time. The pizza stocks, another one. I mean, they’re getting crushed by DoorDash. It used to be that pizza was the only thing you could have delivered to your door online, order a pizza. Now you have all these restaurants in your neighborhood. That’s got to be cutting big time into the pizza business. So there’s another problem. what I would call a soggy stock. And, you know, look, if you go on a trip, no matter where you look, you’re going to see the golden arches somewhere. Where are they going to put another golden arches? Basically, it’s in the new communities, you know, like here in South Carolina, up near Somerville. We’ve got new communities going in, massive communities. They’ve got to have a McDonald’s. But the growth rate is basically, you know, just slightly better than what the population growth rate is.
SPEAKER 03 :
zero right now isn’t the population growth rate in america i think it’s zero yeah i think i think i think it contracted slightly migration yeah i know i know the you know the lifespan contracted uh you know just a couple you know year or two after covid i think we i think i think uh we live a year less longer so
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, and this is the problem that Home Depot has. It’s the problem that Walmart has. It’s the problem that Lowe’s has. It’s the problem that Starbucks has. They’ve saturated the world with these stores, and the only thing that can come along is like a Dutch Brothers, Dutch Bros, which takes on and trying to steal some of that market share from McDonald’s and from Starbucks. But really, you’re dividing up a pie that’s not getting any bigger. And the only losers in that battle are the big ones who are losing pieces of the pie to the smaller, more pesky players like Dutch Bros. I just don’t like anything, anything. I don’t like the ones that are pecking away at the big guys, and I don’t like the big guys. And, you know, all of this Shake Shack, what’s the one out in California? Remember when that was a growth company? Yeah, Shake Shack was a growth company. Now it’s just another burger joint. They’re a dime a dozen. The profit margins are very, very low. And it’s just not a good, good place to be parked with money. And you’re wasting. You know, not only are you not getting any return on that position in your portfolio, you’re missing out. That’s called opportunity cost. Yes, big time. You’re losing out big time to opportunity cost of what could be happening in a good stock. Just a better than average stock, let alone one that is mediocre. And so that’s just my advice. I mean, that’s just my opinion on this subject, which dominates. These big stocks dominate Wall Street. Okay, let’s go to our next story here, which is Vistra. Vistra is a nuke stock, and we had an article out yesterday on a nuke stock. It had quite a few page views. It should have had more because it’s one that flies kind of under the radar of the nuke stocks.
SPEAKER 03 :
It was up 7% yesterday.
SPEAKER 04 :
Today, another one. Yes, that’s right. I mean, we printed the article. Now, this one, I don’t know about it right now. I honestly don’t know about this drug. It’s very much a sideways number one, sideways trend, even though the sales that they reported were up 43% year over year. That gives me great hope for it. Just a little update on Minnesota. It’s going well. I’ll get an update today on how many appointments, if we have any vacancies left. If I need to spend an extra day or two there, I will. I’ll be checking in with Edie today. Also, I don’t know, have you heard anything? I need to talk to her today there, Barry. It’s going pretty good, right? Filling up? Did we lose Barry? Okay, well, all right. Minnesota, we’re going to be in Minnetonka in two weeks, 18, 19, 20. And we’ll be at the Minnetonka Marriott Hotel. And all day Tuesday, all day Wednesday, all day Thursday, we’ll be doing one-hour appointments with the team, which I head up, and I will be in those appointments, except for the ones that I’m doing the radio show from 10 to 11 there. And we also will have that workshop on Tuesday night. Looking forward to this. Which is filling up also. Yes, and we’re trying to put everything in place to broadcast that workshop. I think we’ve got the manpower in place to pull it off and the technology in place to pull it off so that people all over the world can watch that workshop streaming We’re on a delayed basis. I don’t know which right now.
SPEAKER 03 :
We had somebody send us from South Korea. We got a note from South Korea about when you say broadcasted over the world, it’s potential. We get a lot of interesting places that people live who follow the show. Power of the Internet, power of podcasts, I guess.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, I had someone write to me from Germany today about how much they enjoy the show. So I’m always happy to hear feedback like that. It makes me happy, and it feels like what we’re doing is worth the effort that we put into it. So anyway, if you’d like to check with Edie on an appointment, we probably won’t get to Minnesota again this year. But we do have people. We talk to people all the time in Minnesota, current clients, people that are interesting and talking to us about becoming clients.
