Friday May 16, 2025 - What a week in the market!
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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 morning. It is Friday, May the 16th. The live edition of the Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management. And we're hanging on to just some very slight modest gains here so far today. But we've had a really good week in the market. The Dow is up. It's actually down two points right now.

It is running into its 200-day moving average. I would say that about the Dow. It's at 42,320. The NASDAQ, which has had a very good week, is up 21 points. It's at 19,133, just a little under 800 points away from 20,000. And the S&P is just 80 points away from 6,000. It's up three points today.

Let's not forget, just six weeks ago, the S&P was at 4,800. Now we're closing in on 6,000. What a comeback.

V-shaped recovery that it has been. Meanwhile, the bond market, a little rally there going on today, driving interest rates down to 4.39, 4.44 now on the 10-year, the two years at 3.93. Gold is down today. Gold has been going through a bit of a correction. It's down 1.4% today, and Bitcoin is

is up $1,400 to $102,958. 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 I think, Barry, it's safe to say that we can look back on this past week and say it was an active week.

And not a passive week. It almost seems like the news is coming out of a fire hose these days, trickling out of a drip system, you know? It's crazy. The interesting thing is, you know, this week it seemed, you know, I don't know, I guess, you know, less frantic. It seemed more, you know, almost more of a positive news week, right? Yes. Imagine that. So...

Yeah, I mean, welcome. I kind of welcomed this week almost where, you know, nothing, no real bad news came out. And all of the news that has come out seems to be positive in a bunch of different aspects. And it all started, I want to say it was last Sunday when we got the announcement that they had at least a phase one trade deal with China.

When we had a release of the last American living hostage, I believe, kind of started with that as Trump was making the fight over to... And all of the monetary deals, business deals over there in the Middle East. So it's been a pretty good week.

You know, it seems like all of that bad sentiment junk and gunk is now behind us. Now we've got to worry about real things like valuations and P.E. ratios and forward P.E. ratios, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But keep in mind, just about six weeks ago, the S&P was at 4,800. In fact, it was on a Friday that we were down 1,000 points on the Dow, and that's when it bottomed. That was around April the 8th.

$4,800, and here we are closing in on $6,000 again. Okay, that's a 25% move now off of the bottom in the S&P 500. Not quite 25%, but definitely north of 20%. And, you know, we've had a few trade deals. Nothing is finished yet, and there's still a lot more in the works. I see Japan is...

kind of betwixt in between because they have an upcoming election and they don't want to give away the farm. But with Japan, obviously, we want to kind of put tariffs on their cars that they're shipping here. We're buying lots of their cars.

And they are running tariffs on our cars going to Japan. That seems to be the biggest sticking point right now in the trade negotiations between us and Japan. And they've got an election in the way of it all. So that may hold things up. Yesterday, Trump unveiled $14.5 billion agreement with Boeing GE Aerospace Group

and Etihad Airways, which is the big airway in the United Arab Emirates. Have you watched any of that? Can you believe the palace and how beautiful some of those places are in the United Arab Emirates, the UAE, and also in Qatar and also in Saudi Arabia? I mean, it's...

It's pretty opulent, to say the least. Concentrations of wealth kind of can turn into some spectacular feats, right? It's good to be sitting on oil. But you know what? I mean, they have diversified away from oil, but I mean, obviously, that's their lifeblood. I've got to believe that this trip is going to help their tourism industry, too.

You know, the United Arab Emirates has got Dubai in there and Abu Dhabi. Those are some pretty nice countries and some pretty nice places to visit, it looks like. So anyways, he's had a very successful trip. Now, yesterday I saw GE Aerospace blow up to the upside.

That's just the old GE, okay? Not the spinoff. It was the one that everything was spun off from. Look at the chart on GE yesterday, a breakout. So Trump should be getting...

some commission checks soon in the mail from GE and Boeing, right? Well, I mean, I was looking at, did you know, I was doing the math from where we were. We ended the day last Friday. Of course, we had a Besant's meeting over that weekend, and then, of course, we've had this deal-making week.

And the S&P was at 56.60 at the end of the week last week, so up 4.6% since we closed last Friday. So pretty strong week for the market. Yes, yes. And then look what's been added on. You know, that news for Boeing...

