In this episode of the Best Stocks Now show, professional money manager Bill Gunderson delves into the latest market trends, with a particular focus on Palantir’s outstanding performance. Broadcasting live from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Bill analyzes Palantir’s remarkable earnings report and its dominance in the NASDAQ and S&P 500 for 2025. While much of the market remains stagnant, Palantir’s surging success stands as a testament to strategic stock selection and the importance of earnings in driving market movement.
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 01 :
And welcome to the Tuesday morning, August the 5th edition of the Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management. And I’m flying solo here today in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. I’ve got Jeff and Barry doing some appointments right now. And I think the best way to sum up the market right now is Palantir is booming. It is way up. And the rest of the market is pretty much flat right now. Of course, Palantir was my number one pick for 2025. And I think it’s the top performing stock in the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ in 2025 after blowout earnings last night. But all in all, you take a look at the overall market. Of course, we had an explosion upwards in the market yesterday. And today a little bit of settling, except for Palantir. The Dow is down 90 right now. That’s 20 basis points. It’s at 44,083. The S&P 500 is down 5 to 6,324. The NASDAQ is up 36. It’s almost all Palantir. It’s at $21,090. Over at the bond market, the 10-year was hitting 4.20 yesterday. That’s the lowest we’ve seen in quite some time. It’s at 4.22 today. So you’ve had a pretty good rally in the bond market. So welcome to today’s Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management. And I am here flying solo today in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Very nice, beautiful weather today. Everything is green. The flowers are in bloom. I see why they call it Bloomfield Hills. It’s a beautiful place. Really love coming here and visiting. And tonight we’ll have our workshop at 7 p.m. at the Kingsley Hotel, which is a beautiful place. That will go until 8.30. What am I going to talk about? Well, I’ll decide at about 6.59 tonight. Whatever is the most salient topics in the market right now, I think overall market valuation is going to definitely come into play tonight. And how I gauge overall market valuation, that market outlook is very, very important. watching the earnings of the S&P 500. I’m going to focus on that because you could be the best stock picker in the world, but if the market’s not good, it’s pretty hard to find winning stocks in a market that is going the other way. And, of course, the market is very much tied to the economy. And that’s why we give these economic reports every single day and our comments on them. And I just met with some folks before the show, and I was talking about, you know, I would say about 85% of the market is just dead. It’s stagnant. It’s not moving. And the other 10% or 15% usually is thriving, and that’s just where it’s at in the markets today. It’s been that way for quite some time, and there seems to be even a bigger disparity. I mean, look at today. You’ve got the rest of the market pretty much stagnant, and you’ve got really one stock today, Palantir, which is roaring after their earnings report last night. They’re already at a revenue rate of $1 billion per quarter today. And, you know, really, they haven’t been around that long. So that’s a pretty stunning sales report and earnings report. Last I looked, it was up just over 8%. Gold has kind of leveled off these days, although, you know, it’s hitting up against its all-time highs. It’s kind of range-bound, that 3430 area. Interest rates have come way down. We’ve seen a bond rally since Jerome Powell decided not to do anything. The bond market did it on its own and lowered rates by about a quarter of a percent. We’re down at 4.22% right now, so we’ve seen a little rally in the bond market here recently. And, of course, that lowering interest rate down to 4.22% helps support that multiple right now. of the S&P 500. We’re sitting at about 22.3 times, 21.9 I think as of last Friday because we had those two sell-off days. We’re right around, yeah, 22 times forward earnings on the S&P 500, which is very rich, but at least we’ve got interest rates going the right direction to support that somewhat. Oil is sitting at $65.49. It’s come down $5 a barrel here recently with OPEC deciding to open up the spigot a little more. And that Russian oil is still in limbo. That’s a big sticking point right now. I don’t know about India buying that Russian oil. Trump’s even claiming that they’re buying the Russian oil on the cheap. on the black market in the middle of the night and then reselling it for a nice profit to other countries around the world so he’s not happy with india right now at all and uh… threatening to raise their we just kind of had a deal with india and then this came along and then now it seems to be kind of uh… up in limbo once again we had an enormous day in the market yesterday you know i went home