SPEAKER 03 :
Talk to four or five this week. Yeah, talk to four or five clients this week. Did you really from Minnesota? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good. Are they happy? That’s all I care about. They’re happy. Oh, he’s quiet. Happy, but weather-wise, yeah, I think you got a little delay today. But, yeah, weather-wise, it’s going back and forth. Of course, I hear it’s been about four or five fall springs at this point. So we’ll see what the weather’s like when we get there in a couple weeks.
SPEAKER 04 :
Every time you plant them tomatoes, here comes another frost. That’s good for Home Depot. What a tomato plant is like $7.95 or something now. I grow mine from seed. I love to see things growing from seed. But, you know, you’ll never get $7. Maybe you will. In today’s world, tomatoes are not cheap. If you get 20 or 30 tomatoes off that plant, you’re going to pay for it. But you’re going to have a lot of tomatoes to deal with all at once. That’s where spaghetti sauce comes in. I make homemade spaghetti sauce and can it, bottle it. And I make homemade salsa, those two, out of my tomatoes. All right, now, the next one I want to talk about is a REIT. You know, a REIT is a pretty big asset class. And it was an asset class that dominated Seeking Alpha for several years. Oh, get rich off of this REIT. Oh, you can retire off of this REIT. Ah, this is a swan. Did you ever see the term swan REIT? Sleep well at night. At night. Because you’re in the comforting arms and warmth of a REIT, or Real Estate Investment Trust. And I would say that the Pent Ultimate Real Estate Investment Trust is from San Diego, where I hail from, and it’s called Realty Income. And I’ve sat through several of Realty Income’s – we covered it. The company I worked for in San Diego covered Realty Income with our analyst, David Allen. So we were always being quoted in the San Diego Union Tribune any time something was happening at realty income. Oh, and their claim to fame back then, and it probably still is, is monthly income. Not quarterly income, but monthly income coming from their real estate properties. All right, so they pay a dividend yield. Now, how has that worked out over the last 10 years being invested in realty income? Well, you’ve gotten a dividend somewhere in the 3% to 4% range, and you’ve got capital appreciation somewhere in the 1% range over the years. Which adds up to a 10-year total average return of 5.4% per year. 5.4% per year. That’s pretty mediocre. I mean, a money market right now is, where are we at with snot?
SPEAKER 03 :
3.5. It got as high as almost 5.1 when rates were at their peak about a year and a half, two years ago. So not far off from the return that you just mentioned, which is risk-free, by the way, essentially.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, and there’s a lot of risk in a REIT because in a bear market, a REIT gets clobbered. Realty income was down 43% during the last bear market, and I would say that we’re currently in a bear market in real estate, commercial real estate. That’s all I’ve got to do is look around at the vacancies in the big shopping centers, and the malls are vacant basically right now. Restaurants, office buildings. I asked somebody, how are things in New York City these days? Not even close to where it was. Not even close to where it was. And I’ve got to believe every major metropolis, whether it’s Charlotte, whether it’s Chicago, whether it’s San Francisco, whether it’s Los Angeles, where it’s San Diego, where I know the Irvine Company completely pulled out of San Diego. I think REITs are a terrible investment. I sat with somebody recently that has a big chunk of money in one of these non-traded REITs, and he’s getting about 3% or 4% interest and no capital gains whatsoever out of the whole mess. So not a fan of REITs at all. Real Estate Investment Trust and Realty Income is one of the better ones, okay, is one of the better ones. So the mediocre ones are doing even worse than that. Okay, well, we’re out of time on this Thursday, May the 7th. There seems to be some kind of hope coming out of the Middle East for peace. And that seems to be driving. I mean, where does that show up in the dropping oil prices? We’re down to $91 per barrel, which is very bullish for the market. And the earnings picture for the market continues to look very, very good. Although a lot of the easy money, a lot of that cheap valuation has been sucked out of the market very, very quickly. When that window opens and I put out a compelling buy opportunity, you better act pretty quickly because that window starts to close and it closes very quickly. Now that’s not to say there aren’t opportunities out there. but not like there was four weeks ago. All right. All accounts are held at Charles Schwab.
SPEAKER 02 :
Schwab is a member of SIBC and FINRA.
