In today’s episode of the Best Stocks Now show, host Bill Gunderson explores new developments in technology and pharmaceuticals. With a keen eye for opportunity, Bill evaluates the latest stock performance, highlighting potential winners in the evolving marketplaces. From breakthrough advancements in AI and nuclear power to challenges in the pharmaceutical industry, gain a comprehensive understanding of where the market is headed. Discover the strategic moves of companies like AMD and Spotify as they carve their paths in a competitive world, underscoring key factors driving their success.
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.
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And welcome to the Tuesday morning. It is June the 17th. Do you know where your portfolio is? This is Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management. And I am flying solo here probably through the whole show. We’ll see. Maybe one of them will join us here a little bit later on. But that’s cool. We’ve got the Dow right now is down a little bit. Trump had to come home early from the G7. That’s got the markets rattled. They’re always rattled about something, but we’re not down that much. The Dow’s down 89 points to 42,426 after a really big day yesterday. The NASDAQ is down 84 points right now to 19,617 after a very, very good day yesterday, especially in AI. All nuclear, quantum, all of your momentum areas of the market. The S&P is down 19 right now, 30 basis points, 6,014. Small caps are down 40 basis points. We’ve got interest rates are down a couple of points as they’re meeting behind closed doors today. The Fed is, that is. And they will be announcing their decision tomorrow and most people expecting tomorrow. No change, even though we’re overdue for a rate cut. In my opinion, crude oil is up 2.6% today to $73.66. And gold is down a little bit right now to $3,411. So welcome to today’s Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson. President of Gundersen Capital Management, and I am broadcasting today from Lakewood Ranch, beautiful Lakewood Ranch, Florida, where it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day here. Blue skies, temperatures pushing 90 degrees, a little bit of humidity in the air. Beautiful day. We had a big day in the market yesterday. Wow, a really big day, in fact. The Dow yesterday was up 317 points. I don’t know what the catalyst was, really. I would just say that the market seems to be getting used to all of the turmoil in the world and here in our nation and focusing back on earnings once again, which continue to be good. I’ll be talking about earnings quite a bit tonight. If you’re going to do a workshop on the stock market, your main subject should be earnings, earnings, earnings, and it will be. A big topic tonight at the workshop. If you’re in the area, 7 p.m. at the Even Hotel. I finally got that straight, the Even Hotel here in Lakewood Ranch. And we’ll go until about 8.30. The Dow was up 317 yesterday. The NASDAQ was up yesterday 294 points. And there were some outstanding charts in the market yesterday that I highlighted and that I sent out to my subscribers and to my clients that want those live alerts from the market, from the front lines of the market. From on the water, on the water fishing reports throughout the day of what I am observing. The rare earths had a very big day yesterday, Mountain Pass, MP. I talked about the little one. that got a deal from the Trump administration, got a grant to do some work in Greenland on rare earth. And rare earth was a big subject at the G7 meeting. They’re all worried about China. playing that card and restricting those rare earth exports and trying to work out solutions to all that because these 17 elements are in a lot of things that we use all of the time. So the rare earths had a big day. AMD had a huge day yesterday. It got a big upgrade from one of the analysts out there. That stock was up 7 or 8%. That’s the biggest move AMD has made in a long time. Really good chart. We own it in our relative value portfolio. CoreWeave had another big day yesterday despite being very expensive. Oscar Health had a nice day yesterday. It’s up another 6% today. Robinhood had