Join professional money manager Bill Gundersen as he dissects the latest market trends on this week’s Best Stocks Now show. With a keen eye on the mixed performance of the Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P 500, Bill provides insights into how geopolitical tensions, such as Ukraine’s actions against Russia, impact international stock markets. Delve into the vital and dynamic roles of financial planning and investment strategies in navigating these turbulent 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 03 :
And welcome to the midweek already Wednesday edition of the Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management, a nationwide fee-based only money management financial planning firm. We’ve got a mixed market today. We’ve got the Dow just slightly up 47 points right now. UNH, UnitedHealthcare.com. is the leader in the Dow right now. The Dow’s at 46,339. Meanwhile, over at the NASDAQ, it’s down 8 points. 22,564 after hitting a new all-time high on Monday. The S&P 500 is down 1.5 to 66.55 after hitting a new all-time high on Monday. The small cap Russell 2000 down 20 basis points right now. Over at the bond market, we’re down a few basis points today after, once again, Jerome Powell, another hawkish speech. This time he threw in the expensive stock market, which I agree with him on that. But behind the curve, Jerome, once again, bashing the market yesterday. We’ve got the bond market, as I said, a little bit on the quiet side right now with the 10-year down two basis points to 4.12%. There is some action in oil right now. It’s up 1.5% as Ukraine ups the ante hitting Russian refineries. So welcome to today’s Best Stocks Now show. with uh… professional money manager bill gunderson president of gunderson capital management barry maybe we should uh… rename the show best stocks now best financial planners now show uh… you know i’ve had some people uh… outside that don’t know a whole lot about our company say well you guys don’t do any financial planning you just do money management i said no wouldn’t you say barry that we give equal weight To financial planning and to money management.
SPEAKER 04 :
And not as sexy to talk about, right, in terms of a daily show, in terms of the inner workings of what we do from an investment standpoint. But, yeah, I mean, that’s certainly included in what we do, part of what we do, and helps guide us in terms of, What makes sense? What strategies make sense that you run that fits with someone’s needs at that given time?
SPEAKER 03 :
My goal has always been to offer superior financial planning, which I think we do. I think Barry’s as good as any financial planner I’ve ever heard. I’ve heard him talk in there with those people that we meet with about that end of their equation. And I’ll put our financial planning up against anybody’s, all right? But I also believe in superior investing, too, superior investments. I would say that the vast majority of Wall Street puts all the emphasis on the financial planning with mediocre investing, all right? What’s wrong with trying to have both? Just like stocks, I want great valuation and I want great momentum in the stock. I want leaders, not laggards, okay? And we want to try to accomplish the same thing in our nationwide financial planning program. fee-based only money management business, Gundersen Capital Management. You know, there’s some very big news here that is pretty earth-shaking, and it literally could be earth-shaking at some point in the future. But the pivot that Donald Trump made, President Trump made, against Russia was pretty monumental yesterday. I mean, you know, he went to being a big hawk against Russia yesterday, There’s a couple of quotes here that I wanted to read. And you might say, well, what’s this have to do with the stock market? Well, you know what? World events have a lot to do with the stock market. Why do you think oil is up a couple of percentage points here today? Because Ukraine is now emboldened and they’re amping up their attacks on Russian refineries. Oh, and by the way, you know, Russia is a big oil producer, and all of a sudden I’m seeing some new life here in a lot of the oil stocks.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, when you start hurting refineries and then you start hurting the pocket, right, of Putin, we’ve been talking about… India, you know, buying oil from Russia, China, other countries and getting a good deal on it. But if you want to, you know, instead of, you know, we haven’t been successful in terms of sanctions being enough for India. So next level, right, is Ukraine is attacking these countries. and refineries to kind of stop the flow.