Friday Dec. 20, 2024 - A new wrinkle in the market
40:07 Share

Bill Gunderson

And welcome to the Friday. It is the Friday, December 20th edition of the Best Docs Now show. Volatility hanging in the air still. Right now to the good side, however. The futures were way down this morning. And now you've actually got the Dow going positive by 41. Anybody got whiplash yet here? Dow up 41 points right now.

That puts it at 42,374. The NASDAQ, which was down like 300 in the pre-market, is now down just 54 points. It's at 19,318. The S&P is down 3, 5,864. Small caps are actually up a little bit here.

Let's look at interest rates. The 10-year is, you know, I think 4.5 is probably about where they belong, and that's about where they're at right now. We get down close to 4, and they want to come back. You get over 4.5, and they want to come back into that 4.5 area. And right now the 10-year is, let's see, the 10-year is at 4.52%.

Bitcoin was getting clobbered here this morning. It is still down a pretty good amount. It's down $549.4696. It was down about $8,000 here a little while ago. $96,054 as a new wrinkle arises on Wall Street. So welcome to the Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management, home from New York.

sitting on the very peaceful, quiet Wando River, away from the traffic and the hubbub and the honking horns and the Ubers and the taxis and the delivery trucks and everything.

Just wow, just a lot of chaos in New York City, a lot of noise. But, you know, some people relish it, some people thrive on it, some people love it. Sensory overload. I like a little quieter setting myself, but I do love visiting New York City.

Okay, well, we have a new wrinkle thrown in the market, and it's the government shutdown wrinkle. It's the Doge Boys wrinkle. It's the Elon Musk, the shadow president wrinkle. You know, the cost-cutting has to begin somewhere, and it sounds like the line has been drawn. It begins now. And, you know, all those little goodies...

You know, it seems like the Democrats, of course, it was all, now listen, this was a bipartisan bill originally with all the little goodies, all the little Christmas stockings stuffed with good little goodies in there.

I would like to see the complete list of crap that was shoved in there behind our backs, kind of in the dark of night. Let's shine a light on all of that stuff and let's find out who put that stuff in there. Let's hold these people accountable.

you know when they arrest somebody in charlestonberry their mugshot goes in the paper here right you don't want to get arrested in charleston it never comes down if you stuff a pork bill into a uh into one of these uh you know hey we just need money to fund the government here we don't need all of this extra crap shoved in here this has been going on for too long so i'm all for it it

My wife said it's almost too good to be true that we actually have a watchdog now reporting to the people the stuff that's going on behind our backs in the dark of night. But it is causing a little bit of disruption here in the markets. You know, it wasn't enough that our friend Jerome Powell ruined another Christmas Santa Claus rally, but now we had last night that stopgap spending bill go down to defeat.

And, you know, I think the people, look, the mandate, the people elected Trump, I think if you're a Republican and you win against him, I think you should also be exposed for that.

I think they've got to get together and do things and be one. Diversified and fighting one another is going to be... And I think that also shines the light on how difficult it's going to be to cut these expenses.

Look, it's like giving up sugar. It's like giving up caffeine. It's like giving up both of them at once, okay, or whatever your vice is.

The government has been on this for so long and putting all these little sugar cookies into these packages that nobody really sees. Who's going to read a 1,500-page document to find all these little packages and who put them in there? It's about time that we have accountability. I'm happy, but obviously it's going to be a tough road to decrease the spending.

It creates uncertainty, right? And we always talk about it all the time. The market hates uncertainty. And of course, you know, there's going to be some pain level as you work through, I mean, spending regardless, right, is a buffer or is at least a tailwind for the economy. And so when you're pulling that back, right, there's going to be some short-term pain. And I think your note this morning kind of nailed it where it's like, you know, we've

certainly have some short-term pain, but it'll get figured out. It's not like we're not going to fund the government at some point, right? You know, the point, I think the thing is, is

in the interim, there is some uncertainty, a little chaos, which, you know, if you go back to the first Trump administration, the markets was getting, you know, we were kind of, you know, the markets were on their seats in terms of looking, you know, watching tweets and seeing what was going to be said. And things are going to, you know, there's going to be things that are said that are going to move the market, really, because they're creating uncertainty around it. But,

In the long run, like you said, I think it's going to be certainly better in terms of changing the cost structure of Washington and the government in general. Well, we had a little bit of a rebound in the market yesterday. Not much. I mean, after the 1,000-point plunge, we were up about 60 basis points. We had an okay day yesterday.