uh… friday We had two really bad days in the market. And you had to kind of ask yourself, what’s going on here? Is the economy slowing down? We had that jobs report on Friday. We really don’t know where the real jobs report is. With all of the revisions for the last two months and then this one, it’s kind of crazy. It seems like they’re a little bit behind the eight ball there. And for that reason, you know, he’s getting rid of the woman that was over the labor statistics. She’s being replaced because, I mean, she’s been all over the map. And who knows? I mean, some people claim she beefed up the numbers during the election to make things look better for the… The Harris ticket, and now she’s, at least Trump claims that she’s lowering the numbers to make him look bad. I just want the truth. That’s all I want. I don’t really care which side you’re on. Let’s just report the statistics. And maybe she has been just reporting the statistics, but I don’t know how you can be that way off. over the last two months and do those kinds of revisions. I like the weatherman going back and saying, you know what, we reported 89 degrees, but it was only 79 degrees. It just seems kind of wacky to me that they’re not better with their statistics. So whatever reason, you know, I studied that on Saturday. I thought, are we going into a recession here? And the thing that lifted me up was the earnings, the earnings season that we are currently in. This earnings season, when we started out, we’re about 60-70% of the way through it now. We were expecting 4.8% growth in earnings quarter over quarter this quarter, Q2 2025 versus Q2 2024. And every time one of these S&P 500 companies report, we add that to the mix. And right now we’re looking for 10.8% growth. That’s a big, big move upwards. This is actual earnings. Actual earnings being reported. We’re expected to come in overall for the S&P 500 at 4.8% better performance. than the same comparable quarter last year, and instead they came in at 10.8% better. That’s where we’re at right now. We still have a third left to go. We could come in even higher than that because the trajectory would certainly suggest that. We could come in at maybe 12%, 13% higher. than the same quarter last year. And then in the newsletter on Saturday, I also looked ahead to the quarter, next year’s quarter, that would be this same, Q2 2026, and I showed where those expectations were at right now. And, you know, I came away with the headline for the newsletter on Saturday was blowout earnings from the S&P 500. And I think I gave some pretty good commentary and analysis of what was going on. Look what happened in the market yesterday after people disseminated that news over the weekend. You had the Dow up 585 points yesterday. You had the NASDAQ up 403 points. Of course, it lost 450 on Friday, but it gained all of that back yesterday. And you had the S&P up 92, and it goes back to my saying that in the market, it’s earnings, earnings, earnings. And despite those job numbers, whatever the real job numbers were, the ones that they reported were very weak, It came down to the earnings, in my opinion, which people analyzed and looked at. And that’s why you saw the big explosion in the market yesterday. It was a huge day in the market yesterday. And today we’ve got a huge day in one stock. And the rest of the market is a little quiet. And welcome back here to the second quarter of today’s Best Stocks Now show. And we are live in Bloomfield Hills here today, tomorrow, and Thursday. I think there might be a few openings on Thursday for an appointment. Check with Edie. You can reach her at 855-611-BEST, 855-611-BEST. And the workshop tonight at 7 p.m., you can also ask her about that. by reaching her at 855-611-BEST. We’re at the Kingsley Hotel in Bloomfield Hills. Now yesterday, gold had a pretty good move. I recorded the following stocks as breaking out to new all-time highs yesterday. Agnico Eagle broke out to a new all-time high. We still have a position in that. That is a gold stock. Constellation Energy broke out to a new all-time high yesterday. That’s a big nuke stock. DoorDash broke out to a new all-time high yesterday. That is probably the fastest growing restaurant stock in the world today, even though it doesn’t have boots on the ground restaurant, but it delivers from all of them. GE, not GE Vernova, but just GE, just the good old aerospace company, broke out to a new all-time high yesterday. Larry Culp has done a great job there at the helm of one of the greatest turnarounds I’ve seen in my lifetime. They’ll be talking about that one for years at the Harvard Business School. Meta broke out to a new all-time high. And as you know, they had blowout numbers last week from Mr. Zuckerberg’s company. Microsoft broke out to a new all-time high yesterday, riding the AI wave, which is pretty much the surge that’s carrying the market right now and even carrying it to these dizzying heights from a valuation point of view. Talon Energy hit a new all-time high yesterday. That’s another nuclear-related stock. As AI is hungry for energy and we don’t have enough, and that creates opportunity, Vistra also broke out to a new all-time high yesterday. And there’s more