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and I think Trump tried the peace through diplomatic efforts, and it was met with a giant thud. And I think now he’s going to pivot to peace through strength, and he’s going to show, but there could be big ramifications from that, all right? There could be big, big, big ramifications from that. We met with somebody while we were there. I really enjoyed talking with her. But she listens to Martin Armstrong, who’s been around for quite some time. He’s been in and out of prison. He claims to have invented the computer called Socrates that predicts the future. And he’s predicting World War III next year. Okay. Hey, that prediction’s looking more and more like a possibility here as each day goes by. The market ended its win streak yesterday. Jerome Powell made sure of that with more hawkish speech against, you know, he says there’s risk on both ends. There’s inflation risk and there’s jobs risk. So there’s really… No safe way to go, but they leaned towards the jobs risk by cutting the interest rate by 25 basis points here recently. Was Monday the top of the NASDAQ, the S&P 500, and the Dow? Well, only time will tell. I don’t think it was. I’m not seeing signs of that yet. But it did hit all-time highs on Monday, and we did have a sell-off yesterday. But, you know, Poland’s currency is reeling today. The Zloty, after Trump backs use of force against Russian jets, he says, hey, they fly over Poland, shoot them down. The rhetoric is heating up to nuclear powers. I believe I was a little boy when the Bay of Pigs happened, when the standoff in Cuba happened there. JFK was the president at that time. The Russian fuel crisis grows as Ukraine steps up drone attacks on refineries. The WHO, that’s the World Health Organization, they dismissed the link between autism and Tylenol after Trump claims. You know, I don’t know that the WHO gave us very good advice on the pandemic back in the COVID days. The WHO seems to be pretty heavily influenced by China, and they pretty much defended China through all of that, saying, oh, it wasn’t China. The COVID did not come from China.
SPEAKER 04 :
You may want to listen to The Who on health advice. They’re still rocking out there.
SPEAKER 03 :
The only Who I listen to, yeah, is Bob O’Reilly, who performed in Mountain View last week, right? Big news, but the pivot, okay? the he flew putin into alaska they sat down they tried to smoke the peace pipe i want vladimir i want the killing to stop uh let’s just take what you’ve gained in land so far and and you take it and let’s draw the lines and Let’s stop the killing. And it absolutely had no impact whatsoever on. Is it Gog of Magog? Well, only time will tell. That’s another one. If you’re a believer in the Old Testament and Ezekiel, he saw somebody called Gog from Magog. in the latter days. But anyways, he sure is ruffling feathers around the world, especially with Europe. Europe kind of needs to get tough too, in my opinion. Quit buying oil from him. Are you kidding me? Here, on the one hand, you’re amping up your defense spending. And on the other hand, you’re buying Russian oil and funding the attacks, which makes no sense whatsoever. So anyways, that’s a major pivot that I think could have major ramifications at some point in the future if things continue to heat up. The other big news comes out of China. Well, we were there in the Bay Area. I think one of the stocks I featured at the workshop that night was Alibaba, and I used it as an example of a very good chart. And a stock that has tons of AI exposure and is trading at much lower multiples than our AI stocks. Much, much, much lower. But it does come with the Chinese political risk, obviously. Well, we put our money where our mouth is, and we already owned it in our value portfolio, but we also added it to our premier growth portfolio. The race is on. The AI race is on between China and the U.S. as Alibaba ups the ante. And basically, Europe watches from the sidelines while they’re more interested in climate change right now. We’ll be right back. And welcome back to the second quarter of today’s Best Stocks Now show. Well, I would say there’s a couple stocks of the day so far. One’s a small biotech that we don’t have any exposure to, but we do have. I mean, we own Alibaba in our premier growth portfolio. which is having a very, very good year. We have, let’s see, about 18 or 19, 20 stocks in there right now. BABA is one of those stocks. And it’s also in the relative value portfolio. It’s up 32% since we added it on September the 5th of this year. And I just looked at how expensive the US AI stocks were. We still own many of them, right? Several, several. And I said, you know what? Alibaba is a large cap, a third of a trillion dollar company, market cap, trading at under 20 times earnings. And it just made sense to me from a valuation and an AI exposure point of view.
SPEAKER 04 :
And like you said, you’re weighing the valuation against some of the political risk, obviously country risk in terms of the company, but it’s a very low valuation compared to similar names of the U.S. counterparts.
