Join Barry Kite as he navigates the turbulent waters of today’s market in the absence of Bill Gunderson. The discussion highlights the mixed performance across indexes, with a special focus on the ever-changing landscape due to economic policies and consumer sentiment. We explore GameStop’s surprising strategic shift towards investing in Bitcoin amidst declining traditional revenue streams, providing an intriguing look at how companies are adapting in unpredictable times.
He’s been seen on CNBC, the Fox News Channel, and the Fox Business Channel. His articles can be found on MarketWatch, Seeking Alpha, thestreet.com, and many other places. He’s the author of the weekly Best Stocks Now newsletter and the inventor of the Best Stocks Now app. He’s president of Gundersen Capital Management. Here is professional money manager Bill Gundersen.
SPEAKER 02 :
Good morning and welcome to the Wednesday, March 26th edition of the Best Docs Now show. I am Barry Kite, planner and analyst here at Gunderson Capital Management, handling show duties for Bill today, while he and Jeff are meeting with some folks down in sunny Sarasota. I know they’ve been… I know they’ve had a full schedule. And we’ve got, I know Edie ended up showing up to kind of coordinate things. She’s the queen of our schedule usually. So she’s down there directing traffic. And I hope, please say hello to all the folks down there. We’ve got a little bit of a mixed bag this morning in the markets. We’ve got the Dow up 182 points, 0.43%. to 42,774. And we’ve got the S&P down 15 points, just over a quarter of a percent down. We’ve got the NASDAQ down 171, down just almost a percent here, down 0.95. And we’ve also got a risk-off move in Bitcoin down about a percent to 87,194. And we’ve got gold still above $3,000 at $3,018, down $2 today. And again, welcome to the Wednesday, March 26th edition of the Best Stocks Now show. And we had a quiet day, kind of a quiet day during the show yesterday. This morning’s been pretty quiet. The futures were pretty close to flat. Gotten some action since the market opened here, most of it to the downside, as I mentioned. But, you know, hoping to get really some quietness in terms of I think the market’s really kind of waiting for April 2nd, tariff talk kind of remains in the spotlight. Of course, it sounds a bit premature at this point, but in case you missed it, yesterday the S&P notched I think its first three-day win streak. since early February. So that’s not the longest streak there, but good to be on one anyway. Yesterday, the S&P was up 0.2%. We also had the NASDAQ was up about 0.5%, and the Dow was barely up. Just a tad bit higher. So all three finished in the green yesterday. It seems stocks continue to try to get back on track after correcting. Looks like from the February high, the S&P down to the March low was around 10.5% at this point. So as Bill’s mentioned, markets seem to be continuing to kind of build that bottom here. Certainly not out of the woods yet and probably won’t be able to sound any green light on the market, certainly until after April 2nd when we get some of that information in terms of what the tariffs will potentially look like, basically country by country or whatever. Sector by sector or product by product, we’ll find out and we’ll probably all learn together a good bit when we get some of that clarity. And yesterday we had consumer confidence. Certainly some of the sentiment remains bleak, as I mentioned. A lot of the, you know, cutting, you know, a lot of the, you know, headwinds, at least for economic growth, have been easy to quantify, whether they’re, you know, jobs that we’re, you know, taking out of, you know, out of the cutting from the federal government or if it’s an amount of budget cuts that we’re doing from the federal government. Obviously, all of that’s going to be a headwind for growth, you know, All of that’s very easily quantifiable. The hard part to quantify is what those cuts, benefits, and other things that the administration is doing to promote investment, promote business, where that’s harder to quantify. quantify what those benefits will be down the road so we keep you know sentiment as such sentiment certainly been waning here over the last few months you’ve had I think looking at the consensus yesterday in terms of the sentiment short-term outlook for income business and labor market conditions actually dropped to their lowest level in 12 years That obviously was on the back of the University of Michigan’s survey with inflation expectations kind of jumping their highest reading since November of 2022. So sentiment-wise, right, it’s another reason why we need some of these daily win streaks to kind of turn some of that sentiment around because a lot of it is based on more feeling than actual figures out there, at least from a market standpoint. If you look at, you know, we had new home sales grew recently. Gained in February, basically came in just under our estimates. So actually from a home sales grew 1.8%. We also had a durable goods order came in this morning. Those actually unexpectedly rose in February. So new orders for manufactured durable goods rose 0.9% month over month. They were actually expected to fall 1% on the month. And new orders, excluding transportation equipment, It was up 0.7% month over month. I think the consensus number was 0.3. So those durable goods numbers came in, you know, better than expected. So, you know, economic-wise, we’re still growing. And, you know, whether we don’t grow as quickly as we have been or, In terms of some of these sentiment surveys, even though the mood may not be quite as rambunctious as it was, say, four months ago, the economy is still growing pretty significantly. When you look at Asian markets, we had Asian markets have kind of followed the U.S. as of late 2020. A lot of them being worried about reciprocal tariffs, how that’s going to play out. One interesting note is Bank of Japan has continued to look like they’re going to likely be open to further interest rate hikes. Right. Bill has covered the carry trade. We’ve covered it a number of times here. As interest rates go up in Japan, that makes that carry trade less attractive, which ends up being less fuel for risk markets here in the U.S. where you could borrow it. in Japan and then invest here in the U.S., and you kind of had a bit of an arbitrage opportunity, at least very low borrowing cost. And so as borrowing costs go up in Japan, eventually, right, some of that will trickle through to our markets in terms of potentially less capital chasing stocks and equities out there. From a market calendar, we had the durable goods order came out at 8.30 this morning. Not a lot of economic news out there today. We do have a couple of Fed speakers again today, as we’ve had pretty much all week. We’ve got one of Bill’s favorites, Kashikari, speaking at 10 o’clock, or right about now this morning. And then we’ve got the St. Louis Fed Bank president is going to speak around 1.10 today. Most of that story has been they’ve kind of all been on the same page in terms of where they think the market’s at. You’ve seen a lot of caution in terms of just not knowing how to necessarily model what we’ve got ahead until we get some more clarity on the tariff talk. And also, you’ve seen some where they’ve reduced some growth forecasts. They think inflation may tick up a tiny bit. And you’ve had essentially from the dot pot standpoint kind of reduced the number of cuts for the Fed in 2025 from two to one. So not much, doesn’t look like we may not have much Fed intervention in 2025. Certainly not as much as may have been envisioned, you know, just a handful of months ago. But we’ll keep an eye out there. We will get the weekly jobless claims tomorrow, which is always a big number. And then we’ll have the PCE inflation numbers. figures on Friday, which is the Fed’s preferred inflation rate. So a little quiet morning, but we’ll get into some things here for the show. Stay with us. Best Docs Now. And welcome back here to the Wednesday, March 26th edition of the Best Docs Now show. I am Barry Kite, planner and analyst here at Gunderson Capital. Playing relief captain for Bill this morning as he’s down in Sarasota with Jeff, Edie, and the team, meeting with folks. I know they’ve got a busy day on tap here. Not quite as busy from a market news standpoint. It does seem that the market’s kind of taking a little bit of a turn to the negative over the last break. We’ve got the Dow mixed bag here. We’ve got the Dow. Up 0.36% today. That’s 151 points in the green. We’ve got the S&P 500 down just almost a half a percent, down 27 points. NASDAQ down 1.4% here, down 252 points. Getting close to that 18,000 range again, 18,019 for the NASDAQ at the moment. And then we’ve got Bitcoin down about 1,500 bucks a coin, down 1.7%. So it looks like a little bit of a risk-off move in the market today. Like I said, things have been… Yesterday it had been pretty quiet. I think today it’s going to be a little quiet. We may have some quiet markets up until the 2nd. I believe on Wednesday we’ll have some more news on the tariff front. Part of what Doge and the administration is trying to do is pointed out by Moody’s came out with a warning on U.S. fiscal strength, essentially sounding an alarm as they did. I guess they downgraded America’s credit rating. I guess that was back in around 2023. You had Fitch and the debt ceiling battle in 2023, and I think you had Fitch and Moody’s remove their – AAA rating. Today, you know, they’re kind of just warning about the negative, they’ve had a negative outlook for, Moody’s had a negative outlook for the U.S. since November of 2023. And they’re just mentioning evolving U.S. government policy agenda on trade, immigration, taxes, federal spending, and regulations could reshape the U.S. economy. And with significant long-term consequences, fiscal strength is on course for a continued multi-year decline. And when you couple that, I guess, with increasing fiscal risks, economic risks, they’re just reaffirming, I guess, the negative outlook, which is what, from a government standpoint, and Bill’s mentioned this a lot on the show, is the path we’re on, you know, is unsustainable long-term. So you’ve got to Make some decisions. You’ve got to reduce spending, which any government spending is a form of stimulus for the economy, for the markets, for spending. Those dollars are chasing goods here and abroad. And so as you reduce that spending, as you weigh people off, you’re going to have less economic fuel for that to continue. So you’re going to have some pain before things get better, and that’s one of the impetus of reasoning of why we need to you know in invoke a bit of pain is uh is in this moody story in terms of warning uh warning in the u.s about their fiscal strength so that’s uh that’s where we’re at uh there and that’s why i think uh you know from an administration standpoint that’s why they’re on uh the path that they’re on here um you know uk wise we’ve got uh got an inflation report today inflation uh And it seems kind of the inflation bug has really kind of waned around the globe. It’s certainly not back to where it was pre-COVID days, but certainly those inflation rates have continually dropped around the globe. It really seems in each economy. But UK’s inflation dropped to 2.8% in February. So under the 3% mark, it was 3% in January. We’ve also got some consumer confidence in Sweden fell to 89.8%. So I guess from a sentiment standpoint, we’re not the only folks out there that have kind of a sentiment issue there. And speaking of sentiment, I think at 11… 11 a.m. today, we get a survey. It’s funny, a lot of these surveys, you’re kind of seeing more and more now since the sentiment has gone a bit south. But you’ve got a survey of business uncertainty that comes out at 11. So we’ll dive into that after the show and see if there’s anything that we can glean from that there. Of course, you know, it really says, you know, all the discussion, you know, continues and will continue to be around. The tariff discussion, of course, you know, which I’m sure like everyone kind of tired of hearing it, really had my – heard plenty on the topic at this point. I mean, it almost gives me flashbacks back to college economics class where, you know, a lot of that – tariff discussion and terms of trade back in those classes. It put you to sleep back then, and now, of course, it’s front-page news no matter what TV news you listen to. It’s all about the tariff discussion. We went through yesterday a number of different parts, different sectors, different companies that affected in one form or fashion in terms of the tariff talk, some on the good front in terms of opening what I think we were talking about opening a steel mill. uh in louisiana and and you know of course uh the you know talk in terms of you know what is that going to do for prices of of other goods so uh you’ve had a we’ve had a lot of discussion on it and uh and you know some of the uh pushback from other countries in terms of uh you know we’re raising this or they’re raising that so we’ll We’ll talk about some of those. I’ve been putting together a number of stories that highlight the tariff talk and how that translates into our investments and how we’re positioned in portfolios, how individual investors are navigating this. Because it comes at you news-wise, comes at you a bunch of different ways where, you know, you could have a news story for Lilly and positive news, say, on the GLP-1 front or, you know, something else that they’re into. But, you know, on the other side of the equation, you get, you know, we hear talk of potential pharmaceuticals, talk of tariffs involving pharmaceuticals. So how do those two, good news and bad news, how do those net out and how that affects your portfolio? But we’ll take a look at those coming back when we come back from break. We’re through the first half of the Best Stocks Now show. Be right back.
SPEAKER 01 :
This is Bill Gunderson. Thank you for tuning in to today’s Best Stocks Now, Best Inverse Funds Now show. Now, back to the second half of the show.
SPEAKER 06 :
Because there’s something in the air.
SPEAKER 02 :
And welcome back to the second half of the Wednesday, March 26th edition of the Best Docs Now show. I am Barry Kite, planer and analyst here at Gunderson Capital, sitting in for Bill today while he’s down in Sarasota with Jeff and Edie, meeting with the good folks down there. If you want to stay up to date with Bill’s thoughts on the markets, get the newsletter, get the four weeks of the live trading alerts, please go to GundersenCapital.com, or you can always give us a ring if you want to have a discussion about portfolio allocation or any financial planning issues you may come across. Feel free to give Edie a call, get a meeting set up with us. You can reach us at 855-611-BEST. That’s 855-611-2378. Always here to be a resource. From the market standpoint, we’ve got NASDAQ still down a little over 1% at the moment, down 205%. S&P looks a lot to be driven by. Maybe the chip sector of silver and NVIDIA is down about 4.5% here at the break. But the S&P down 0.33% here. And Dow actually up, bucking the trend a bit, up 0.41% at the moment. But we’ve got, like I said, I think some weakness in the chip sector or no weakness. Yesterday I mentioned where Alibaba’s chairman had kind of expressed some concerns about possible AI bubble here in the U.S., primarily on the data center side. Just meaning, I guess, in terms of the size of some of these data center builds, also some of these data center builds being built on spec, so building data centers hoping that there’s going to be demand. And, you know, you’ve had a couple big players. Microsoft backed out of a contract recently on a data center. So you’ve seen those things kind of bring down the overall AI trade. You’ve seen, you know, Oklo had posted a bigger than expected loss yesterday. Oklo was down pretty significantly from a – and obviously that’s a long-duration power play, but – You know, if you’ve got some questions in terms of data center build, right, well, then, you know, that would lead you potentially to a question in terms of do you need, you know, as much power as we’ve, you know, seen forecasted. So that’s probably what the drag is on primarily the chip sector, but also really anything to do with the AI sector at the moment this morning. We talked about tariffs being, all of us are probably likely tired of hearing about tariffs in some form or fashion. And of course, you’ve got these ripple effects across all different industries, across companies. Probably the number one company that’s under attack at the moment certainly is Tesla. not just because it could be affected by these tariffs, but also certainly backlash, whether it’s Doge or just as a proxy for the administration at the moment. But we’ve continued to talk about that company just really being under attack, literally and figuratively. But I saw where Canada is going to halt Tesla rebate payments and likely block future rebates, at least at this point. It’s going to frozen payments to Tesla under the country’s electric vehicle program. has directed the department to change the eligibility criteria to ensure that Tesla vehicles will not be eligible for incentive programs so long as the illegitimate and illegal U.S. tariffs are imposed against Canada. So there’s backlash against tariffs. We’ve taken away incentives for Tesla vehicles. Toronto, I believe, had already… kind of ended financial incentives for tesla i think they did that uh i don’t know how they did that maybe a few weeks ago or so um but uh you know there’s also been as with here been a bunch of vandalism incidents at the dealerships in canada um so that’s uh you know that’s another piece i know yesterday i highlighted uh The European sales saw some more stats on that in terms of Tesla’s market share shrunk to 1.4% in Europe. Companies that beat them in terms of sales in the January to February period include Ford, Volvo, and Chinese state-owned SAIC Motors. Suzuki, all of them sold more automobiles than Tesla in that time period, the last couple of months. And all at the same time, the new battery car sales grew by 28.4%. So just another example of how what’s going on in the real world affects our portfolios, affects companies out there, and Tesla certainly being… One on the front lines, in terms of we’ve got copper out there. We’re actually coppers at all time. And this is how these tariffs and talks of tariffs happen. It can affect commodity prices, but you’ve got copper hitting record. I think it was up over 3% yesterday. There’s discussion. Trump’s threatened to impose a 25% tariff on all copper imports. So that’s affecting the price of copper here and abroad. We’ve got some steel in terms of steel plants. We had news of one yesterday that we’re investing in, and then I saw one from Cleveland Cliffs is going to idle part of their Dearborn steel plant, and that’s basically due to some weak auto demand. They’ve got one furnace that they’ve had down. that I believe they’re going to bring back online, and then they’re going to have temporarily shut down one of their other furnaces or blast furnaces. So they’re not really necessarily reducing the amount of output. It’s really they’re kind of reshuffling it at some point, you know, You would think both of those furnaces would be on at some point. But this is kind of what we do and what Bill does. We’re attempting to read the tea leaves. and see what’s going on out in the market, out in particular sectors, and how that in turn affects companies and affects portfolios as a whole. We’ve seen other benefits. Saw news where I guess India is going to get rid of a digital ad tax for foreign firms. So this is a win for the administration. India’s going to abandon 6% digital ad tax on online advertisements. That helps companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, for example. So that’s a 6% tariff that will go away for those companies. So there’s, for every… Cost, there’s also offsetting benefits where you’ve got some wins and some losses in one of the More recent winds is obviously it looks like this Panama Canal port deal is moving ahead, regardless of China has some concerns over it. But it looks like that’s moving ahead. With C.K. Hutchinson, they’re planning to sell some ports to BlackRock. Obviously, two of those ports involve a port on each side of the Panama Canal. The deal is worth $19 billion. It involves 43 ports globally. That looks to be on track, so that certainly was a win for the administration there. In terms of progress towards, we’ve gotten some concessions in terms of a potential partial. Um, cease fire for, uh, in the Russian Ukrainian war. Um, that’s, uh, led to fertilizer, uh, fertilizer, uh, costs going down, uh, uranium, uh, stocks going down. Uh, so all these, uh, these things have a ripple effect through, through the markets and through your portfolios. But, uh, we’re, uh, through the three fourths of the best stocks now show, and we’ll be right back for the fourth and final segment looking underneath the hood of the market. Good morning and welcome back to the March 26th edition of the Best Docs Now show. I am Barry Kite, planner and analyst here at Gundersen Capital. Sitting in for Bill today as they wrap up meeting with the folks down in Sarasota, but of course Bill’s adding to the newsletter every day as a collection of his research, and to keep up with what Bill’s doing, what he’s got going on in the newsletter, and All the daily emails and live alerts that go out from live trading, you’re always welcome to go to GundersenCapital.com. If you want to have a chat about your portfolio, feel free to give us a ring, 855-611-BEST. That’s 855-611-2378. Well, you’re finishing up in terms of how administration’s progress is working towards moving markets in certain forms or fashion. I think uranium actually is a pretty great example. So we’ve got… There’s been some discussion in terms of potential ceasefire, at least involving energy assets in the Russian-Ukraine war. In doing so, you’ve had fertilizer costs have gone down. Nutrien, for example, CF Industries, Mosaic, all of those companies, We’re trading lower yesterday. And just because you may have more Russian fertilizer come on, grain and fertilizer come on to global markets as we work to some form of resolution in that war. Who knows when that will happen. But as we work towards it, markets are being affected. And uranium is probably… You know, a great example just in terms of something in how many different things are affecting, say, uranium prices right now. One being the Russian-Ukraine conflict. As tension goes down there, right, you’re going to have uranium costs are likely to decrease. So that’s one thing that’s leading to… So peace equals less price for uranium in that example. And so also we’ve had some tariff proposals potentially have caused utilities from signing up for long-term uranium purchases. So that’s affecting the price there. And last, you’ve had, of course, you know, deep-seek in terms of partly, you know, part of what the Alibaba chairman was mentioning yesterday in terms of, you know, AI maybe being overbuilt. Both of those things, right, with deep-seeks, you know, discovery or, you know, the way they’re driving their model uses less power, so that reduces all of that, reducing the cost of uranium. So, It’s just interesting where you’ve got something with all these different cross-currents, all of them having to do with something different out there, really, one being tariffs, one being war, one being, I guess, discovery. if you will, or technological advancement and all three of those things affecting uranium in some form or fashion. So that’s what, you know, that’s really probably in a nutshell kind of what we do here at Gundersen Capital and what Bill is doing is, you know, So looking at the market and looking at those various cross currents, you think of a tug of war sometimes where you have a headwind for a company or earnings or a sector and tailwinds for those sectors or companies as well and kind of netting those out. Okay, well, is it going to be a net positive, a net negative for the company? What’s the story there, right? And so that’s what we’re doing, and that’s why, you know, Bill, and while we’re immersed in this on a daily basis and most importantly paying attention, So I guess if you don’t have anything, you can always do what GameStop did. This is an interesting story. It kind of reminds me of, as Bill mentions, the old kind of dot-com days where you just mentioned dot-com and your name and the company went up. There have been a few. Green Energy at one point was very similar. We had the word green in your name. But GameStop has gotten approval by the board, I guess, announcing that it can start investing in Bitcoin. So GameStop apparently has $5 billion in cash. I did not know that they had $5 billion in cash, given the fact that their revenue fell 28.5% year over year. But In terms of, you know, so I guess now that cash can find Bitcoin potentially. So I haven’t seen what GameStop is trading at today. But, you know, I guess soon enough maybe it could be, you know, could be the next up and coming, you know, micro strategy, I guess. GameStop on the news up 15.5%. So they’re announcing that their normal business, which, as I mentioned, their revenue fell 28.5% year over year. But the company is up 15% for announcing that they are now able to invest in Bitcoin. So… I guess as a dad with three boys between the age of 18 and 10, they haven’t had me purchase anything from GameStop for a while now, surprisingly enough. So I guess that tells you Bitcoin probably is maybe the next thing that they want to go into maybe. on a go-forward basis, may be more profitable than their previous business. GameStop is still alive. Who knows? We’ll see how this next line of investment goes for them. As we’ve seen, a lot of these companies, Bed Bath & Beyond was a great example. We’ve got Kohl’s now. Some of these companies can stick around and last longer than any of us would have ever expected in terms of remaining an entity in some form of fashion. So with a lot of these brick and mortar retail companies, they’ve been disrupted and that business is certainly changing and GameStop seems to be figuring out that they’re going to go in a different direction. So we’ll follow them as we keep looking high on the markets. Always, if you have any questions, give us a call, 855-611-BEST. That’s 855-611-2378. Or look us up at GundersenCapital.com. But have a great day, everyone. Bye now.
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.