That's the biggest order that they've ever received on their wide-body aircraft, a $96 billion order from Qatar. In Oklahoma, the Emirates Global Aluminum will invest to develop $4 billion in primary aluminum smelter project. That's in Oklahoma.

which also includes some rare earth supply chain stuff there. Among other deals in his UAE, United Arab Emirates, ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum, that's Buffett's big holder there, and EOG Resources are partnering with Abu Dhabi National Oil Company,

for expanded oil and gas natural production Raytheon is collaborating with Emirates Global Aluminum and the UAE's Council on a gallium project aimed at securing and stabilizing the United States critical mineral supply chain and Amazon Web Services and the UAE Cyber Security Council have launched a sovereign cloud launchpad to accelerate public cloud services adoption in the United Arab Emirates

And Qualcomm is expanding its global innovation footprint through partnerships with the Arab Emirates, etc., etc., etc. So it was all good. They had their checkbooks open when Trump arrived, that's for sure. Trump's not afraid to open his mouth and make some deals while he's there. So you've got to say it was a pretty successful trip.

Okay, and as I said, Japan's going to hold out for a better U.S. trade deal. They've got a lot of political pressure there right now. They've got to step back and try to work a better deal. Of course, they're lifeblood in Japan. They heavily protect their agricultural industry, very much so. They want to keep foreign competition out to protect their farmers. Protectionism, yes, a lot of other countries employ protectionism on some of their farms.

crown jewel industries but japan the biggest deal there's with the cars right yeah well in japan's gdp fell i know you know point zero nine percent so just basically flat but still um you know so in terms of um in terms of waiting out even though there is political pressure they got a waiting at a deal i don't know how long they can really wait out so

Now, I found this to be interesting. We were talking about Kohl's doing a private offering on their bonds and wondering how much they got to pay. And would you loan Kohl's money? Well, today they're announcing the terms of their private offering, which are due in 2030, five years from now. And, of course, the trajectory of Kohl's right now is belly up.

10%, 10%, you can get a, what is that, a five-year, less than five-year note, maybe a five-year note, I guess, at 10%.

Would you take that deal? I mean, that's a lot of money. There's no way that I would. Remember back in the heart of COVID where we were seeing 10% for Carnival? That one would have worked out good. Yeah, that worked out good. Not cold. No, no way. All right, when we come back, it's been a really good week for NVIDIA also. I want to talk a little bit about that.

and some heavy investing in the chip industry in America taking place. We'll be right back. Here's the second quarter of today's Best Stocks Now show.

If you're in the Cleveland area, we have a lot of listeners there on the station there in Cleveland, which we're happy to be affiliated with. We will be in town Tuesday and Wednesday with a Tuesday night workshop at 7 p.m. at the nice, beautiful Big Marriott there in Warrensville, Ohio.

And, of course, during the day on Tuesday and Wednesday, we're meeting with folks.

that want to meet with us, talk to us about their portfolio, their plans, etc., etc., etc. If you'd like to reserve a spot, call Edie at 855-611-BEST, 855-611-BEST. Things are packed. Yes, and then June 10th, I believe it's June 10th, is Lakewood Ranch.

We're going to do a Tuesday-Wednesday thing down there. And then we're off to Bloomfield, Michigan, I think in July. I'd have to look that up, the exact dates. Okay, Kohl's, 10%. No thanks. NVIDIA plans R&D center in Shanghai to keep its China foothold strong. Okay, I would think that would be good news. And I don't know if the U.S. is backed off at all today.

Remember, our friend Jensen Wang was in the White House last week talking personally with President Trump about chips and China and other subjects.

Jensen Wang is now number 12 in the world, richest people. His company, NVIDIA, is now a $3.3 trillion company. By comparison, Microsoft has just a tiny little lead on NVIDIA right now as the biggest company. Apple is now a distant third, but Jensen Wang is definitely the biggest.

Probably the best tech CEO in the world today, along with Elon Musk, for sure, with all of the things he's got going on. I don't know that I can say that about the guys at Google and Apple and Microsoft right now. But he wants, you know, NVIDIA's had a heck of a week. NVIDIA was cleared down. Here's another one. If you look back...