SPEAKER 03 :
And don’t discount China as part of this AI race. I mean, it’s almost like the race to the moon between the U.S. and Russia in the early days. The 60s. Now here we are 60 years later, and it’s the race for AI superiority. Alibaba is going to incorporate NVIDIA’s robotic software in its AI platform. Now, obviously not the… the uh… the high-end ships uh… but uh… they’re going to use their software uh… and they announced an integration of the full suite of nvidia physical a i stack and they’re gonna up their investment big-time alibaba’s hong kong listed shares are up nine percent after the e-commerce giant announced plans to ramp up artificial intelligence spending passed an original 50 billion plus target and they unveiled their largest ever language model quen 3 max the company also said it plans to integrate nvidia suite of ai development tools okay so that’s big big news and of course they’ve had a lot of really good news recently coming from Alibaba, who in the early days, you know, they are also working on chips, semiconductors. There’s also a race there to catch up with NVIDIA, and Alibaba is a player there, too. So that’s got the Chinese stocks. The Chinese market’s up over 30% so far here in 2025, and I would say it’s being driven by, Buy AI, and like I say, the Chinese stocks are a lot cheaper. The Tencent holding, the big ones, the big ones, NetEase, Tencent holdings, Alibaba. For me, there’s three or four or five stocks maybe that are investable, and those are them right now. Texas, what’s going on in Texas? Stargate. A massive $500 billion joint venture between Microsoft-backed OpenAI, who’s made a lot of news this week. OpenAI helped boost NVIDIA on Monday because NVIDIA is going to use NVIDIA chips in their data centers. The joint venture also includes Oracle and SoftBank. Now, I remember the day they announced this from the Oval Office. Microsoft CEO, it was Sam Altman from OpenAI, and it was Larry Ellison from Oracle, and, of course, Sun from SoftBank. But where are they going to build this large-scale data center? Abilene, Texas. So that big building you see going up is going to be the first Stargate data center, and it’s going to be in Abilene, Texas. No, it’s not going to be a slaughterhouse where they make brisket and T-bone steaks in Abilene. It’s going to be the first large-scale data center by this new partnership. The complex will feature eight buildings. Oh boy, that’s going to take some nuclear energy that will eventually house hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA’s artificial intelligence chips, Mary. How much are those chips, the Blackwells, $50,000? $50,000 at least, yes. You know, I want to buy one to just sit on my desk. That’s an expensive paperweight, and someday it will be a paperweight because there will be something new and way better and way faster. I wish I still had my K-Pro computer. I think I probably took it to the Goodwill or something at some point, but now it’s probably worth a lot of money. I don’t know.
SPEAKER 04 :
I wonder what the depreciation value is on those chips after, you know, because I would guess it would be pretty high on the accelerated depreciation.
SPEAKER 03 :
The entire complex will require about 900 megawatts of power. I think Dallas will go dark when they flip the switch. Like that Christmas vacation when Chevy Chase flips the switch and the whole city goes dark, but his house is lit up. The data center will glow, I guess. Yes. Stargate eventually plans to build two more data centers in Texas, one in New Mexico, one in Ohio, four dead in Ohio, and another in a Midwest location. Ted Cruz says Texas is ground zero. for AI. These data centers are designed to not use water, said Oracle CEO, co-CEO Clay McGurick. All the data centers that we are building in this part of Stargate are designed to not use water. The reason we do this is because it turns out that it’s harmful for the environment And this is a better solution. So there you go. Watch for it in Texas. Watch for the lights to dim at your home when the thing is flipped. And, of course, you know, the two Texas-related nuke companies, you’ve got Talon Energy and you’ve got the other one, Vistra.
SPEAKER 04 :
With no water, the interesting thing is what’s the coolant, right? I mean, there’s got to be a coolant in some of those air-conditioned companies that you’ve named off before.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, we own A.O. Smith. That thing’s hitting new all-times highs right now, so that’s also a big deal. And there’s other cooling solutions that we’re invested in also. Now wait, if that’s not enough, the other big story continues to be the weight loss drug out of Lilly. They’re going to build a $6.5 billion Texas plant. to manufacture the obesity pill. They’re going to build this in Houston. I think, Barry, that I am smelling a Houston trip coming up at some point in time here. We are in Houston. We’ve been there for about a year, two years. I mean, there’s a lot going on in Houston. You’ve got the space exploration. You’ve got a little bit of nuclear. You’ve got LNG. And now they’re going to make the ZepBound drug down there in Houston at Generation Park in Houston. Generation Park in Houston.
