Friday Mar. 14, 2025
40:07 Share

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.

And welcome to the Friday, thank goodness it's Friday edition of the Best Docs Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunnarsson. And so far it's a smiley day on Wall Street, a sunny day with the Dow up 371 points.

to 41,184. The NASDAQ is really cooking today. It's up 302, 295 now. That's 1.7%. The S&P is up 1.3%. Small caps up 1.5%. Big story on gold today.

Gold is up over $3,000 per ounce for the first time in its history. Oh, it just slipped below it. It's at $29.98, but I did see a $3,000 print there just a while ago. Crude oil is at $66.94. Bitcoin is up $1,337 to $83,361.

And the all-important 10-year right now is at 4.31. It's up three basis points. So welcome to today's Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management. And I'm here with Barry Kite, our chartered financial analyst. And I did quite a bit of work this morning on the overall markets. A lot happened this week.

The big news for me is the forward PE ratio for the S&P 500, Barry, which has been running hot. I mean, the forward PE has been running at 22, almost 23 times forward earnings. It got under 20 for the first time yesterday. It closed at 19.98%.

And I think that's very healthy to get that valuation down. It was definitely, we began the year way overvalued. And I see our former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin agreeing with that, saying this has actually been healthy for the market. And that is a sizable drop in the forward P.E. ratio. It's definitely material. It's not immaterial. It's not one-tenth of a percent. It's

It's, what, 300 basis points there on that S&P 500 forward P.E. ratio. The forward P.E. ratio for the NASDAQ, now the NASDAQ is now down 14.5% from its all-time high. Its forward P.E. goes from 28.4% down to 24.4%. That's significant.

That is very significant. It's about one-seventh. That's a big, big drop in the forward P.E. And the good news is the earnings didn't drop. I mean, the stock price dropped. And there's the math involved there. It lowers that forward P.E. And gold had a massive breakout yesterday to an all-time high. I sent out a chart of that this morning.

It went over $3,000. What do you think it is? What's driving gold? Is the tariff talk? What is it? I think with gold, usually it's a lot of different factors. That's one of the reasons why gold, I feel like gold always reacts the wrong way, right? You think it's going to do something, does something else. But certainly as interest rates come down, gold tends to go up. Obviously, you've had a...

kind of quote-unquote de-dollarization a little bit, where you've had a lot of other countries have begun purchasing gold, central banks, and that's driven demand. But I think potential inflation fears, tariff fears,

Fight to safety, right? Russia pointing nuclear missiles at Ukraine. All of the above. Handful of cross currents there, I think. Blood moon last night, you know. Yeah, that did it. That sent it over 3,000. You know, that's a rare blood moon, by the way, on the Jewish calendar. I had that one marked on my calendar a long time ago, like a year and a half ago.

Because it's a very significant, I mean, a blood moon like that only comes along so often. I didn't catch it. Jeff Webster stayed up. He sent us a picture. Sent me a picture. You know, I'm sound asleep when I get a tweet or a message at like 3 a.m. I go, oh, no, who's calling? Who needs help?

I hope it's not a client panicking. No, it was Jeff sending me the blood moon. But as I was driving home last night, I did see that big, fat moon. It was huge, yeah. It was huge, and it was very eerie looking, and it was a significant... You can look that up on the Jewish calendar. It symbolized, by the way, this is why I had it on, just for curiosity, it symbolizes the end of a dynasty and rebellion.

Well, okay, we'll see what happens in the coming weeks. Which dynasty? Well, you know, the current one. It's the current one. Which country? Putin? Trump? I don't know. S&P 500 correction, biggest decliners, index logs, its first 10% fall from its peak since 2023. We didn't have, well, 2023. We didn't have one during 2024. We didn't have a 10% correction.

I found over time that 10% is kind of the pain level. You know when the chiropractor starts cricking your neck a little bit and he says, tell me when it hurts. Well, you know, when you get about 10% on that S&P 500 and 15% on the NASDAQ, it definitely starts to hurt and you're crying uncle and telling them to stop.