And then we're down a little bit today. We're being helped, however, by Lily, which we'll get to here in a minute. Now that down day on, I told you, I went back to New York to help ring the bell on the NASDAQ. And I said, I just hope I don't get my bell rung. And instead I got my bell rung.

Down 1,000. You rang it on Fed Day, by the way. Luckily, we rang the bell to end the pain. I mean, the Dow was down 1,000 and dropping quickly, and ringing that bell did end the pain, so we can say that. But I felt like I got my bell rung when I went back and looked at the carnage and everything like this. I mean, Powell could have been a little bit softer spoken here.

given the time of year and everything. But, you know, that's the way it goes. Okay, so the rally fizzled out yesterday. You could argue he's being fiscal responsible, just like the turmoil was caused here. Yeah. In terms of not just...

Hey, cut, cut, cut, cut, and then next thing you know, we're in the same inflation mess we were to begin with. Yes. Well, anyways, the Dow had its longest losing streak, believe it or not, since 1974. Hey, you know what? That goes back to Black Friday and all of that. It had a 10-day losing streak, and yesterday it was up a little.

So that did end that losing streak. I was there talking. We were with a group of people there, and I was talking about 2000 and the NASDAQ and the spill that it took and the 79% drop it took and everything.

The guy next to me who had a little grayer hair than I do, I'm just partially gray right now. He said, were you there in 74? I said, no, I wasn't there in 74. He says, how about 69? I'm going, wow, who do you work? He was one of the institutional, he runs the institutional trading desk for Oppenheimer.

And he was an interesting guy to talk about. And I actually had some talks with Oppenheimer earlier this year. They wanted to buy out Gundersen Capital Management at one time, but I don't want to be selling Oppenheimer stuff. They said, well, we'll leave you independent. We'll leave you independent. Yeah, you know what? I don't think you will. You'll be breathing down my neck. Ebenezer Powell potentially throws cold water on a Wall Street Santa Claus rally. That's our friend Jerome Powell.

They were listing his record on the Fed decision days. It's been the worst in history.

He's obviously not very good with words because he's caused a lot of problems. It's not so much the decision. The decision was exactly what we were looking for, right? A quarter point cut to interest rates. That's exactly on the money. No problem at all. But it's what he says after the decision.

So goodbye punch poll, no Christmas cheer from the Fed, policymakers see higher inflation and lower unemployment in 2024. There's simply no reason to be dovish given that outlook. So yeah, you still have a strong jobs market.

We say that every Thursday when those jobless claims come in. That means there's really no reason to cut interest rates because, you know, the economy is still strong. It's not leaning towards recession. But the market doesn't like it. It has to get off of its addiction to the punch bowl just like the government needs to get off its spending, spending, spending addiction. We'll be right back.

And welcome back here to the second quarter of today's Best Docs Now show. Well, Barry, I think there's a lot of optimism that they're going to get something done today back there in Congress.

I saw a live video of all of these people arriving, including RFK showing up for the big showdown. The Dow is now up 110 points. The NASDAQ is down just 22 points right now. So you have a lot of optimism that at least they'll get something past...

to just get them through and avoid, avert a government shutdown so they can all go home. There's a lot of pressure on them, too, to get out of town. They've got the ski vacations planned, etc. They want to go home, too. Yeah, I was going to say, I think the chances are fairly high of getting something done, even if it's just kicking the proverbial can down the road, simply so they can all get out of town and go do whatever they've got, whatever lavish plans they all have. Yeah.