SPEAKER 06 :
We’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 03 :
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. Call out the instigator because there’s something in the air. And welcome back here to the second half of today’s Best Stocks Now. So two NVIDIA directors report stock sales. One guy sold $62 million worth of stock. And the other guy, let’s see, following the sale, the overall stake, he still owns $6 billion. Okay, so it’s a small sale, Barry. It’s financial planning, right? And another guy sold $7 million worth. He still owns $25 million. You know, that’s kind of the strategy we suggest if you have a big heavy position in one stock. And it depends a lot on the stock. I mean, if you have a heavy position in a smaller cap, very volatile stock, the pace of diversifying should be quicker. All right? That’s part of financial planning there. And if you have a very stable stock… and you have huge capital gains, you know, another factor that comes into play is your age. In California, if the husband dies, the wife gets stepped up cost basis, right, Barry, in stocks because of it being a, what do you call it, when the husband and the wife are equal partners in that. And also, obviously, when you pass on, you would avoid completely the capital gains if you pass it on to the next generation. They get a step up. in cost basis. So all of that comes into play. The stock you own, how much it is of your portfolio, how old you are, what your plans are for the future. That’s all part of that financial planning formula. Boeing taps Palantir for AI integration across defense programs and factories. Well, you know, we know that Boeing is booming right now. You know what else is underneath Boeing doing very well is Rolls-Royce. They make a lot of the jet engines, right? And they’re also in the nuclear business. R-Y-C-E-Y I see is now trading… ADRs on the U.S. Stock Exchange. So that makes it a lot more liquid and a lot more easy to get in and out of. Let’s take a look at Boeing right now, BA. Boeing has stabilized. It’s had a little sell-off recently. And yesterday they announced three Turkey stocks. China and Kazakhstan. Boeing announced all three of those yesterday, right? Boeing is booming, like you say. The boom at Boeing continues. And Palantir, you know, it hit 190, and then it sold off down to 148, and now it’s headed towards 190 again. It’s back to 181, and it still continues to be, in my book, The best software stock out there at the current time. But having said that, Palantir has a PE ratio of 344 right now. We do own Palantir. It’s a very dominant company in what they do. It still has a lot of growth, a lot of runway in front of it. But it’s not one that… You know, you can just go to sleep on and check it five years from now. It’s, you know, one that has to be managed just a little bit along the way. Should the market start to turn, I mean, those are the stocks, the Palantirs of the world and others, the high PE stocks that would be the first to get hit. Lithium America skyrockets as the Trump administration reportedly seeks an equity stake. Well, Lithium America must have more than just lithium, because I know that the Trump administration would not invest in a lithium miner. They’re not real big backers of the EV makers and the cars. So Lithium America must have some exposure. It’s got to have some rare earth. Rare earth. And yesterday, as I looked through the charts yesterday, I couldn’t believe the rare earth stocks yesterday. UUUU Energy Fuels, which is uranium. The uranium and the rare earth stocks were absolutely blowing up to the upside yesterday. And it was probably on this news. Lithium America, Barry, is now up 101%.
SPEAKER 1 :
100%.