And you always have averages. I mean, the average is usually, you know what, I think it's every 11 to 13 months, right? You'll have a 10% pullback, right? Yeah, we went quite a while without one all throughout 2024. And that's where you get the healthy piece, right? That's where the healthy part comes in. Yeah, you would have thought we would have had one with that presidential election and everything. But, well, the government's not going to shut down this weekend. The Democrats are mad at their leader, Schumer.

As he backs the Republican stop gap bill, as he says the government shutdown would be far worse. I heard Ben Shapiro talking about that. He says, well, you know, if Schumer would have shut, it's just a clean bill that they put forth to keep the current spending in force with nothing attached to it.

And had Schumer shut that down, the monkey would have been on their back for shutting down the government and not on the Republicans' back. Schumer probably did the right thing, but his colleagues are upset with him. The consumer sentiment, did you get a chance to see that? I didn't check it. Oh, it comes in at 10 a.m., so during the break, maybe you can check. Because, you know, the last time we had the consumer sentiment numbers, it sent the market south by a big...

Big amount. And it kind of started the whole sell-off in the market, really. Yeah, and then we had that small business. To me, the biggest one was that small business survey that I think came out earlier this week on Tuesday that was pretty, you know, a bit dire over, you know, at least comparatively to the last year or so. But, yeah, the consumer sentiment slid, third straight month.

as inflation expectations keep climbing. And I think those expectations are what you keep hearing from, if tariffs go in place, what's going to go up? No one really knows how prices are going to react. And how long the tariffs will be in. They could be in for a day. They could be in for 24 hours. Former Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, the guy that needs a bowel,

Current sell-off market correction makes sense. Well, I wish he would have told me that a month ago, you know. But it would have made sense six months ago. It would have made sense nine months ago because of the valuation. But Mnuchin says investors should not overreach as the current downturn in equities makes sense while he does not see a recession happening.

And, you know, I said it at the beginning of the year. This market is expensive. There's just no room. He said we came in with the market being fully priced. I totally agree. But that doesn't mean it can't go higher. So then you have to let the momentum work its way out and the charts. He says a 10% correction on the S&P or NASDAQ actually makes sense. He said during a Bloomberg interview on Thursday, he

Now, the interesting statistic. Here's your interesting statistic for the day. When the S&P 500 goes through a 10% correction, how many times does that, what's the average or percentage probability that it turns into a bear market?

Barry, did they teach that in CF? Okay, take a guess. I'd go 1 in 5 or 1 in 6. Well, you're not bad. You're a little on the high side. There's been 48 corrections of 10% since World War II for the benchmark S&P 500.

How many have turned into bears? Well, 25%, actually, 12 of them. Okay, yeah. I don't see it this time. I think this is one of the 75% of the times that it doesn't turn into a bear. And a bear, I guess the definition of a bear these days is a 20% drop. 20% pullback, yeah. And we're at 10 right now for the NASDAQ. So there's a 25% if you're just looking at history drop.

But then I think you have to look at the current conditions in the economy and in the market. You know, and I think this would be a very low percent that it goes down another 10. Why? Earnings, earnings, earnings. They're still there. Future earnings are still predicted and they're expected to be good. We'll be right back. ♪♪♪

so

And welcome back here to the second quarter of today's Best Docs Now show. I've looked at enough charts here this morning to make a couple observations. There are a lot of bottoms being put in.

Apple, Estera Labs, ALAB forming a very firm bottom. AMD putting in a bottom. Arista Networks putting in a bottom. App, which is App Lovin' putting in a bottom. Arm Holdings putting in a bottom.

Breakouts to new highs, ACMR, which I've had on my list for a while. It is finally breaking out. It's a wafer, chip wafer stock. American, let's see, Agnico Eagle, gold stock, AEM breaking out. AGI, gold stock breaking out. Allianz, big French insurer company.

breaking out all state the insurance stocks continue to look very good asa which is a gold stock most of your gold stocks are breaking out today so that's just an early look to give you a flavor but you know i started to tell you a few several days ago that i starting to see bottoms being put in and attempted the bottoms and they're just looking better and better

After this 15% sell-off in the NASDAQ and a 10% sell-off in the S&P 500. Now yesterday, there were still some free-falls. Consumer discretionary especially. Costco was in a free-fall situation.