their staffs and

And, you know, news people, I mean, I was looking at the, peeking at Bloomberg this morning, and they're, you know, they're ready to get, they're ready to go on vacation too. So it's like, they're like, hurry this thing up. Let's get it over with. We'll see what happens. I think today's the last day, right, in terms of their last session day. Yes. Okay. So anyways, they will get something done. And, you know, that's, sometimes when you look at these, you know,

futures and they're down they were down like 400 points at one time on the Dow and the Nasdaq was down 300 you gotta just say you know look this is just part of being in the market it could have been down that much today but you know you gotta look beyond today and say look they're eventually going to get something

uh, done, uh, and, uh, you can't trade, uh, you know, there's people that react to every little wrinkle. Uh, you can't do that. Well, you've got to react as little to, to as few wrinkles as possible. Yeah. And they got to get something done. Otherwise, you know, I'm sure, I'm sure a lot of them are going to hop on a plane, which, uh, you know, I think, uh,

I think if they do have a shutdown, you're going to have basically some TSA workers working basically with no pay at the moment. My guess is they may not show up or be as punctual in terms of showing up on time. And so those people who don't get a bill done, they may not be able to get out of D.C. So we'll see, right?

Okay, well, now we've got, you know, this could be good for the U.S. gas industry. Trump threatens EU with tariffs unless it buys more U.S. oil and gas. Now, we were selling a lot of oil and gas to Europe during the first Trump administration, and that, you know, went to heck during the Biden administration. In fact, he put a moratorium, no exports of LNG to Europe.

Who knows what was behind that, but Trump is threatening them. The liquor distributors are crying because of these big tariffs that are about to go on some of these imported European liquors, etc. And of course, Europe's going to turn around and threaten us with tariffs. That's how the game is played.

but he wants them buying more of our product, which is oil and gas. If you're going to shrink the deficit, the trade gap between what we buy and what we sell, something that we have an abundance of, we could definitely sell a lot more to try to narrow that trade gap somewhat, would be our energy, our rich energy reserves.

Jay Powell, okay, we talked about him. His tenure as Fed chair has seen the weakest performance on decision days. He's not very good at it. Guess what? President Trump and Elizabeth Warren agree on one thing. End the debt ceiling.

Well, okay. You know, look, I mean, it's kind of like a line of credit. You can't put a debt ceiling out there right now. I mean, it's going to take some time to get off the sugar high and work things out. You need a little bit of room to move. So I think that's one big thing. I mean, this bill, whatever it is today, has got to get rid of the debt ceiling for now.

until they can get things under control, okay? And it will not get passed unless... And, you know, Elizabeth Warren is calling for... So they ought to be able to agree on that. Now, of course, Elizabeth Warren wanted just an unlimited spending. Yes, that's what...

That's my worry. It's like I get, you know, I'm okay with no debt ceiling if the Republicans are in charge, right? I'm not okay with no debt ceiling if it's the other way around. Okay, I mean, he needs it to maneuver, okay? He needs it to maneuver to get this whole ship turned around. This is the U.S. enterprise here that we're trying to turn around. This has been going on for many, many years. Now, the good news is...

The Fed's favored inflation gauge, the core PCE. That's also helping the market go positive here now.

cools slightly in November. Now, I don't think that's going to change. I don't think we're going to get a bunch of rate cuts next year. I think we'll be lucky to get two. We're definitely not going to get one in January. There's no way. Do you think the Fed knew these PCE numbers before the announcement? Probably, but they did come in softer, and that's helping the market here this morning.

Now, the big news here on an individual stock basis is the reaction to Novo Nordisk. We don't own Novo Nordisk. We pulled the plug on NVO. It broke our line in the sand quite a while ago, several months ago.

And it's down 19.6%. They're trying to come up with a new and better weight loss drug. And, of course, last week the test proved that Lilly's drug is much more effective to begin with than Wagovi. It was an interesting test, too. Did you see they were shooting for 25% more weight loss over however many weeks? Yeah, they got 19%.

Oh, okay. The number I saw I thought was 22, and I'm thinking, well, that's not that far off. Maybe it was. I don't know. But it's like, I know they're shooting for 25, but the number I saw is not that far off. I just looked at the market reaction here. It must have been bad results. A quarter. That's the equivalent, by the way, the amount that they lost, right? It's a Danish company. They lost 19% of their body weight today. A quarter.