On Nvidia, it got as low as about $100 per share there, and now it's $135. So it's up 35% from its low. It continues to be our largest position overall by a pretty good margin today.

And demand for NVIDIA's AI chips remain high among major Chinese tech firms like ByteDance and DeepSeek and Tencent and Baidu. China accounts for 14% of NVIDIA's revenue in 2024. He's described the country as a potential $50 billion market in the coming years. So they're going to at least have an R&D center there.

in Shanghai and we'll see if the restrictions are lightened up on those Nvidia chips now another one investing in the United States Taiwan Semiconductor owns a company called Global Wafers

And it's not vanilla wafers. Is that what's in banana pudding? Vanilla wafers. Okay, yeah. Well, you know, banana pudding is kind of a southern thing. I don't see any banana trees around here. I don't know how it became that way. But Global Wafers is looking to boost its investment in the U.S. to 7.5. I mean, we're losing track. I'm sure somebody's keeping a spreadsheet somewhere saying,

on all this investment in the U.S. This is a Taiwan-based semiconductor silicon wafer company. They plan to more than double their investment by $4 billion from a prior commitment, and this is going on in Texas, at their facility in Texas. I believe it's in Sherman, Texas. So more money being spent in the U.S., more factories, more jobs coming to the U.S.,

Apple, on the other hand, he's not going to bow. I know Trump kind of twisted his arm about bringing some of that Apple iPhone fabrication to the U.S., but they're going to keep their iPhone production hubs in India and China. That's according to Wedbush. So I don't know. He may pay a price for that in the way of tariffs at some point. Right now they're carved out, I believe. iPhones are carved out.

on the tariff front. Because right now, China's still at 30%, right? It's at 30% with some carve-outs. Correct. I believe that Apple iPhones fall within that carve-out. Well, you know Los Angeles. I always like to hear some of the things they're doing back there. They're going to have the highest minimum wage of any city in the world, $30 per hour.

Let's see, $30 per hour, that's $250. That's not a bad $80,000 a year. It will be the highest minimum wage in the U.S. The Los Angeles City Council voted 12-3 to clear the plan to raise tourism workers' minimum pay to $30 per hour.

Wow, not bad pay for tourism work. I mean, do they have the margin? I mean, is the tourism margin that big? Well, it's all I know. When I had my office in downtown San Diego for several years in one of the high-rise buildings...

And Wendy's was right across the street from us, and I used to frequent it often for a quick lunch in between stock charts. Of course, the market closed at 1 o'clock on the West Coast. As soon as San Diego raised their minimum wage to, I think, $20 per hour, Wendy's closed down a week later, and McDonald's closed down about six weeks later. So I don't know. You know what? I mean, you crush...

You crush the people that have to all of a sudden, I mean, there's a lot of little 7-Eleven stores and whatnot in downtown areas. And how do you pay somebody $30 an hour, you know, to just ring up Slurpees at the counter? That's a tough deal, but it is Los Angeles. It is California, which very much leans towards a socialistic state.

Baby is given the world's first personalized CRISPR therapy. Now, there's no price tag on this, but it could be a watershed moment. You know, this is the gene therapy. It's currently approved by the FDA to treat sickle cell anemia and a few other things.

But there was a baby that went in with a very rare disease. It's a big breakthrough. It's being hailed in the world of gene editing with the first custom-designed treatment using CRISPR technology. That's a publicly traded company, CRSP.

And that's the name of the technology. I saw the 60 Minutes quite a few years ago. It's, I think, a Taiwan. Either he's Chinese, Taiwanese. Of course, China considers them one and the same. He was talking about the CRISPR. He's kind of the inventor where they take some of your genes out of your body, put them in a test tube, stick a computer into it, and change those genes and then put them back in your body.

But anyways, that is a big breakthrough there in that industry. Okay, when we come back, here's the stock Warren Buffett is really doubling down on. 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. The Instigator

And welcome back here to the second half of today's Best Docs Now show on this Friday. A pretty good week in the markets this week. Certainly a lot different from the weeks leading up to that March 8th bottom.