Walmart was in a free fall. Of course, Kohl's was in a free fall. Marriott was in a free fall. The vacation stocks look ugly. But they're going to start putting in bottoms too, and that's why I don't think that the odds are very high of this correction turning into a bear because the fundamentals of the market are still too good. Well, what about the tariffs? How much will that take out of earnings?

We don't know, and we're factoring that in now. In fact, I put a chart up in the newsletter last week of how many companies mentioned tariffs during their call. It's like a record number. You've got to go back to Trump's first time around the block when there was as many companies mentioning tariffs recently.

But all in all, I honestly don't think, yes, some companies, yes. I see Elon Musk is hollering about how it could hit him, some of the tariffs. And we saw yesterday, who was it, what industry was it yesterday? Oh, the food industry saying, hey, we need help. These ingredients we can't get anywhere else and whatnot.

But the fundamentals still look pretty strong for earnings, and that's the key driver in the market. Well, all these gold guys that pitch gold, William Devane, okay, he was right, old William Devane. Gold futures hit $3,000 for the first time as trade tensions. U.S. rate cuts bet spark historic rally. I still want them to open up Fort Knox.

and see what's in there. The last time Goldfinger, you probably never saw the movie Goldfinger with Sean Connery and Oddjob. Oddjob with the hat, man. Yeah, and they tried to rob Fort Knox and everything there in Kentucky. I want to know what's in there. Maybe we get Geraldo Rivera.

Who opened up Al Capone's vault? I remember that. Nothing there. No. Trump is going to invoke the wartime law as soon as Friday to fast-track deportations. He's also mulling tougher sanctions on Russia, oil, Russian oil, gas, and banking sectors.

The decision to restrict access to the American banking system makes it even harder for other countries to buy Russian oil. And of course, he's trying to put the heat on Putin to get him to the table on this ceasefire. Let's put the blood moon thing off the table for now, but we don't want to upset Putin too much here.

On Wednesday, the Treasury Department, and this was our new Treasury Secretary weighing in. He said that the Biden administration made a big mistake by letting –

a restriction lapse and they've been able to sell their oil so they're going to toughen up again on Russia trying to Scott Besson said we continue to implement our sanctions which remain one of the levers to facilitate the goals of peace that's what they want they remain focused on ending the fighting and fostering negotiations to end the war at least Putin is talking

British Columbia stops rebates on Tesla chargers and battery installations. Do you think they just singled out Elon Musk and Tesla? I think so, probably. Probably.

They used to give a rebate if you installed a Tesla charger. No, not anymore. Not in British Columbia. Airline drama again. Passengers are evacuated after an American jet catches fire in Denver. I saw them out on the wing. I saw them out on the wing. That doesn't look good. Luckily, the plane had landed. I wouldn't want to be out on the wing as it's coming in for a landing. You go first. And then the slide. Whee!

And it's no birthday party. It's not like a balloon, like one of these circus slides. It looks scary. I think I'm going to drive to Sarasota here in a couple weeks. What is it, six hours from here? Six hours to Sarasota? It's a nice drive.

I won't have to be out on the wing of the airplane. You might be able to turn it into nine hours, depending on what kind of actions on 75. You never know. It gets pretty heavy there through Waldo. European investment bank eyes doubling or tripling defense spending. Well, you know what? I keep watching. Who do they buy? BAESY is the purest play. That's a U.K. defense stock. That would be equivalent to probably...

probably a Raytheon for us. And then there's some Israeli defense stocks that are also doing very well, but it's obvious that they don't think they can count on the U.S. anymore to defend them with NATO. They're going to have to build their own budgets for their defense over there in Europe. Now, Tesla is mulling a low-cost Model Y. We talked about this yesterday.

There's no way that Musk is going to compete with BYD and with Li and with all the other... NIO. NIO, X-Ping, all the other electric cars in China...

with his Model Y because their crossover starts at $36,000. He's got to get a price down, and I think he will, to make it competitive to regain share, market share in China. He's been hit hard. Two companies have been hit especially hard.

by China. One is Tesla and the other one is Apple. Those two have been... And then in the U.S., of course, the demand, Volkswagen is shutting down a shift at their Chattanooga plant in Tennessee. What's it build? It builds EV SUVs, electric Volkswagen SUVs. The demand has plummeted.

Volkswagen is laying off an entire shift in Chattanooga and the UAW is filing a complaint calling it anti-something practices, anti-American conduct.

Well, when business slows down, I mean, you have to be able to lay people off, but they do remain at the table. 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. Music

We've got to get together.

Hey, and welcome back to the second half of today's Best Stocks Now show. Market pretty strong today. A lot of good bottoms being put in there today.

A lot of nice charts really shaping up nicely. It's good to look at a lot of charts on a daily basis. That will tell you more, but it's time-consuming. That will tell you more about the overall market than listening to any one of these pundits on CNBC in the afternoons. I don't think they spend a lot of time looking at individual stocks. It just doesn't sound like it. So anyways...

A lot of good charts, looking pretty good here today. Now, there have been some earnings come in. I've been watching Rubrik. It hasn't been one that's high on my list recently with the sell-off in the market, but

It is definitely a cyber security stock on the rise. And I can see how name Rubrik, probably after the Rubrik's cube, trying to figure out all the attacks coming into your IT systems. Rubrik is up 26% today. That's a huge, that's the earnings report of the week, RBRK.

That's a fairly recent IPO. They came public last year, let's see, in about June, midway through last year. So they've been around less than a year. But that stock's hitting a new high. It's out of Palo Alto, which, you know, there's Palo Alto networks there.

So kind of the cybersecurity, one of the cybersecurity centers of the world. That's an important, very important industry. A huge bounce in Rubrik today. I'm sure that's lifting a lot of other security stocks today. We also have a bad one here, Exponential Fitness.

XP-O-F, not looking too good today. You know what? I mean, look, the weight loss drugs have got to be hurting the gyms and the fitness centers. Exponential down 38%. It's just getting smacked.

There's a pretty well-known guy that started Exponential. I can't think of his name. Kind of a semi-celebrity kind of guy. It's a boutique kind of fitness thing, but not doing well. Today, it's out of Irvine, California, the fitness capital of the world. Down 38% today, down to $7.45 today.

Very soft revenue. Not good. Ulta Beauty has reported. That was a Teflon stock for a long, long time. Ulta Beauty is up 10%, but it is way off of its highs, which were back at $574 last year.

Now it's at $345. You know, Barry, last night I had to make a trip to the Citadel Mall. Okay. What's left of it? I'm glad you came back. Yeah, you get a better chance flying. But I did walk through a Dillard's. And, you know, I mean, it still looks like the old, you've got the makeup counter, you know, and the gals there. There's nobody in there, at least on a Thursday night.

And, you know, I can remember going into Nordstrom's and all the women are sitting there and they're putting the stuff on there, you know, making them up and they're buying stuff hand over fist. It's just like, wow, what happened? You go into the food court and it's just like, it's depressed, you know, and a lot of vacant stores, you know.

Guy goes, oh, it's down by the old Sears entrance. And, like, the Sears is vacant, and there's, like, mold all over the brick. Really sad. They've got medical offices in there. They've got everything but what you would usually see at a mall. They've got a Planet Fitness, of course, and I think they've got a gymnastics area. Yeah. It's like a gymnastics. And a train. The Model Railroad Club meets there every Thursday night. I had a little engine problem.

with my locomotive, and I took it in, and the guy diagnosed it right on the spot there. And I knew that I would get an answer from one of those old-timers. These guys are old-timers, you know, sitting there wondering their little trains around. And I think their wives are just glad to get them out of the house, really, and looking around at them. But anyways, you know, Ulta Beauty and all of that, it's just a different time that we live in.

And, you know, and it's not going to get any better. It's not like that mall's going to come back and all of a sudden Ann Taylor stores and Wetzel's Pretzels and Dairy Queen and all of those things, Orange Julius. Those were kind of the good old days. I used to like going to the mall. DocuSign rises as investors look past a weak 2026 outlook.

Well, okay, you know, that's a pretty good report. I love signing DocuSigns. That's my favorite email to get every day. I usually get a couple a day. That's a new client coming in, and I have to okay them, you know. I don't turn too many people away, really.

But anyways, DocuSign's up 16% today. DocuSign was sitting pretty in 2020 during the year of COVID when you could not sit there with the mortgage gal. Now sign here, sign here. We need both your signatures here. There's a pile on her desk about three feet high.

uh next to the her subway sandwich and you're signing stuff and DocuSign just made life so much easier and we used to have to open new accounts in the old days I had the new account paperwork in my drawer and I'd have to pull it out and then you had to nail it you know wet signature with all the sign here signatures and all this and that and then you waited for it to come back so

I like DocuSign. I like signing different things through DocuSign, not having to go downtown to the attorney's office. Lee Otto misses on revenue. Now, I did notice, look at the chart on BYDDF. It is hitting $50 a share today. That's a $137 billion company now.

By contrast, Tesla's $783 billion, but here comes BYD on the outside moving very quickly, making up ground. It's the major player in China is BYD. Li is a minor player in China.

But Lee did report earnings. Okay, now what we need to do is look inside some of these indexes here because it is a healthy day. There's some nice bottoms being put in. If you've been getting my alerts, I've been teaching a lot. I said, look at this. Yesterday I sent out a chart of Costco. I said, look at this. There's no attempt at a bottom yet. It's still in a free fall.

But I'll let you know, because this would be one. It's on my potential buy list. It's a dividend. A dividend of growth. It would fit nicely in there. I mean, it's been so expensive. It's absolutely a ridiculously priced stock, but it has that wow factor.

And you pay up for that wow factor. That's the way it is. Okay, now, if we look at the Dow today, okay, well, you've got to – I said this yesterday. I said when I woke up yesterday, there was one word in my mind, NVIDIA. And that's a nice move on NVIDIA today. It's really shaping up nicely. That to me –

The chances are good that it's going to go back and test that bottom again, okay? It's tested it once. And when you go back to January of 2023, I saw the NASDAQ put in the bottom, and then it rallied. And guess what? The rally fell apart, and it went back down and tested that bottom again. And I would not be surprised. I'm not saying that NVIDIA is doing a V-shaped return.

Rally here. That's pretty rare. You know normally they got to draw out a bottom But Nvidia is especially excited today. It's back up to 120 right now It's 2.9 billion after being 3.7 or no 2.9 trillion after being three lost a trillion dollars in value and now it's making some of that back up So that's exciting. I mean, it's like I said, I

The leaders, the previous leaders are going to be the leaders again. It's just because they're still the best stocks out there. And, you know, you're seeing some hard bounces here. That's the leading stock. That's the leading stock in the Dow today. JP Morgan's up 2.5. It's attempting a bottom. American Express attempting a bottom. This is all good news.

Goldman Sachs attempting a bottom. Nice bottom being put in there. Nice bottom being put in an Amazon. Even Amazon got hit for 16%. Amazon, 16%. You think that it's invincible Amazon when you go through the vacant Wetzel's pretzels at the mall and you think about Amazon.

being invincible but it's not invincible and you know what's selling off now all this money went gushing into the consumer staples and all of a sudden it's running out of the consumer staples that's a good sign for the market we'll be right back

On a winter's day.

And welcome back here to the final segment of today's Best Stocks Now show. Okay, let's look at the S&P 500, which gives us a little bit bigger look. Look at Palantir up 8.2% today. We did get back in. That was one of the ones that I got back into. It was the leading stock.

before this all happened. And it was probably the first stock that... Let it down, huh? Yeah, the shot across the bow. That thing had gone so far so fast, it would make your head spin. And then it went down so fast, it would make your head spin. And I look back on that whole experience and

I'm a little upset with myself that I didn't cut my position because we had, in one account, we had a triple, I think, in one of the portfolios. And in the other one, we had more than a double. And I wish, I mean, it was still going good, but all of a sudden there was that one day that just shook it and reverberated it. And, you know, I probably should have taken half off the table because I think it grew to about a 15% position today.

during that time. And did so quickly in both directions, right? It ballooned quickly and the air came out pretty fast as well. So anyways, it's up 8.2% today. It's the third best stock in the S&P 500.

The leading stock is Crown Castle. You know, it's a wireless tower stock. I'm not real hot on that. Ulta is up 10% today. But the best stock overall, definitely Palantir up 8.2%. Micron's up 5%. Western Digital's up 4.8%.

Arista's, there's another one putting in a nice bottom. It's up 4.4. Nvidia's putting in a nice bottom. It's up 4.1. And on the downside there in the S&P 500, I'm sure it's going to be the safe stocks that they're moving out of. You know, Macy's. Where's Macy's at the Citadel Mall? I didn't see Macy's anymore. Gone.

Macy's is down 3%. Kohl's is down 2.8%. Kohl's is probably terminal. Does not look good at $7.97.

Gap Stores doesn't look good either, down 2.6%. And, of course, that's Old Navy and what's their other brand that they have? I can't think of it. Gap Stores. Old Navy is their main other brand. Dollar General is down 2.5%. Do they have Ari? Are they Ari as well?

no uh no they have one other brand uh i can't remember the name of it maybe lucky jeans maybe now uh over at the nasdaq uh the winners are uh and tech tech looking pretty good today uh checkpoint lamb i have lamb on my list it can get

go pretty good when those chipmaker equipment stocks, LRCX, LAM, looks okay. Booking is up 2.6%. Netflix is up 2.4%. Another previous leader, AMD, is up 2.4%. Conspicuous by its absence, well, there it is. Meta is up 2% today, not that much. Amazon's up 1.7%.

Okay, well, I will be writing the newsletter today and tomorrow. And this is going to be a very important newsletter. I think the chart section will be very telling. The macro outlook will be very telling also.

And so if you want to sign up to get the newsletter, go to GundersenCapital.com, GundersenCapital.com. You'll see the stocks that we bought back this past week. And, you know, I mean, look, though, it's still a rocky market. I mean, the market is still getting over a bad case of the flu.

Is it ready? I mean, just as of yesterday, there were a lot of stocks still in freefall, okay? I mean, I'm going to give you a few of them here that were just in freefall. Costco was in freefall. It's catching today a little bit, but, you know, it takes more than that, you know. The small caps were in freefall yesterday, okay?

Stocks, the housing stocks were still in free fall yesterday. So this is still a shaky market. And a lot of the consumer discretionary real estate stocks still in a free fall. Healthcare stocks still in a free fall. So by no means is this, you know, go back in with guns blazing.

So you've got to tiptoe back in and you have to be very careful and look for some firm, solid bottoms that have been built and stocks that were previous leaders, previous leaders. So anyways, that's my advice. And of course, you know, I mean, if you're signed up to the four-week trial, you're going to hear during the day, you've already heard from me several times this morning,

And, of course, then you get the newsletter with all the portfolios and you get the access to the app. That is GundersenCapital.com. That's our four-free-week trial. And also, if you'd like to set up an appointment with us, we've got still some spots left in Sarasota.

It's getting full, but if you want to meet with us while we're there, 855-611-BEST, 855-611-BEST. And we'll be at the Westin Hotel there downtown.

And then it's on to Cleveland, maybe four to six weeks after that to Sarasota trip. And then it's back to Michigan, maybe four to six weeks after that trip. Get rested up. You've got to always button up everything from each one of these trips. And then probably down to Texas after that. And then back to Minnesota.

And then, you know, we've got to put Pittsburgh in our sights. Pittsburgh is, we've got a lot of followers there in Pittsburgh in the Pennsylvania area. So anyways, we should have some fun, see some America.

this coming year, which is always fun to do. I love to see all the different great cities of America. So anyways, 855-611-BEST or GundersenCapital.com. GundersenCapital.com. 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 SIPC and FINRA.