a big day. Embraer had a big day with the Paris Air Show going on. And Pony also ponied up today. Yesterday was some big gains, and today it’s not too bad. I’m seeing some good moves here today. Oscars up 6.4%. AMD’s up again. The oil stocks are doing well. I don’t know how long that’s going to last. I guess as long as the shooting war in Iran between Iran and Israel is going on. And the Straits of Hormuz are threatened. I suppose oil will continue to move higher. Palantir had a good day yesterday. Also, the AI stocks and NVIDIA continues to break out to the upside. Well, Trump demanding that Iran give up entirely on their nuclear weapons. That seems to be a non-negotiable point. No more nuclear weapons research, which Iran has been spending a lot of money on. a lot of time a lot of energy and uh… you can’t tell me it’s for peaceful purposes uh… you know nothing that they have really fired at uh… israel some have gotten through but for the most part over ninety percent of their their ballistic missiles are being deflected and uh… it seems like they’re hell-bent on getting their hands on a nuclear weapon and that’s taken a big big setback I was listening to a couple of talk show hosts yesterday as I traveled down here and talking about the big, big plant, which is under the ground. It’s under the ground. I think 1,000 feet or something like that under the ground, and it’s totally encased in cement, and that’s where they keep the fuel that is almost ready to go or is ready to go. With a nuclear weapon. And the only way they can reach that bunker down there is with the bunker buster bombs, which they don’t have. They’d have to get those from the U.S. And some wonder if that’s why Trump came home early from the G7 meeting yesterday, leaving kind of in a hurry. And also putting out a warning to Tehran to evacuate Iran. So we really don’t know, and that definitely is part of the market being down today. The only other way that Israel could reach that big plant under the ground would be to send in some commandos. I wouldn’t want that assignment. And that could also be where the Ayatollah is hiding. So anyways, we’ve got that under the ground of the market, underneath the surface of the market today. Retail sales here in the U.S. slump in May. That doesn’t surprise me because there was a lot of front running in February and March and April, getting ahead of the tariffs. And now, you know, the tariffs are here. So it doesn’t surprise me to see the retail sales slump. We just need for them to not continue to slump. And I think that’s what the Fed’s worry is. What will these higher prices do to retail sales? Will it cause the consumer to tighten up? And will it eventually impact the economy? And will it show up in the inflation numbers? So that’s our first report here today. Since the tariffs on retail sales, they were down minus, minus 0.9 month over month. And again, I think a lot of that was because of the front running done in February and March. Well, the Fed, our friends at the Fed are the friendly Fed, which hasn’t been too friendly. We probably have the unfriendliest Fed in the world today as the ECB continues to cut, Australia continues to cut, Bank of England continues to cut, and our Fed has not done any cuts whatsoever, keeping those Fed fund rates up over 4%. which keeps the 30-year mortgage up near 7%, 6.5% to 7% seems to be where that is mired. And most people do not expect a rate cut this week. And, in fact, most of the analysts out there do not expect a rate cut this year, which is a little bit hard for me to believe. We haven’t even reached the halfway point of the year. We will in a couple of weeks. But former Federal Reserve Vice Chair Roger Ferguson believes the Fed is not going to cut interest rates in its upcoming meeting. Of course, we’ll get the decision tomorrow or likely at their next meeting and maybe not even this entire year. Well, on that happy note, we’ll take a little break. We’ll be back, and we’ll talk about the rest of the world, a lot of trade deals in the making, and a lot of stocks in the news today. This is the Best Stocks Now Show.
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They call me free. I keep blowing. I keep blowing.