news today on some of these nuke stocks that we’ll get to. Well, Trump gets to name a new Fed governor, and, of course, you had two of them dissenting against leaving the rates alone. They wanted a rate cut, and he’s going to get to name another one, a third one, and who knows, that could help bring about an interest rate cut. And he’s also going to replace the chief labor market statistician. And I just want the real numbers. That’s all I want. I just want the real numbers. I don’t want any politics entering into statistics, please. We talked about India buying the Russian oil. You know what? They’ve got to realize that’s not going to go over well. And you’re going to get hit with big tariffs. And as of now, they’re pretty much saying, go ahead. We don’t care. We’re going to do what we need to do. And other countries are also buying Russian oil, including China and Turkey. Let me take a look here. Other things taking place here today. They want to build a nuke on the moon. Now, is that our number one? How important is that? Apparently, we want to stake out. Maybe there’s rare earth on the moon. I don’t know. But anyways, U.S. is set to fast track a plan for a nuclear reactor on the moon. How? How about one here in Detroit? How about one? Well, they are. They are fast-tracking nuclear plants all over the place. That seems to be a huge, huge opportunity there in those stocks still. It’s been going on for quite some time. But U.S. Transportation Secretary and Acting NASA Director Sean Duffy said, will unveil accelerated plans this week to build a nuclear reactor on the moon. Political reported last Monday, NASA has discussed building that reactor, but it would set a more definitive timeline soon and come just as the agency faces a massive deficit budget cut. So I don’t know about that. We’ll see. But I suppose, who knows, we could operate a base up there on the moon, and we could have a reactor and declare a keep-out zone, which would significantly, you know, inhibit other countries from entering into that space. What’s Buffett buying these days? Well, you know, I don’t think Buffett’s buying anymore. I think it’s his new guy’s. that are calling the shots and they’re buying serious satellite. I don’t know. I guess from a value point of view, Sirius has never really done much as a stock at all. I mean, it was an $80 stock back five years ago. Today, it’s a $22 stock. It’s less 75% of its value. I never listened to Sirius. Maybe you do. I mean, it was a good idea. It was kind of… The forerunner to Spotify, but Spotify seemed to come along with a better formula. Sirius is a very cheap stock, but it’s just dead in the water. It’s absolutely a flat stock. They bought $106 million. recently in Sirius. That’s Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. Intel’s credit rating downgraded by Fitch, the outlook is now negative Well, that’s not good. That means it’s going to cost them a lot more money to borrow money. They’re not going to get away with 4.5% bond issuance. They’ll probably be more up in the 6%, 6%, 7% range with that kind of a rating on them. Whereas other companies in that industry have very good bonds. credit ratings, such as Broadcom and Taiwan Semiconductor, etc. So anyways, more bad news for Intel. I did see a bond offering today from KKR, which is a private equity firm, 5.1%. That’s about the going rate right now. It’s kind of tough. We’re shopping. Barry, we have some clients that just are in the bond portfolio. Of course, you’ve seen a big rally in bonds here the last couple of weeks with the interest rates down to 4.2%. But the low fives, high fours and low fives is pretty much the state of the bond market these days. Well, the big news in the market today is is Palantir. Let’s just look at the quarter that they reported here. It was just phenomenal. It wasn’t as massive as NVIDIA’s quarters. But given the fact that this is such a young company, this is already a half a trillion dollar company. They’ve only been public since 2020. When we come back, we’ll take a look. They had their first billion dollar in revenue quarter in their history. And their history is not that long ago. for this, actually headquartered in Denver, Colorado is where Palantir is headquartered. 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. 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. And welcome back here to the second quarter of today’s Best Stocks Now show. And, of course, the story of the day. The market, they’re all three indexes are now just slightly negative after that big day yesterday. Palantir does not have, yeah, it has a three-year record now. It doesn’t have a five-year track record quite yet. But the three-year track record is average capital gain annual return of 146% per year. Over the last three years, that compares to the S&P 500’s 18%. But listen to this. And we’ve owned the stock during this time. The Palantir over the last 12 months is up 473%. During that same period of time, the S&P 500 is up 16.3%. And Palantir, as of yesterday, was ranked number 17 out of 5,115 stocks. It’s our second biggest holding. And it’s been ranked at or near the top for quite some time. This year, year to date, it’s up 104%.
SPEAKER 1 :
104%.