This is now, no, it was April the 8th bottom. This is now May the 16th. So you're five weeks away from what was some really dark days in the market. You've now got the NASDAQ almost back to 20,000. It's at 19,101. You've got the Dow is up way over 40,000 again. It's at 42,320.

And the Dow got as low as 36,600. So it's up almost 6,000 points from that low. And, of course, the S&P, which got down around 4,800, is almost at 6,000 once again. Where do we go from here? Well...

You know, that's what the newsletter is all about. It comes out every week. I begin work on it. I've already started uploading screenshots from the app and whatnot. Start working on the newsletter to get it out tomorrow as quickly as I can. It'll have my macro outlook. It'll have pretty much the numbers for this first quarter of 2025. Earnings are now in the book. But more importantly, looking ahead.

What is the market expecting for the rest of this year, the last half of this year? And, of course, 2026. The market's really starting to look to 2027, believe it or not. How can it do that? Well, it does.

Those earnings estimates are out there now for the next couple of years on these companies that make up the S&P 500. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway sells Citigroup. I can't blame them there. They cut their Bank of America holdings. I can't blame them there. Their Capital One stake, I can't blame them there. And they increased...

They're holdings in Constellation Brands. That's the stock that has all of those different Modelo or Corona. I don't know all the brands, but there's a lot of them.

in their portfolio, Ballast Point, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's the one that, I don't know. Corona, Modelo. Yeah. They've got a lot. All the seltzers and whatnot.

And the other one, let's see, the other one they're increasing their stake in. They've got a lot of brands. Yep, Verisign, Pool Corp., which is kind of weird that they'd be buying. That's a smaller stock. They held steady with their 300 million shares. He owns $66 billion worth of Apple stock, but he considers Constellation Brands, STZ,

It has a good value right now, and they double their stake in it. A lot of Mexican beers that Constellation has. I guess they're not worried about the tariffs. They're the ones that recently came out with Fresca Mixed, which I guess is Fresca. If it wasn't bad enough, throw some vodka in there. Yeah.

Okay, Microsoft in focus as Europe seeks feedback. They're going after them for antitrust violations. And, you know, that's just, it's constant. It's one, it's constant, constant, constant. The European Commission opening a formal antitrust investigation to look into the matter. Microsoft came under fire when Slack...

now owned by Salesforce, complained in 2020 to the European Commission that Microsoft received an unfair advantage by bundling Office and Teams together. Okay, so like we say, Europe regulates.

Novo Nordisk CEO to step down. That's a surprise. I mean, this is one of the great stocks of the last couple of decades, really, because, I mean, the name is synonymous with diabetes and diabetes drugs.

Did they mention a reason why? Had a curiosity? Well, kind of weird. I don't know. It just says he'll resign as he searches for his successor. He says there's recent market challenges because of competition from Lilly. Jorgensen became the company's CEO who joined Novo in 1991, the CEO in 2017. So he's been in there for eight years now.

And they're looking for his successor. The stock is languishing right now. If you look at that trend in it, it's just been stair-stepping downwards. It's in our value portfolio because it's trading at 14, 15 times forward earnings right now. 15 times forward earnings. And you've got pressure, don't forget, from Trump and the HHS.

RFK Jr. 8 says the GLP weight loss meds, well there's only two, will cost the same as the least expensive country. I'm surprised that Lilly, you know, that cast a pall over Lilly for sure. Lilly's actually bouncing today, maybe because of the woes at Novo Nordisk.

Lily, they're wanting to charge, Govee costs around $100 per month in Germany. That's the lowest priced in the world. That should be the amount that U.S. consumers would pay. Well, I don't know how you figure that out because there's a lot of subsidy there. Those are socialistic countries that, you know, take in big taxes and then dole it back out to the folks.

And, you know, a lot of those drug prices really aren't what they're paying. I don't know how that works. We talked about that yesterday. And I saw Appaloosa, which is David Tepper's hedge fund. He's the owner of the Carolina Panthers. His hedge fund, I don't know. I'm looking at some of the things. He increased his position in UnitedHealthcare. Ouch. That thing continues to just get pummeled.