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And welcome back here to the second quarter of today’s Best Stocks Now show. While the European market’s down today, also they’re down one-half of one percent. My guess is they’re worried about the same things that the U.S. markets are worried about, the escalation taking place in the Middle East and trade deals that remain undone, although we do have some important updates on some of those trade deals. Also seeing the China market down about 35 to 40 basis points. It’s selling off also. And Japan, we were very close. There’s the first update on a trade deal. We were very close to a deal with Japan. Not quite there, however, but very, very close. Japan’s Nikkei was up yesterday. Their Bank of Japan, they stood pat on their interest rates while Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to continue trade talks. continued trade talks but failed to reach a breakthrough on tariffs. So that one is still out there, but getting closer and closer. Yesterday I said, I’m not sure where we are with Canada and Mexico. Well, there was an update on Canada yesterday. President Donald Trump said on Monday that a trade deal with Canada is achievable within days or weeks. Okay, that’s very encouraging. because they are a big trade partner. Trump wants tariffs, and their leader, Mark Carney, has got a similar idea, but it’s not exactly tariffs. And when asked what the holdup on the deal was, Trump said it’s not so much holding up on a deal with Canada. We have different concepts here. He said, I have a tariff concept, and Carney has a different concept, which is something that some people like. So I don’t know what Carney is suggesting, but they’re very, very close to a deal we are with Canada. I haven’t heard any updates with Mexico. I haven’t heard anything at all. coming from Mexico. And, of course, one of the hang-ups with Canada was the fentanyl coming across the northern border. That’s obviously one of the biggest hang-ups, too, with Mexico on the southern border. And, of course, with China. I mean, they got hit with the 20% fentanyl tariff as part of that 30% package. Solar stocks get crushed as the Senate bill budget proposal keeps cuts to solar incentives you know that’s one thing that’s kept the solar industry alive obviously uh… is uh… the tax incentives especially to people who install solar on the roof uh… getting a big tax incentive and uh… that uh… apparently those cuts are gonna continue to happen to solar incentives And don’t forget, it happened to EV, electrical vehicle cars also. That $7,500 is going to be phased out. Relevant stocks in the solar industry, Sunrun, what’s left of it, down 28%. SolarEdge down 22%. Enphase down 16%. I see that Enphase is one of the most shorted stocks. In the entire market, that’s ENPH. And other solar stocks, first solar, probably the blue chip of solar stocks, it was down 7% yesterday. But the modified text of the bill extends tax credits for hydro. nuclear, and geothermal power to 2036. Well, Citigroup’s got a big, bold prediction on gold. I don’t know that I agree with it. They see gold dropping back below 3,000 an ounce and headed down to about 2,500 to 2,700 an ounce by the second half of 2026. That would be next year. Well, I don’t know how to put a valuation on gold myself. I found that the only way I can trade gold or own gold is looking at the charts of gold. It continues to hit a new high. It has leveled off a little in the $3,400 area. Silver continues to be pretty strong. It’s hitting $36. It was hitting $37 per ounce this morning. But Citigroup is calling for a break in the rally in gold. Well… let’s put it this way gold has been a great hedge against the tariffs and one by one the tariffs are being resolved okay so i can see from that standpoint of view gold could lose some of its luster here as these deals with other countries are resolved TikTok deadline is fast approaching. Trump indicates that he may push back the TikTok deadline. The clock, the tick is talking or the talk is ticking. on TikTok. I don’t know. This has got to have hurt TikTok and its popularity. You know, they have a deadline bite dance to divest the U.S. assets of its popular short video app called TikTok. But it sounds like he’s going to extend it, still trying to work out a deal. Several investors, including Oracle, Blackstone and Dell have stepped forward to take a majority stake in TikTok, leaving ByteDance with a diminished 20% stake. So that deadline looks like it’s going to get pushed forward. Spotify. You know, Spotify has been a great stock here in 2025. And it is one of the chosen ones that we own in our premier growth portfolio, which when fully invested has about 20 to 25 stocks in it. Only the best from my point of view. That’s another topic on the table for tonight. What is a best stock now? Is it the deep value, low PE, low price to cash flow, low price to book value, stocks trading below their intrinsic value, or is it the go-go momentum stocks, or is it somewhere in between? Well, everybody has a different opinion on that, obviously. But using my criteria, Spotify continues to be a best stock now. It hit a new all-time high yesterday. And pivotal research on Tuesday gave the music streaming giant a $100 price target hike. You know, they’re the only ones that have been able to work out. Other than Netflix, they did it with movies and films. But Spotify’s doing it with podcasts and music, where Pandora failed to do it. Sirius Satellite failed to do it. XMSR, they finally had to merge with the other one. And… For whatever reason, I mean, they figured it out there at Spotify how to become profitable and a profit giant. They have the right formula and we continue to own it. As Pivotal puts a $900 price target, I think we’re up around there too. Spotify closed at $715 yesterday. We’ll be right back. What is SoftBank buying? What are they selling? S-F-T-B-Y. This is Bill Gunderson. 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.