A quarter. If they lost a quarter of – that's a value that is equal – the value drop is equal to a quarter of Denmark's GDP. Yeah. Okay, now on the other side of this trade, Lilly was up about 8% in the pre-market. Now it's up just $33 a share. It's up 4.4%. But it does seem that Lilly has a big, big edge here.

over Novo Nordisk at this point in time. Now, when I was back on Wall Street and I did my 10-minute interview, I got to find out where it went, and I'll get it up on our website or get it out there on X somewhere. But I was asked by Will Ryan, the CEO of Granite Shares, what was your biggest disappointment this year?

And I think I might have said that interest rates remain so high, I thought maybe they'd go down a little more. But I'd have to say my other biggest disappointment is the performance of Lilly this year. I still believe it's going to be the biggest drug of all time.

And I still believe it should replace Pfizer in the Dow. But Lilly has not done well. But there's other good news on Lilly when we come back, and it has to do with the compounders. And then I want to talk about the sell-off in the quantum stocks yesterday. I told you that was hot money. 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 GundersenCapital.com. To talk to us about our fee-based only money management services, call us at 855-611-BEST. Now, back to the second half of the show. Call out the instigator Because there's something in it We've got to get together sooner

And welcome back here to the second half of today's Best Stocks Now show. And we currently have a Dow up 341 points. The seesaw continues. Ride my seesaw. Wasn't that a Moody Blues song? It's up 326 points. It was down 326 points before the market. So anyways...

That's good news that we've had this turnaround. And I think I gave out an optimistic note this morning that they will get it settled, which is pretty obvious that they've got to get it settled. I said this morning, I said stock futures are down big this a.m. after the budget proposals, blah, blah, blah. We're just seeing how hard it will be to cut government spending today.

There will be a lot of pain along the way, yet this is the mandate of the voters. And, you know, I mean, basically I said to myself, there's not much you can do. This is...

The market panics, and sometimes you have to ride through those panics, and then things work out. I got the Churchill quote in front of me, where Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing once all other possibilities have been exhausted. I guess so. Okay. Hims and hers falls as FDA issues unfavorable compounded GLP-1 decision. Well, it took them a long time.

I mean, first they declared that the shortage was over of the weight loss drugs. And, you know, that killed all of the compounders. And the compounders got mad and they went to court and said, no, the shortage is not over. And so the FDA said, well, we'll revisit it. That was several months ago. And it just put Lilly into a funk, put Novo into a funk. And, of course, Novo is selling off here this morning again.

on the latest news, but finally the FDA finally issued the resolution to all of this that there is not a shortage, okay? So now these compounders have a real uphill battle now. I mean, I think they're done. I think you can stick a fork in these compounds.

in the compounding drugs that have been knockoffs of Wagovi, which is Novo Nordisk, and Zepbound, which is... They've got to find a new compound and a new copyright to infringe on, right? Yeah, let's look at the quantum stocks here. Okay, you know, my favorite, they're rebounding today.

There's definitely an opportunity here once again because they sold off heavily yesterday or the day the market was down 1,000 points. They were down 38%, 40%. I do see one in the news today, which this happens to be my favorite of all of them. Craig Hallam gives bullish views on Rigetti. I don't know if I mentioned Rigetti during my interview with...

My friend there, oh man, Rigetti's up 21% today. We've already done one trade in Rigetti, and I don't regret it either. It was a good one. I saw it go up in just a few days. Sometimes that's a gift. Yeah, it was up 29% in the three or four days after we bought it. And I said, you know, that's a gift. You've got to take that.

We got in at 7. This is the trading account. This is really high risk, highfalutin, and got out at 9. And I said, I plan on getting back into Rigetti, RGTI, because I do think there's really something here. I think it's probably one of the best. And now it's back to 9, where we sold it after plunging clear down to 7 yesterday.

So anyways, I mean, this quick turnaround in the market. And then I think probably the second best one is D-Wave, which is QBTS. That's my other favorite in those. I don't look at these as investing opportunities right now. I look at them more as, you know, this is more in that hot money area of the market right now.

If you're looking for a little action, right, along with your investments, which is 98% of what we do is, 99% of what we do is investing in the market in great companies. But this is kind of the little, you know, the trading account that a lot of people do on their own, do-it-yourselfers especially. NVIDIA reiterated as top pick by Morgan Stanley. All right, NVIDIA.

right now is up it was making a nice rebound until uh jerome powell stepped in on thursday on wednesday nvidia is up back up to 133 that's kind of where it was uh before the big plunge the next day it's back up to 133 it still is holding its support line at 132

But it certainly has lost its momentum. It's been gone for several months, really. Morgan Stanley has a price target of $166. I agree with Morgan Stanley. I do believe it will get there. I don't know when, but the valuation certainly would suggest that. Now, AMD, on the other hand, it was tanking. It was breaking support.