SPEAKER 03 :
And they are, I mean, their mine is in Nevada. So maybe they have the same kind of exposure that Mountain Pass. We know that MP already has received an investment, not only from Apple, but from the Trump administration. MP, from the Department of Defense. MP… is hitting 75 right now it sold off recently and uh it’s starting to go back up but u.s antimony got a big contract from the department of defense yesterday uh it had a big day so anyways yesterday those were the stars of the day were the smaller uh Rare earth stocks, U.S. rare earth, USAR was another one that was on fire. But today, look at this lithium America. Obviously, there’s more there than just lithium. There must be some exposure to the rare earths. Oclo cut to neutral at Seaport on valuation after shares double in two weeks. You know, okay, I’ve got to bring this up. I was listening this morning to an interview Bloomberg Europe. And they had on the Minister of Climate Change from the UK. And, of course, he was talking about Trump’s speech to the UN and how Trump really dissed wind and solar and Europe for a lot of things. And I’m sure they dissed him also. That’s kind of a love-hate relationship there. But, you know, the UK guy, he was all in. The UK is all in on solar and wind. They’re not going to increase their production of oil in the North Sea. But the one word that he kept throwing into the conversation and made sure that everybody heard him is, He says, we’re all for, we want to be all renewable energy at some point in time, including, guess what, nuclear. Okay, that’s a big deal, right? I mean, they don’t want fossil fuels anymore. But nuclear has made the pivot.
SPEAKER 04 :
But nuclear, yeah, nuclear is in the inner circle, right?
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s in the inner circle now, and it’s a heck of a lot more. Think of the space that a nuclear plant takes up and the energy it produces compared to a wind farm in the ocean off of Scotland or the British Isles there. It’s much more highly focused and concentrated. Now, Europe does not have the AI exposure. In fact, I heard another analyst say, you know, someone said, how about Europe and AI? I said, well, we’re kind of just sitting it out and watching the U.S. and China. duke it out they’re not really part of that ai race at all and they’re they continue to back down from fossil fuels across the board pretty much in europe but They’re leaning heavily towards nuclear and, you know, therein lies a lot of investment possibilities there for nuclear power in Europe. There’s still some countries, Germany, last time I heard, they were anti-nuclear. And along those lines, Constellation Energy says that the Crane Nuclear Plant, now they renamed that nuclear plant. It used to be known as Three Mile Island Unit One. They renamed it, Barry.
SPEAKER 04 :
They changed the name. Imagine that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Here’s a sign painter went up there, okay, and whited out, you know, painted over Three Mile Island Unit 1 and replaced it with Crane Clean Energy Center in Pennsylvania. They are ahead of schedule and will have that unit back up and running by 2027. The project is nearly 80% staffed with 500 full-time employees on site and dozens more pending. Inspections of steam generators, main generators, emergency diesel generators, and underground piping have been completed or are near completion. And they’ve received approval from grid operator PJM, which I believe is Maryland, Pennsylvania, I’m not sure what the J stands for, for interconnection, clearing the path for grid integration and allowing the unit to accelerate its restart to 2027. That’s Constellation Energy. And that has all been made possible through a 20-year power purchase agreement with Microsoft. Marking a symbolic turning point, which that was. I mean, that was the turning point. That’s the day the lights went on in Georgia, right? Or in Pennsylvania. A turning point for the U.S. nuclear industry. I mean, to bring back Three Mile Island, Unit 1. And what’s it linked to? AI. How many data centers did they say were in the Silicon Valley? I want to say 78. and counting. And guess what? They’re pro-nuke now, too, in the green state of California. We’ll be right back. And welcome back here to the final segment of today’s Best Stocks Now show. The stock of the day is a biotech. It’s been around for a while. I’ve never owned it, but they came up. They’re succeeding in a pivotal trial for one time Huntington’s disease therapy. It’s a Dutch biotech. The symbol is CURE. Good symbol. Q-U-R-E. And the stock today is up 196%, Barry. That’s just shy of a triple.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s always a good success story. I like when you highlight those.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, and, you know, I mean, if you look at the – That’s a bad one. Yeah, if you just look at the biotech sector, it has a major impact on the whole biotech ETF. There’s one – you know, I’m not a big fan of ETFs, but a biotech ETF, you know, you’re going to get much bigger exposure there. You know, a lot of these are one-hit wonders that come along. Just like the old days, some of the artists that had one big hit, and a lot of people tried to have that one big hit but never did. Well, the biotech industry has a lot of risk. and spreading out that risk. But anyways, Unicure announced on Wednesday that it’s one-time gene therapy. This is gene therapy. This is another milestone. The drug AMT-130 reached its main goal in a pivotal Phase II of III trial for patients with Huntington’s disease. which is a rare neurodegenerative disorder. So if you know somebody with Huntington’s disease, maybe they can get into the clinical trial. uh there seems to be a lot of hope here when i whenever i see news like this i always look and see how the stock is reacting and the stock has tripled uh here on this news so congratulations there to uh the early investors that got it at 25 cents a share and took a risk and There’s capitalism at work. What can I say? That profit incentive, which drives a lot of innovation. Marvell Technology announces an additional $5 billion stock repurchase authorization and a $1 billion accelerated share repurchase program. So Marvell is also having a good day. The chip maker, which also is on the fringes, not too far from the center of AI itself. And Marvell is one of the cheaper semiconductor stocks. It’s headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware. Marvell has got a PE ratio of 32. We do own Marvell in our relative value portfolio, and it’s done pretty well since we’ve added it. It’s up 3.2% on that news. You always like to see a stock buying back their own shares. A lot of times we’ll put in a bottom, and good stuff there. Okay, here’s another nuclear player. This one is emerging on the scene here, Mirion. Now, Mirion, I don’t know if this is the old Morant, which was, I believe, in Houston. And Morant was kind of, it was back in the days of the California. Remember when they were upping the price, these energy brokers, the days of Enron? Morant was a player in that. I had a friend that actually was an energy trader. And, you know, when California had a heat wave, man, they could up the price on that energy that they were shipping in from Texas. And it was crazy. Well, now it’s still the same symbol, MIR. I don’t know if this is the same company. Now it’s Mirion. But Mirion is acquiring Paragon Energy Solutions from Windjammer Capital Investors for $585 million. This broadens Mirion’s portfolio of offerings for nuclear power customers, including small modular reactors, the SMRs, And this purchase is also accretive to their diluted EPS within the first full year past acquisition. So we will keep our eye on Mirion, which is currently a $5.3 billion stock out of Atlanta, Georgia. That’s where this one is. And it’s in the nuclear sector. the smaller nuclear sector. Then there was an AI stock, and I’ll probably have to end here with this one, maybe get in one more. United States Antimony. Not alimony, but antimony. They make antimony metal ingots, which is important. And the U.S. Department of Defense, they got a $245 million contract to restock Those antimony methyl ingots. And UAMY set off a huge rally in the rare earths yesterday. I saw UUUU and others, U.S. Rare Earth, USAR. And I’ve brought up U.S. Antimony before. They are out of Montana. They’re headquartered in Dallas, Texas, but I believe that their mines are in Montana. They’re in Sanders County. where they mine antimony, oxide, sodium, antimony, and precious metals. The stock is down 4% today, but they did get a huge contract from the Department of Defense yesterday. Okay, as of now, we don’t have our next trip scheduled. We’re licking our wounds and resting up a little bit. That was quite a week there in the Silicon Valley. And I can’t wait to get back there early next year sometime, do another workshop, meet with more folks. And we’re following up with a lot of those folks we met with back there. A lot of single stock concentration issues.
SPEAKER 04 :
Great stories, right, overall.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, great stories. Really good. One guy was a major M&A guy that has done a lot of the early M&A activity. He has his own company doing that in high tech. Another guy that helped build the original technology platform inside the NIO, the Chinese EV cars. I mean, just one story after another. I absolutely had. An info hound like me had an absolute blast there listening to this story.
SPEAKER 04 :
Just putting a bunch of puzzle pieces together.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. Yes. And a lot of. Aha moments also. We’ll be back, but we’ve still got to get up to Minnesota at some point here and up to Pittsburgh and out to Denver, Colorado, and over to Houston. So anyways, what a great business. I love every minute of it. If you’d like to get a four-week trial to the newsletter, our portfolios are having a really, really good year here in 2025. You can look at them. We’re transparent. Get a free four-week trial to the newsletter at GundersenCapital.com. And to set up an appointment with us from anywhere in the world, really, as long as we can open an account for you here in the U.S., 855-611-BEST. 855-611-BEST. Have a great day, everybody.