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And welcome back here to the second half of today’s Best Docs Now show with the markets underwater a little bit here today after a really big day yesterday.
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The first chart that caught my eye yesterday was AMD, and it’s the first chart that catches my eye once again. Boy, that thing has really turned a corner. We bought it just two weeks ago as it started to reverse course. It was in a downtrend for the longest time. AMD got as high as, oh, let’s see, almost $200 a share at one point in time. Then it went to 76. And since it hit 76 at the beginning of April of this year, it’s hitting 130 today and breaking out. That’s a very powerful chart. And it qualified for my value, relative value value portfolio because on a relative basis, I mean it’s traded in the 45 to 60 forward PE range. Right now it’s trading, when we bought it, it was about 19 times forward earnings. Now it’s at 21 times forward earnings as it’s really taken a pretty good run here over the last couple weeks since we purchased it. And it’s breaking out today. So that stock catches my eye once again today. SoftBank raises $4 billion. Where did the money come from? They sold their T-Mobile shares. Now, I’m a fan of T-Mobile stock. He has done a fantastic job over the years. I think the CEO is John Legere in running a company very much like Spotify, where others have failed to do it, to take on the AT&Ts of the world and the Verizons as far as plans, sell plans. T-Mobile has been an earnings powerhouse. Over the last five years, it’s averaged 21% per year in earnings growth year over year. They just had a big quarter with 24% growth in earnings. But the stock’s been under a little bit of pressure here recently, and now I know why. It looks like SoftBank has been unloading their position, and they got rid of the last bit of it, and that’s why it’s down today, selling 21.5 million T-Mobile shares for 224 each. You might want to look at it as a relative value play here because it’s trading now at about 18 times forward earnings. It’s a $252 billion company. It also pays a dividend of 1.6%. So that’s why TMUS is selling off today as SoftBank, big Japanese publicly traded private equity fund. They own public stocks too. Unwinds its position. The global pharma stocks. It’s not a good place to be in 2025. They have a couple of things hanging over their head. One, a lot of them don’t have very robust pipelines at all. And two, actually there’s three things. Two is the threat of tariffs. Trump has kind of laid off imposing tariffs on pharmaceutical goods. because of the impact that that might have on public health. And then you’ve got the fight to, you know what, whatever the lowest price is in the world, that’s what they should be charging U.S. people, people in the U.S., ZepFound comes to mind, which costs $100 in Europe and about $900 in America. What gives there? I told you I’d have an answer for you. I didn’t see my friend, my contact there when I was at church on Sunday, but I will get to him. I know he knows the answer to that. I’m guessing it has something to do with the socialized medicine. in Canada and Europe and other countries, where a lot of that price that you pay for a drug is subsidized by the money they extract from your paycheck in the form of higher taxes than what we pay here in the U.S. That’s just my guess, or we’re getting ripped off by the drug companies, or a little bit of each. That’s probably more like it. Okay, you’ve got a new player in China in A.I., You know, that was a big pivot point in the market earlier this year, especially in the AI stocks. When the news of DeepSeek broke, China had their own version of AI to compete with our OpenAI, ChatGPT, and others. And they were able to do it supposedly with a lot less of the high-speed NVIDIA chips than we do it with. Now there’s a new player, China’s Minimax. Minimax claims new AI reasoning model surpasses DeepSeq. Okay, Minimax is backed by Tencent Holdings and Alibaba. If you’re looking for value and you’re able to put up with the volatility that comes with Chinese stocks, Alibaba’s got a PE of 13 right now. which is about one-half of what our tech stocks are trading at, even more so than one-half. But Alibaba does have exposure to this AI stock that’s private, China’s Minimax, and Tencent Holdings, TCEHY, both very tradable on the U.S. markets. I like Tencent myself better than I like Alibaba. Because Tencent’s a lot more diversified. Tencent’s a $610 billion company, probably headed for a trillion at some point in time. It’s up 44 cents on that news. Their investment in Minimax AI, which supposedly is better than DeepSeek’s platform. Here’s some good news coming out of Slovakia on nuclear for a couple of nuclear stocks that we’ve talked about. And I’m going to mention them again here related to this story. Slovakia is nearing a deal for Westinghouse to build a nuclear reactor. Well, Westinghouse is a U.S. company, and we’ve talked about that several times. Slovakia operates five nuclear reactors at two plants. They plan to expand its nuclear power capacity in the coming decades, and the government approved plans last year for a new unit owned by the state and operational by 2040. You see how long out that is? 2040. 15 years to make that thing operational You know the soonest we’ll have new nuclear power is probably by 2030 in different areas around the world but that Westinghouse again is a 51% owned by BEP which is, let’s see, BEP, that stands for, let me look that up real quickly, Brookfield, Brookfield Renewable Properties. And the other 49% is owned by Cameco, CCJ, which is the big uranium company. But it looks like there’s going to be a deal with Slovakia for a brand new, spanking brand new power plant, nuclear power plant. in Slovakia by 2040. And speaking of nuclear, Oklo hits a new all-time high yesterday, leading the nuclear stocks after closing a $440 million capital raise. Okay, what is meant by a capital raise? Well, that means that they printed up some stock certificates on top of the stock certificates they already have which dilutes. I mean, you take the market cap of the company, you divide it by the amount of shares outstanding, and when you increase those shares outstanding, you’re going to get a diluted number In book value, you’re going to get a diluted number in price to cash flow, price to earnings, price to sales, etc. But it did surge yesterday. Oklo, which is headquartered in the Silicon Valley. It’s kind of the nuclear stock of the Silicon Valley. It’s pretty strong again today. It’s up 1.5%. It’s almost a $10 billion company. No sales. No sales yet. Maybe by 2030. They’ve got some customers that they’re trying to get commitments from. And they also announced that they were selected by the U.S. Department of Defense to supply its emerging nuclear reactor technology to power the Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. So that’s an interesting thing there. I mean, to power an entire Air Force Base. I don’t know what the timeline is on that, but they do have a customer in the U.S. government now. And that’s what drove the stock. And yesterday, and of course, the AI revolution happened. And the big need, when you’ve got stocks like Nano, Denison Mines, NuScale, Uranium Energy, Cameco, etc., all big players in that resurgent nuclear sector. We’ll be right back.
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Do what you want to do with whoever you want to be.
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Go where you want to go.
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And welcome back here to the final segment of today’s Best Stocks Now show. Well, the crazy stocks of the day. I wish I’d have known about this one because Eli Lilly coming to town and taking out a company by the name of Verve Therapeutics. The symbol V-E-R-V. Verve is up 76% today. out of Boston, Massachusetts. I was looking at what Verve does. They develop therapies for cardiovascular disease by combining human genetic analysis and gene editing treatment, which is interesting. We recently had the very first drug coming out of this whole gene editing movement. It came, I think, from CRISPR, C-R-S-P. Well, Verve is in that business. Verve has got some sales. They have a product. So, you know, Lilly… Lilly’s got a lot of cash floating around, and they step up to the plate, and they’re paying, you know, just about a billion dollars, $1.3 billion, write a check, and add Verve to their portfolio, V-E-R-V. Did I see that one coming? I don’t know. Let’s just look at the Best Stocks Now app and see if Verve was showing any kinds of signs there. ticking underneath the surface. Well, it was ranked number 1,199. It had a momentum grade of B+. So, yeah, I mean, there were really no signs that that was coming along. And then the crazy stock, the crazy, crazy, crazy stock of the day, Justin Sun is a big digital investor, well-known guy. He came up with Tron, T-R-O-N. That’s a cryptocurrency group founded. He’s a billionaire, and he’s going to go public. But what they’re doing is they’re going to back into a toy maker, SRM, SRM, and do a reverse merger. And as a result, SRM, which was really an unknown stock before yesterday, SRM yesterday I want to say was a 500, it was a five bagger in one day on that news. Today it’s down 22%, but I did add it to my app today. I try to, anytime I see something new like that. Yeah, it was up 534% today. SRM, which until today manufactured battery-operated toys, intended to be sold to customers in amusement parks. Okay, so basically, you throw a dart at the balloon and they give you some crappy little prize, you know, for hitting the balloon. It only costs you five bucks. They’re headquartered in Winter Park, Florida, so I’m guessing there must be an amusement park there in Winter Park. That’s probably why they call it Winter Park. SRM Entertainment, the crazy, crazy, crazy stock of the day. It has been added to the app. We’ll keep our eye on it. And Tron is the new game in town there. Tom Brady Back Company aims to disrupt the athletic apparel and footwear industry. Here comes another one. It’s not publicly traded yet. I remember when Under Armour came along and took on Nike. Hoka Shoes by Deckers definitely has taken on Nike. Now meet no bull, which I tend to give that label to the Best Docs Now show. No bull and no bull in the newsletter. It’s just there’s the facts. Here’s what I see. Here’s what I observe. There’s no bull. I’m not supporting any one stock or I’m not pitching any stock or anything like that. But that’s the name of the company, Noble, and it evolved from the niche CrossFit brand, which I see around quite a bit. A couple of industry veterans in there, Mike Repol and Tom Brady, Boston-based company. It’s going to take on the big boys. It is a private stock right now. Just what Brady needs, you know, a little bit more money there in his coffers. But no bull has grown enough to become a competitive threat to a wide range of established athletic apparel companies, including Nike, Under Armour, UA, Lululemon, Decker’s Outdoor, Brooks. Allbirds and Bandier, as well as newer brands Rad, Strike Movement, and Born Primitive. Kraft Heinz removing all artificial dyes from the remaining 10% of its products. Well, we can thank RFK for that. They say only 10% of their products have artificial dyes in them, but the remaining products that still have those artificial dyes, which RFK, that was one of the first moves he made as the human HHS secretary, was banning red dyes and artificial dyes. Kraft Heinz is going to comply and get rid of the remaining little bit and have to spend a lot of money to do it. That’s the problem. Ferrari will delay their second electric vehicle model due to concerns about demand. I mean, do you really want an electric Ferrari to come home and plug it in? You know, that’s like having a Learjet with propellers. You know, you’re running it on propellers when it’s a Learjet. Not a lot of demand. They’re pushing off plans. In fact, that whole EV space has definitely got some clouds hanging over it other than even Tesla’s got clouds hanging over it. Ventix says Parkinson’s disease drug hits main goal and mid-stage trial. This is another one I added to the app. I really don’t see much movement in that stock. You always wonder, is this a big breakthrough in Parkinson’s disease? Well, I look at the stock. And it’s really not moving that much. Ventix Biosciences. It’s actually down 14.6%. It’s out of San Diego, California. That’s where I’m from. It’s a $151 million company. We’re always rooting for a cure to Parkinson’s disease. And then the last one here. This kind of caught my eye a little bit. The Smart Shopping Cart. a z i added this one to my app this morning they get an order for 3 000 smart carts as you go around with your shopping cart put things in the it totally you know update your cart and how much you owe and what this and that what kind of coupons are available kind of a good idea we’ll keep an eye on a z we’re out of time for today You’re in the neighborhood, 7 p.m. tonight in Lakewood Ranch, Florida at the Even Hotel. And if you’d like to set up an appointment with us, 855-611-BEST, 855-611-BEST. 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 SIBC and FINRA.