And I mentioned that one of the negative ETFs that GraniteShares has is short AMD. And that's a great chart on that short AMD stock, the ETF. Today, AMD is up a little bit. However, I do not like AMD.

Okay, well, we were asked during our interviews over at the NASDAQ, our highest conviction stocks. UBS is out with theirs. Now, UBS is kind of right in the center of what we talk about. Wirehouse firms buying old school stocks. Maybe a little better than most, but here's their highest conviction. 3M.

Alaska Air, Amazon, American Tower, Centerpoint Energy, Comfort Systems, ConocoPhillips, Dell. It's just more of the same. Keurig, Dr. Pepper, MasterCard, Oracle. Nothing very creative. Texas Instruments, nothing very creative or nothing very exciting. That's what you get with the big Wall Street firms.

I would say most of them are more centered around the New York Stock Exchange. The NASDAQ is definitely more of the innovative, the more of the disruptors, more of the high growth, more of the technology. I hang out at the NASDAQ myself, okay?

let's see we got a good uh uh literally biotech yes i i got my picture i'm gonna put that on the newsletter my picture was literally in times square on one of those great big uh things uh standing in front of the nasdaq podium there uh and uh that was kind of cool that's where i hang out that's where i'm

I'm a disruptor. You know, I'm not old school Wall Street, you know, Procter & Gamble, Kimberly Clark, this and that. No, the innovation has come. The disruptors have come from the NASDAQ. Humasite up today. This is a biotech. H-U-M-A-I.

They've got an FDA approval of SimVas, an off-the-shelf implantable vascular conduit indicated for arterial injury. Well, okay, that might be a pretty good deal. It's up 59%. I'll keep my eye on that. It's out of North Carolina.

Robinhood's competitor eToro, which we've heard of before, is preparing for their IPO. And, you know, I was talking to actually my stepdaughter. She works for a startup that is pretty big, very well big, got huge clients. They're not quite IPO. And she said, they've kind of put off their IPO this year because

because of the conditions, but look for them to come public maybe next year. So, you know, there's a lot of companies sitting in the wings, waiting to go public, which then gives the people that are invested in those companies money.

that own private shares in a private company which don't have a market except amongst the other shareholders. When they go public, now you've got an event. You've got a liquidity event where you can sell your shares. So anyways, Robinhood's done pretty well. And eToro, that could be a pretty good IPO when it does go public. We always keep our eye on that.

on those ipos now earnings today uh i would say the biggest one and uh the news coming out of there from fedex is that they're going to split off they're going to spin off the trucking part of fedex fedex is uh let's see how it's doing here after their earnings last night it is basically flat

Not a stock I have any interest in, but FedEx did report earnings. And going to spin off the trucking part of their company. We'll be right back. One word in a golden key. Oh, no interest in it. You've got to go where you want to go. Do what you want to do. And this is what it's like.

And welcome back here to the final segment of today's Best Stocks Now show where we're going to take a look inside. Wow, look at that. The Dow is up 350. The NASDAQ is up 132. We're surging. We're up over 1% right now on the day.

That's a happy thing. Puts a smile on my face. Let's take a look inside the Dow first, where we have Nike down 1.4%. Oh, Nike, Nike, Nike, Nike. You know, I did notice they have a Hoka store, a big one. Do they really? Yes, in Times Square on Fifth Avenue, which obviously is the retail, the street for retail stores.

Of course, the Nike store has a huge presence there. But Nike has fallen on hard times, down 1.4%, even on a big gain day in the Dow. And over the winners today, Salesforce up 2.2%, which is a dividend payer. Salesforce, Goldman Sachs up 2.2%, NVIDIA up 1.8%. It's also a little bit of a dividend payer.

And as we look at the S&P 500 today, where is the fun happening? Where's the fun taking place and where is the pain? There was a lot of pain on Wednesday. Oh, man, those last few hours of the day were just absolutely brutal. The market gets in a bad mood and it panics.

And it sells off, and it looks like there's no end to it, and they're going to just get hammered. And eventually people come to their senses. They say, look, the 15-year bull market's still in effect for now, still churning along. But from time to time, the market throws tantrums. The upside on the Dow, on the S&P today, Dexcom,

You know, Occidental Petroleum, I think maybe Trump put a bottom in the oil stocks with his comments against the EU today, saying, hey, you need to buy more of our oil. That might drive oil prices up. You also have today on the S&P Supermicrocomputer up 4.6%, Occidental up 5%.

What's Amazon looking like today? I know they just keep getting these things at the bottom. Three things that keep coming up in terms of risk, right, is number one, the funding bill failing. Number two was thousands of Amazon drivers on strike. And then the third was potato chip recall. Yeah, there's a fourth one. Your package may not arrive by Christmas. That's the fourth one. Amazon is flat. Right.

Which is pretty good. Okay, Amazon's flat. Lilly's a big winner in the Dow today, or in the S&P. It's up 4.2. It was up 8 for a while. Broadcom's having a good day. That's actually a very nice chart on Broadcom. I've heard a lot of people commenting that Broadcom, with that latest earnings report, has really become...

Quite a growth engine once again. We do not currently own Broadcom. We've owned Broadcom in the past. We made some money off of Broadcom. The thing is they heard it called their NVIDIA moment. Yeah, it definitely was. Okay, so I just wanted to lower my exposure to the chip sector, which has been dead in the water.

But Broadcom's having a good day. It's not back to where it was, but it is having a good day. Let's check. I'm going to check the granite shares because you get those juiced. What's the top granite shares performer today? It's SMCI Supermicro 2 to 1.

That's too hot for me, baby. I can't take that. I don't think I can take that. But the one I do like is Palantir 2 for 1. It's up 4.2% today. I don't have a problem with that one. NVIDIA 2 for 1 is up 3.8% today. CrowdStrike 2 for 1 is up 3.6% today. The worst performer over Granite Shares is two times long Alibaba.

I don't want any part of that. I'll go two times short Alibaba, but not two times long. And then they're two times short. NVIDIA is not doing well today, although it had a huge day on Wednesday. I think these are very usable instruments. Now that I've studied them, now that I've spent some time analyzing them, etc., there's definitely a lot of usefulness here.

in these ETFs from Granite Shares, and they're adding to them all the time. Okay, now let's finish off the week by looking at our friends over at the NASDAQ. I have a long history with the NASDAQ going back to the late 90s, and I rode that NASDAQ up to 5,300, and then it crashed by 79%.

And now it's back over 20,000. What a history there. Some of the great stocks of all time. Today the biggest winner on the NASDAQ is Sirius Satellite. I'm not a fan. I realize that Warren Buffett owns it.

I'm not a fan. I think Spotify is the monster in that category. Broadcom is the second biggest winner in the NASDAQ today, up 4%. Expedia is up 2.2%. NVIDIA is up 1.9%. On the downside in the NASDAQ is Vertex Pharmaceutical down 1.8%. The biotechs have definitely been under some pressure here.

All right, well, as we end the week, we've just got 11 days left until the end of the trading year. Next week you've got a full day off on Wednesday, obviously, for Christmas, and I think Christmas Eve is probably a half day. Friday is a full day. We're coming down to the wire. It's time for tax planning, really. That's your biggest concerns right now.

You want to take advantage if you've got some losses. You want to sell them before the end of the year so that you can use them on your tax returns. You want to be real careful about selling stocks right now with big gains in them

because you'll be on the hook come April for the capital gains taxes, whether or not they be long-term or short-term. So everything you do between now and the 31st, think about the tax man. And, okay, we still are offering four free weeks. I am having so much fun with the four-free-week trial program.

of the live trading that's still available to at least the end of the year you can sign up at GundersenCapital.com to set up an appointment with us to have us review your plan right now your trajectory what you're currently in what the odds are of you reaching the goals of your plan are

Give us a call at 855-611-BEST to set up an appointment. 855-611-BEST. Have a great day, everybody.

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 SIPC and FINRA.