It's been one thing after another. Two bad stocks are getting together. When two bad stocks get together, does it make for one big bad stock? Usually, that's what happens. Usually, it's a lifeline for one. Cox is getting together with Charter.

I've heard nothing but bad about Charter. It's a cable provider. I remember a few years ago it was listed as one of the most hated companies. Yeah. And Comcast was too for a while. Of course, they changed their name to Xfinity just probably to throw people off the trail. Yeah. So, you know, you diversify by buying another company that's having the same issues you're having.

But I guess the cash flow and everything, there's strength in numbers. WeRide launches their robo-taxi operations in Abu Dhabi in high-demand areas. You know, there's a lot of business going on in that little area of the world. A lot of big execs travel there. A lot of deals are made there in Abu Dhabi. And in that area, obviously, Dubai.

You've got the world's tallest building over there. It really is quite something. It's pretty impressive to watch the news reporters reporting from there. Yeah, and when you have a centrally planned city, right, it's probably easier to, you know, to have some, you know, at least technology or software-wise, right, to have something that will, you know, robo-taxi you around. Yeah. And, you know, there's...

It's a lot more tighter-knit roads and everything else there. Yes, it's not spread out like New York City or something like that. Applied Materials, you know what? It has been really a squishy, soggy company. It was one of really the great stocks that came out of the Silicon Valley market.

With their chip making equipment, they're out of Santa Clara. And it's a $132 billion company. I mean, they still make a very needed product and are a big player in the chip industry. But it's a single-digit grower pretty much these days. Sales growth is 5%, 6%, 7% somewhere in there. It's kind of like Cisco, which was also one of the great companies that come out of the Silicon Valley.

But both of these stocks have seen better days. Applied Materials is down 6.9%. They're kind of the lower end of the semiconductor chain. They're definitely not making the high end equipment that they're making in the Netherlands at ASM Lithography to build those NVIDIA chips.

but they did come out with earnings. It'll be interesting, you know, today, all these guys that count the earnings, there's a couple of them that aggregate all the earnings that come in, and they aggregate all the consensus estimates out there on all of these companies, and they get updated basically every Friday. I look at several of them, and it'll be interesting to see

where we're at right now with this earnings season now almost completely in the books. We'll be right back for the final segment of this week's Best Stocks Now show.

And welcome back here to the final segment of today's Best Stocks Now show. A few other stocks here in the news today of note. Let's look at Kava real fast. Some people have called Kava the next Chipotle brand.

I don't see it myself. I've been there a few times to our local kava. I think it probably does well in college towns and...

And areas like that. But the stock is pretty dull. Yeah, still haven't made it over to that one. It certainly hasn't taken off like Chipotle. No. It was kind of tabbed as the next, you know, Chipotle. And it's like, I don't know if we'll ever see something like Chipotle. Well, it's now one-tenth the size. Chipotle has 3,644 food restaurants in the U.S.,

And Kava has 367. The one that's also taken off again is Wingstop. Wing has been breaking out. They're worldwide with Wingstop.

I'm telling you, growth-wise, I mean, they have blown up. I mean, they continue to open stores. Their only kind of downfall is the fact that they're so tied to chicken prices, and at certain times it squeezes their margins. But, yeah, in terms of opening new stores, it must be easy to crank out one of those. And I remember, you know, look, fads come along in the market, right?

I was talking about this with a friend of mine, one of my neighbors yesterday. But I said I was talking about the new kid in town. That core weave is kind of the new kid in town in the AI sector. But I remember maybe 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago, when Wings became the thing. Buffalo Wild Wings was one of the hottest stocks in the entire market.

BWLD. I mean, every day they were pricing chicken wing prices on the spot. Spot chicken wing prices. Because there were several of them getting in on it, right? And as chicken wings would go up, the stocks for those would come down. It was fascinating. And now most of those, you know, some of them have survived. I see some buffalo wild wings around.

But Wingstop seems to be the one. And then the other big fad, I remember in the early 2000s, the Blue Collar Steakhouses in that Outback had a giant market share of

I had a client that owned an Outback. Yeah, Outback. And what was the other one? