Friday Mar. 28, 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. It is TGIF today on this March 28th. And this is Bill Gunderson. You're listening to the Best Stocks Now show with Bill Gunderson. And I've got Barry Kite here, our Chartered Financial Analyst. And it's all about tariffs this week for the most part.

25% on the autos coming in from out of the country. And that's got the market nervous, chewing its fingernails again today.

We've got the Dow down 298. 42,000 has been the support level on the Dow, and right now it's at 42,000. So let's hope it holds. The S&P is down 36 right now. It's at 56.56. Those are your lottery numbers for the day, 56.56. NASDAQ is down 180. That's 1%. Tech looks awful. It just looks awful.

We've lowered our exposure to tech considerably if you look at our portfolios. The NASDAQ is down 183 to 17,620.

We've got the small caps down two-thirds of a percent. They look awful. The bond market right now is down a little bit. No, actually, it's down seven basis points after a hotter-than-expected PCE report, inflation report. So I guess the bond trader is hoping for maybe three rate cuts this year.

So welcome to today's Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management. I'm here with Barry Kite, our chartered financial analyst, and this is newsletter day for me as I do my internal research, which a big part of that today will be, hey, where are those earnings estimates at for this year?

2025. Next year, 2026. And the year after that, 2027. Has there been any dent in

put into those estimates with all of this tariff fever going around. It's interesting. You haven't seen a lot, have you? No. Is there a vaccine for tariff fever? The market's got tariff fever, and it needs to be inoculated and get over it because, you know, it's a tactic being used by Trump to, number one, get countries in line,

and quit taking advantage of the U.S., which they've been doing for a long, long time. We have huge trade deficits, six major trade zones,

with China leading the pack, and Mexico, Canada, Taiwan, etc., also with big trade deficits with the U.S. I think the story yesterday, gold 3,108, 3,108, I've never said that before, that's a new all-time high on gold,

It's the only place to go to hide and still have some upward exposure, right, instead of going to cash. Yes, and gold doesn't have that exposure to tariff fever. And I would say this, that as I look at my top, there's 386 stocks that are B-plus ranked or better today. About 70 of those are foreign stocks.

And I'll be looking at all of those charts. That's been the other safe place to hide is Europe and China, mostly those two. And we do have exposure there, and I will be looking maybe to add exposure there. The worst-looking place in the market right now is AI and tech, nuclear, etc.,

It's just not a good place to have a lot of exposure right now. It had a good run. It's really pure risk-off. Yeah, it's risk-off. And overblown being taken out of the equation. The data center exposure definitely. And I see SoftBank is upping their bet. They want to put a trillion dollars into data centers in the U.S.,

And while Microsoft is trimming their plans for data centers, and the market is trading like this whole data center fever is a little too hot. It got a fever of 103, and it's been cooling off here recently. So something to take into account. You know, when you look at 800 to 1,000 charts a day, you definitely see where the weakness is, and you see where the strength is in the market.

And the strength, the force is definitely not with the data center play here at the current time. Will it come back to that area? Well, it did momentarily there for, what, three or four days, maybe a week. And now it's cooling off again. Meanwhile, it is definitely risk off. Where can we hide until all of the terror fever passes?

Yesterday was another soft day in the market. I don't know where we're at for the week. I think we're about even. Maybe we're slightly down for the week. I'll find that out when I do my charts here a little bit later today for the newsletter.

And let's see, we had yesterday the Dow, the NASDAQ was down 95. Yesterday the Dow was down 155. Gold closes at an all-time high, 3,110 actually. Tech had another bad day. Silver cracks $35 per ounce. Silver is breaking out, by the way. You should take a look at silver today.

Interest rates were continuing to drift higher, and I want to get Barry's take on the PCE index that came out today. 2.8%. Should we be worried about inflation? Yeah, I mean, they can't. I mean, probably be more worried about the uncertainty of potential inflation, right, around the tariff stuff. How's that going to shake into all of our pocketbooks in some form or fashion? But, yeah, in terms of PCE, it came in a tenth higher today.

at both the monthly and the annual figure.

So this number, it's not as much of a surprise a lot of times as a CPI because a lot of these different components you can kind of calculate and then come up with the number even without having the number. So it's usually pretty close to the estimate, and I don't really see – it didn't seem to me that interest rates were moving much. It came in a temp hotter than expected. Yeah, and I think the market kind of liked the news because it might push the Fed –

Well, I don't know. I mean, rates are down seven basis points today. Yeah. So something moved the bond market. You're down to 4.30. We were at 4.37 yesterday. And I have noticed that the yield curve has been pretty good. The two-year is 32 basis points below the 10-year.

So you have had a little bit of a steepening yield curve. The bond market is not pricing in a recession at the current time. But consumer sentiment, all these sentiment indicators in general, some of that, I believe, in my opinion, is somewhat media-driven. But then some of it also is real worry out there. You've got consumer sentiment measures. They keep rising.

climbing when you look at inflation expectations, right? And so the worry, right, of potential inflation, who knows? Maybe that sends people to the store sooner. Well, okay. And you get some people start buying stuff now. Here's a boots on the ground report from downtown Sarasota from someone who knows her shopping, my wife.

She was there like 10 minutes before a popular clothing store opened in downtown Sarasota. She said she got in there, and as soon as that door opened, there was a line out the door to come inside for people buying clothes. I don't know which one. Eileen Fisher, something like this. I don't know, you know. I'm just a man. But anyways, there's no problem with consumer sentiment in Sarasota. One hour wait to get into...

To Columbia, you know, yes, it's a tourist trap, but they do have a good salad, okay? One hour wait to get in the Mediterranean place across the way. One hour wait to get in Spaghetti Jack's or whatever it is, Spaghetti Joe's, the clam bake place. They're not hurting there in Sarasota. Plenty of action there.

I'll be checking out one of Charleston's hotter restaurants here if I can get in tonight, you know. So I'll give you a boots on the ground. I'm not seeing the consumer, you know, I'm not seeing the consumer, you know,

Pull back at all. Pull back at all. Okay, now, here's the word on the street, all right? You've heard of the Magnificent Seven. Forget about it this year. Forget about it. Isn't that what they say in Philly? Today, this year, it's the Terrific Ten. What are the Terrific Ten?

Alibaba, B-A-B-A, Tencent, T-C-E-H-Y, Mytoon, M-P-N-G-F, foreign stock, Showmy, X-I-A-C-F, foreign stock, JD.com, NetEase, Baidu, B-Y-D-D-F, foreign stock, Geely Automotive, G-E-L-Y-F, and S-M-I-C. What do they all have in common?

Deep Seek, China, tariff, not worried too much about tariffs over there. So right now, I mean, we already know that the stocks 50 are clobbering the S&P this year. Well, the terrible 10, the terrific 10 also outperforming our magnificent 7. Are you in?

And welcome back here to the second quarter of today's Best Docs Now show. Well, I've got to say this today, Barry, because I won't be able to say it probably anymore this year. The Padres are undefeated.

so far this year unless they rattle off 10 in a row to start the season i don't know that'll happen but they did beat the atlanta braves last night and i don't know what it is with the atlanta braves here we are in charleston south carolina we're five hours away from atlanta i

I go to watch the Padre game on the MLB network, and I'm blacked out in Charleston, South Carolina. What do they have, a blackout policy over half the United States that you can't watch the Atlanta Braves games? That just seems a little ridiculous to me, but that's the way it is. And so instead I watched a very interesting interview that I'm glad I watched. Brett Baer on Fox News said,

You might hate them, you might like them. I don't know. But I did watch the Doge Boys. I think it was, well, it was Elon and maybe seven others. I don't know how anybody can be against what they're doing if they really know what they're doing.

I mean, Brett Baer asked each and every one of them. These are very accomplished people. The co-founder of Airbnb. You've got people that have ran businesses all their lives. You've got software specialists. Our government is 50 years behind, at least, in the technology that they use. They have so much overlap of IT systems that don't talk to each other anymore.

It's really pathetic how backwards it is. And, yeah, okay, so we're going to trim some people. I see Amazon's laying off 200 people today in one of their departments. You know, sometimes that has to happen. I feel bad for those 200 people, but they're like one of the largest employers in America. I know, yes. That made it to the news.

But each guy was interviewed, and they stated that, you know, the errors are in the billions. Okay, not a few dollars here and there. Billions that they don't know where it went. They can't account for it.

And by the time they get through, they're going to have, like they say, we could not pass an audit. None of the departments of the U.S. could pass an audit. It needs to be ran. I mean, when you're dealing with that much money, it has to be ran by like a business, at least to be able to trace it and be accountable for where it's going. It's sacred money. It's sacred money. I mean, it's no different than people giving me money to invest. It's sacred money.

that has to be safeguarded and handled with care. You know the restrictions in our business, Barry? Yeah, I mean, right.

With money laundering and fraud and everything. Right, holding the money. You know, the biggest enemy to Doge, no question about it, is the media. They're the biggest enemy to Doge in trying to say that, you know, they're up to no good, they're going to steal your... No, there's people stealing from Social Security. There's people committing fraud constantly in these areas of the market, and

And I think Elon said it best. You know what he learned from PayPal is the ones that complain the most are the fraudsters. They got their gravy train cut off. So you know what? I have nothing against Doge and what they're doing. They call them, what do they call them, apologists.

A bunch of rich nerds. Billionaire nerds. Would you rather have a bunch of poor idiots like we have doing it? I mean, it needs to be updated and brought to the year 2025 with the software that we have that speaks to one another, with the accounting systems we have, with all the checks and balances that a billionaire

private company has to adhere to the government should have to adhere to those same checks and balances so anyways i'm glad i watched it it really enlightened me on the whole thing now if you're one that lost your job yeah you're gonna hate him

But companies downsize all the time in the real world. Start the tariff engines. What does Made in America mean? Well, starting on April 2nd, the U.S. will apply a 25% tariff to imported passenger vehicles and light trucks, as well as key automobile parts, powertrain parts, and electrical components. It's an announcement that has rattled the car industry today.

which has spent decades integrating supply chains with Canada and Mexico, as well as elsewhere across the globe. So it's going to put them under a microscope, tracking how much of a car is made in America is a complicated endeavor and can sometimes lead to surprising discoveries.

There's many stages of production that cover the thousands of parts that go into a vehicle, including the raw material procurement, melting and castings, parts manufacturing and finishing, and quality control and testing. It's not just the final assembly of the components or installing them into a vehicle is what most people think about when picturing auto manufacturing and production.

When factoring all these supply chains and parts, one might find foreign companies like Honda in Alabama and Toyota in Kentucky that make cars which might be more American than some vehicles produced by Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis. And then, of course, there's Tesla.

The EV maker has notable final assembly activities in California and Texas and might benefit from the new tariffs, though it also sources motor and battery parts, raw materials, and components outside of the U.S. So the newly signed tariff appears to recognize some of these complexities.

And while it may make a dent in the closely aligned supply chains with Canada and Mexico, the complex logistics systems won't be totaled, at least initially. So anyways, that's what is going to occur on April 2nd, which is Tuesday.

The European Commission is said to be assessing ways to simplify EU energy policies. In fact, they're watching what we're doing here in the U.S., and they're considering changes to EU energy laws as part of its next package of proposals to cut the regulatory burden. Can you believe this coming from Europe?

for struggling industries. You know, Europe has just strangling regulatory burdens that really hurt a lot of industries. So maybe there's a movement worldwide to help with some of these issues.

strangling regulations. Well, the Panama Canal is still definitely in play here. C.K. Hutchinson, did you see that? They were going to sell the ports because of the pressure coming from Trump. Now they're getting pressure from

from Premier Xi from China saying, oh, no, no, you're not going to sell those ports. They won't be signing a deal on April 2nd to divest its two ports in the Panama Canal, which

So anyways, that's an about face. They were going to sell it to BlackRock. Well, yeah, and there's like actually 40, I think, because I talked about it earlier in the week, and it was still on track. And then, of course, I saw the news today, but I think it's about 47 ports. Of course, the two big ones are at least the ones that have been in the news are BlackRock.

the ones on both sides of the Panama Canal. That's right. Well, when we come back, there's a hot IPO today. Should we buy into it? We've got to talk a little bit more about gold. And how about GameStop raising a billion dollars to buy Bitcoin? That's their new business. We'll be right back. Really tight breast, don't like him talking so much.

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. Music

and welcome back here to the second half of today's best docs now show i'll be working on the newsletter today we'll be

updating the key macro outlook, the earnings expectations. That's the hot spot right now. That's what I'm interested in seeing. It's going to be really important, and the charts, and the charts. The charts tell a lot. We had a burgeoning rally, and it seems to have been snuffed out, I would say, by two things.

Number one would be Microsoft kind of talking down the data center stuff. So that affects across the board NVIDIA, Palantir, Apple.

uh vistra uh constellation energy oclo uh you know anything uh related to uh data centers the cooling of the data centers uh just across the board and number two and probably even bigger than that but maybe not maybe equally as big as the tariff uh on the autos that are going to hit on uh

Tuesday. And of course we do have the end of the quarter on Monday. And the earnings season is about 12 days away. We're in between earnings season. But...

The companies are staying in touch, and the analysts are making checks, especially right now. They're checking in with companies. Next week's going to be a busy week. I mean, we've got, you know, of course, what, Liberation Day, you know, Trump's announcement on April 2nd. Right. What kind of happens, you know, in between, you know, then and now? I think I saw some news here yesterday.

about 30 minutes ago that the eu was going to you know it was potentially uh making some concessions and we're gonna you know present them so we'll see uh you know we got an employment report next week we've got uh we've got uh of course initial jobless claims always but we've got a big a lot of a lot of employment info next week so it'll be interesting to see uh you know it should be a pretty busy jobless claims yesterday

Did you see them? Yeah, they came in, I think, 1,000 higher than the previous week. So I think it was around 125. It was basically a non-story because it was so close to the week prior. All right. Still nothing to see there, right? Here's today's hot IPO. I think they picked a bad time of year and that bad market to go public. Core Weave.

That's a major AI stock. That's probably the biggest IPO that we've had so far this year. This is a hot IPO. The stock goes live Friday morning under the ticker CRWV. The artificial intelligence hyperscaler expects a midpoint of $51 per share, according to a filing last week.

with the SEC. It doesn't seem like it's trading quite yet. No, it has not opened yet. So that means there's a lot of jockeying before it opens. They have to measure how much demand there is for it once it goes public, how many people want in wherever it comes public. And it will probably come in higher than

uh then they're uh then they're a pricing that they did so we'll see crwv i'll add it to the app uh nvidia is a backer of core weave maybe uh nvidia will get a little bit of a bounce here today of core weave opens up big but it's not a good environment right now for ai and

It's not a good environment right now for data center stocks. Gold futures, another record high due to Trump tariff worries. We talked about that. You saw an all-time high on gold yesterday. Bitcoin not really picking up that gold-like move to avoid the tariff war. They're going to gold. They're not really going to Bitcoin today.

It's hanging out about 86,000 or something like that. I mean, after the Trump election, it went up to 106,000. Now it's down around 86,000. That doesn't stop GameStop. I guess they've given up on all other business plans. They're going to become like a micro-strategy now.

Yeah, it tells you that's what some of that brick-and-mortar retail has come to. That's what it's come to. Maybe Kohl's needs to sell all their inventory and buy Bitcoin.

But then they don't need all the space that they've got. I mean, why be paying rent? You just need a little office to run a Bitcoin mining firm. If you get into Bitcoin mining, they can put some computers in all the space that they have. And GameStop, I think it was down 23% or something like that on that news. It's kind of like surrendering, total surrendering. Tesla not totally unscathed by the Trump tariffs.

but their localized manufacturing is the prime reason tariffs could potentially have a lesser impact on the company. None of its cars produced at gigafactories in China and Germany are marketed in the U.S.,

But they're marked cars right now. Europeans are boycotting Musk for cleaning up the U.S. government. Imagine that. How does that work? He's in there volunteering to make our government more modern and more efficient than

And they're burning his cars and boycotting him for doing that. The media is the worst enemy. It is. I'm telling you. So anyways, Tesla is best off from Trump's new trade directives. Deutsche Bank downgrading it, you know, and they're also downgrading U.S. markets and everything like this because they think what we're doing over here is awful.

Okay, Amazon expected to expend Prime Day to four-day shopping event this year. Four days of Prime Day.

Well, it used to be we had... How do you increase it by percentage-wise? Add another day? Yeah, three more days. Well, you know, it used to be, what was Friday called? What's Friday? Black Friday. Black Friday after Thanksgiving. Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday. Terrible Tuesday. Wicked Wednesday. Terrific Thursday. So anyways, but you know what? Yeah.

Amazon kind of has been under a little bit of pressure too because it really shouldn't be. But the part of Amazon that does have exposure to the data center is AWS, and that's why you're seeing a sell-off in Amazon right now because in addition to the retail giant, it's off 3.4% today. It's about ready to break.

It's support level. Why? Because of exposure to data center through AWS. And like I say, data center is not a good place to be in the market right now. Inverse data center, maybe, yes. There is a big data inverse fund out there. It's inverse big data, like I think 3X. It is AIBD.

It's an ETF, seeks daily results, double the inverse of the sole active AI and big data index. It's breaking out today. It's up 5.22%. So that means big data...

Data Center is down 2.6%, somewhere in that neighborhood today. And AIBD, if you've got a bunch of stocks in that area that you don't want to sell, you can hedge it with AIBD. Or you can just make a bet against Big Data and Data Center by buying AIBD. It's a direction funds product.

They do have quite a few, a pretty big portfolio of inverse funds that they offer folks. TMC, the metals company, I've seen this before. They're going to look for rare earth at the bottom of the ocean. They initiated a process with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, otherwise known as NOAA.

to apply for exploration licenses and commercial recovery permits under existing U.S. legislation. They want to look for rare earth under the ocean, deep sea, just like they find oil there.

Deep Sea. And I have noticed that TMC... There's a lot more land underwater than there is above water. I don't know how you send miners down there, but 2,000 foot deep under the ocean. We'll send some robots. But TMC is up 15.3% today. 15.3%. On that move, Deep Sea mining permits...

Never mind that they may never, ever find anything.

I remember when they were getting permits to go down and, you know, to wrecks offshore and get the bounty that they're in. Well, TMC is looking for rare earth in the deep sea, and it's up 15% on that news. When we come back, we've got a little biotech up 95%, and Lilly fails to win EU backing for their Alzheimer's therapy. We'll be right back.

And welcome back here to the final segment of today's Best Docs Now, Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, LXRX.com.

teaming up with Novo Nordisk. It was up 95%. It would have been a good short candidate at that point. Now it's up 52% in the trading after the Texas-based. Texas-based biotech? I don't remember ever saying that before.

San Diego, big biotech capital. The Silicon Valley, big biotech capital. Back east, Massachusetts, big biotech. Texas, biotech? Okay. It's up 55% right now in agreement with Novo Nordisk to develop an obesity candidate called LX9851.

So anyways, there's your biotech of the day. Eli Lilly fails to win EU backing for their Alzheimer's therapy. I wonder if that could be a little anti-Trump backlash there. I don't know. It's approved in the U.S. It's not really much of a blockbuster drug, though, to be honest. It's not a game changer for Eli Lilly. Lilly is flat on the day so far and has not been trading very well.

Activist investor Elliott Management has a $1 billion short position against Shell. What have they got against Shell, Barry? The UK-based company. At one time, I think Shell Oil was a US-based company. Ended up over in the UK.

Good luck with that, Elliot. They're pretty big. They're a very big activist hedge fund. A $1 billion short position in Shell. Dutch Brothers outlines aggressive store growth and revenue targets. We have a little position in Dutch Brothers in our emerging growth portfolio. Not looking too good today.

Down 6.9%. Don't know what's wrong there. But maybe their plans are a little too aggressive. And I know also that they're going to start getting onto retail shelves with the Dutch Brothers brand. That's a crowded shelf though, Barry. All those K-Cups.

And, you know, Donut Shop and Dunkin' Donut. Now you've got the Nespresso machines. So they're a different kind of cup, right? Not the old K-cup. So, yeah, there's a lot of different... Everybody seems to be in the coffee business. I was listening to somebody on...

I think it was one of the financial channels. And he said, oh, yeah, I learned about labor costs because he happens to own two local coffee shops. And I'm like, does everybody have a coffee shop now? Yeah. I mean, we had a vacant corner and they put up a quick auto tune here on Highway 41 and a coffee shop, a drive-thru coffee shop.

There, you know, in that little space. Just what we needed was another auto-tune and another coffee shop, drive-thru coffee shop. But God bless them. What can I say? Wolfspeed tanking today. Why? Okay, now this is an interesting story because Wolfspeed, they changed their name. I can't remember the name of the stock before. It's in North Carolina. Basically, one of the LED tanks.

with the silicon carbide, gallium nitride materials, etc. And the stock has just tanked over the years. It was 142 at one time as LED becomes a commodity. And Wolfspeed is now $2.85. It's losing 47%. Why? They lost their CHIPS Act funding.

Another victim of Doge. They've canceled a lot of grants. Grants. Biden was good at handing out money. I mean, grants here and grants there. Never mind we've already got $2 trillion in debt. Let's just give about a bunch of grants. And they shut down a lot of that stuff. Maybe you're against it. Maybe you're for it. I don't know. But Wolfspeed was caught in the middle.

and lost their grant. Their grant was taken back away from them. Okay, Milestone Pharmaceuticals says FDA declines to approve their heart disorder therapy. I'll bet there's a lot of people over there having a heart attack today because that stock, Mist, M-I-S-T, is down 62% today. Play Misty for me.

And here is the one. If you're just determined to buy an auto stock and you want one that's tariff resistant, Barclays is upgrading Ferrari today, R-A-C-E, Race, one of the most beautiful cars in the world. I was down in Sarasota and there was a couple guys. We're standing in line for one hour. I'm not going to wait an hour.

We found one for 15 minutes. Usually the food level goes down. A one-hour wait usually has better food than a 15-minute wait, but that's just the way it goes sometimes. And as we're standing there, I saw two beautiful, classic red Ferraris. I mean, they were in mint condition there in Sarasota.

drive by and a couple of old timers kind of driving them and showing off the wheels you know nothing turns ahead like a red ferrari checkpoint upgraded at bmo you know checkpoint is kind of a nice little software company out of israel

internet security software, hardline services for enterprises and consumers. It's always traded at a pretty reasonable P.E. ratio. It's not a 25-30% grower. It's one that I actually have kind of targeted. By the way, Monday at the end of the day is the start of my new value portfolio. I have funded it personally.

My own account, $100,000. That will be the model. And every week when I report on the newsletter, the results, it will come right from that $100,000 portfolio that has been funded. It's all in cash, 100%. And start picking off lower volatility.

Value, relative value. Relative value. I don't know that I've ever seen a relative value fund. Of course, I've always been a bit of a disruptor. Instead of intrinsic value, I'm going for relative value. Let's say Palantir gets cut in half. Let's say Tesla gets cut in half or down 60%.

That qualifies as a relative value. If you're interested in being with me on the ground floor, give us a call at 855-611-BEST.

Want to get the newsletter, the four-week trial, GundersonCapital.com. If you want a portfolio review, a financial plan, 855-611-BEST or GundersonCapital.com. I officially declare it the weekend. Okay? According to Bill Gunderson, the weekend has begun. Have fun, 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.