SPEAKER 01 :
It was my number one pick when asked. When I was back at the NASDAQ, ring the closing bell ceremony. I was interviewed. It was recorded. And I don’t know where that video is. I’ve got to find that, figure out where that’s at. But I was interviewed by the CEO of Granite Shares ETFs and I told him that’s my top pick for 2025 and it is the number one performing stock in the S&P 500 so far this year. We back that up by we also own the stock. Not only in our premier growth portfolio but also in our ultra growth portfolio. Now, the quarter that they just presented came in, their sales this quarter, the second quarter of this year, which ended on June 30th, Their sales came in at just over $1 billion. That’s for a 90-day period of time, $1 billion. And you compare that versus the same quarter last year was $678 million. So that’s a sales growth of 48% year over year. Their earnings growth last year, this same comparable quarter, they made $0.09 per share. Of course, you’d have to multiply that by how many shares they have to come up with the actual number. This quarter, their earnings were $0.16 per share. That’s a 78% increase year over year. And the stock is hitting a new all-time high here today at $174 per share. It began the year at $78 per share. So it’s up $100 per share. The relative strength, when you compare it against all the other stocks in the market, well, it’s number one. It’s the number one performing stock in the S&P 500. Hence, it gets a relative strength of 99 on a scale of 1 to 99. In my system, it’s an A+. momentum grade what is it expensive the PE ratio right now is 303 and the forward PE ratio is 259 where would you sell it bill well I’ll tell you I’ll let you know you know usually my in stocks like this usually I cut them in half first take out all my cost and This one, I think I’d have to only sell maybe a third of it would take out all my costs in Palantir. Then the rest is just gravy from the gains. But, you know, I watch different things. There’s all kinds of different reasons to sell a stock. If the story change, evaluation is a reason. Technical breakdown is a reason. Economy market, bear market is a reason. A lot of different reasons. But right now, we’re enjoying this big jump in Palantir today. And we’ll continue to ride it for now. But we’ll also watch it very closely because of the extreme valuation on the stock. PLTR, the symbol. Okay, the other area. There is the actual nuclear stocks, but there’s a couple of stocks that I want to mention here. They’re in the news today that actually service… uh… power plants including nuclear power plants uh… i’ve talked about bwx technologies before the symbol is bwx t uh… they’re headquartered in lynchburg virginia lynchburg virginia uh… and they matter they’re the manufacturer of power generation systems and nuclear components there’s that word no clear for U.S. government industrial and utility. And BWX is a small cap stock. It’s $16 billion in market cap, a mere tiny little stock compared to Palantir at $470 billion. BWX is only $16 billion. But they just reported a quarter that beat the estimate. So let’s take a look at BWXT and their track record in the Best Stocks Now app. And you know that the first place I look is their track record. What they do, well, that’s important too. I’d like to know what they do for a living. And then that’s the front of the baseball card. You’d see a little picture of their headquarters, corporate headquarters, and maybe some people standing out in front waving or whatever, the CEO getting out of his car. Now we turn the baseball card over. Over the last 10 years, BWX, and this is before the nuclear boom started to happen, BWX has delivered 21% per year return versus the S&P 20. So here you’ve got a small cap stock, which there’s not a whole lot of them that have outperformed the S&P 500 over the last 10 years in the small cap space, but BWXT is one of them. Over the last five years, the stock has been going up at a rate of 24% per year. using the rule of seventy two that’s doubling your money every three years with no guarantees going forward we’re looking in the rearview mirror now this is what they put on the scoreboard when this company comes up to the plate over the last three years now the nuclear boom is really starting to take place here with AI and data structure and infrastructure and energy needs They’ve got a 40% annual return over the last three years versus the market 17.9%. So you’ve got a performance grade of A, not A+, which Palantir has, but A going on at BWXT. Over the last 12 months, it’s up 52%, while the market’s up 16%. It gets a momentum grade of A-. And so far this year, it’s up 35%, not counting today. It’s breaking out today to a new all-time high. The stock is up 18.6% today, BWXD. Now we’re going to look forward. That is the consensus earnings and my five-year target price on BWXT. It’s one thing to look backwards on a stock. It’s another thing to look forward and look at the earnings expectations that are out there on the street and the growth rates and apply a multiple and come up with the target price. It does have a little bit of a valuation problem right now, but maybe with this big number that they reported here today, maybe that will lift the valuation. I had, as of yesterday, 68%. For that reason, we don’t own this stock. But I’m pointing it out to you because the growth rate that we’re using of 12% may be a little bit on the low side. And the target price may go up after this big beat here today. So as of yesterday, it certainly met my performance criteria, but it didn’t meet my value criteria. And it has a very strong chart right now breaking out to new all-time highs. So that’s one to keep on your radar, on your list, on the periphery of the nuclear sector. And when we come back, I have one other one. that is also in a similar kind of shape, breaking out to a new all-time high. And they provide maintenance services for power plants, refineries, and nuclear plants. And it’s having a big day. We’ll talk about that one when we come back. This is the Best Docs Now show.
SPEAKER 05 :
We’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 01 :
And welcome back here to the final segment of today’s Best Stocks Now show. The NASDAQ has now turned negative by quite a bit here. Not a lot, but it was positive after Palantir’s big earnings. The NASDAQ is now down almost 60 basis points, and the Dow right now is down one-half of 1%. The 10-year is clear down at 4.20. Gold’s got a little life today. It’s up a quarter of a percent. But it looks like the semiconductor stocks are under some pressure here today. And, of course, you know, China buying the Russian oil could be an issue. Just when you think the tariffs are all settled and fixed and nothing’s going to happen to them, who knows? He may threaten China over buying the Russian oil with some heavier tariffs or that whole semiconductor thing, which seems to be kind of in the middle of all of that. the negotiations that and the rare earths. I did notice, too, yesterday that MP Materials hit a new all-time high. Okay, Primorus, P-R-I-M, is another one that’s kind of on the outskirts of town, just a little bit in the nuclear power plant sector. It’s headquartered in Dallas. It is also a small cap stock, $5.5 billion, which is really small in today’s world of AI stocks. But it is up 10% today after a very good earnings report. Their sales were up 21% year over year, and their earnings are up 62%. That’s really good. When you look at the overall market, on a daily basis like i do with about fifty two hundred stocks in my database you know about ten percent at any given time is flourishing ten to fifteen percent somewhere in there maybe twenty percent was twenty percent recently because we had such a a wide uh… move in the market uh… but it’s it’s still you know eighty percent does nothing You get into the small caps and it’s even more narrow than that. Then now you’re looking at about 5% of the stocks. Think about that. You’ve got the Russell 2000. You’d be lucky to find 100 stocks in the Russell 2000 that were worth their salt. It’s a pretty bad index, really, as it comes to quality and growth and everything. Primorus, though, would be one of those ones that is flourishing in the small cap universe, PRIM. And again, they had a good report, and they are on the periphery somewhat of that whole nuclear space, which continues to be one of the hottest areas in the entire world. market one of the areas that is flourishing now we get to some of the other stocks that have reported earnings today pfizer for instance let’s take a track record look at pfizer okay on On the cover of the baseball card, you see that beautiful building. You come out of Grand Central Station, and you look up, and it reaches to the heavens. And right over the door, it says Pfizer. Big Pharma, man. This is a $132 billion drug company. But you know what? It’s been a terrible stock over the last decade. You know what you’ve made in Pfizer? Nothing. Half a percent per year. You take the risk of owning a big farm of stock. You’re in the market. You’ve got market risk. And you have made nothing in Pfizer over the last 10 years. Well, the market’s 20%. That’s pretty hard for the CEO, Albert Borla, to hide behind. Borla, over the last five years, you’re down 4% per year. Average of 4% per year down. Down. Well, the market’s up 18%. That’s a lot of negative alpha there. That’s 36% that you’re trailing the S&P 500 by. Over the last three years, you’re losing 18% per year for folks, investors. And over the last 12 months, it’s down 18%. Well, the market’s up 16%. That’s bad. That’s horrible returns. The last time they had a positive return was during COVID. 2021, they rode the vaccine wave, and they were up 60%, and it’s been all downhill since then. Now, they do have a little bit of a pop here today. This would be if you were a deep value, a contrarian investor. Pfizer currently has a P.E. ratio of 7. But it probably deserves it. The dividend yield is 7%. So there you go. I mean, isn’t that a pure value investor’s dream to get a P.E. of 7 and a dividend yield of 7? Well, that tells me a couple of things. This stock is not well thought of at all. They’re punishing it mightily with the single-digit P.E. ratio. And I would say the dividend yield is probably in great jeopardy of being cut in half or maybe eliminated entirely. Who knows? They can’t sustain that dividend yield. Their earnings came in 30% higher. They had a pretty good quarter, and the stock is up 5.2% today. But, man, I don’t know. You look at that track record. It does not instill a lot of confidence in an investor, even a deep value investor, stepping up to the plate and getting into Pfizer, PFE. Okay, the next one is Caterpillar. Caterpillar’s been a little bit better. It’s definitely done better than Pfizer. The pride of Irving, Texas is where it’s headquartered, Caterpillar. And Caterpillar’s actually had a little better track record. Cat very much impacted by mining, rare earth, lithium, and, of course, the construction, heavy construction. Let’s just take a look. I had the CEO of Caterpillar. He actually wrote me a letter thanking me for mentioning him. in my book that i wrote back in 2013 let’s just look at the track record though real quickly here of caterpillar how they’ve done i mean numbers don’t lie it is what it is here’s what you’ve done for investors over the last 10 years you’ve delivered 21.5 percent per year that’s why it was in my book in 2013 because they have crackerjack management and they always have had crackerjack management Beating the S&P 500. So anyways, it’s the tale of a good stock in the Dow and a bad stock in the Dow. And Palantir, the story of the day. Well, we’ll see you tonight if you’re in the area at 7 p.m. at the Kingsley Hotel in Bloomfield Hills. 855-611-BEST if you want to come. If you want to set up an appointment with us, 855-611-BEST. Have a great day, everybody.
SPEAKER 03 :
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.
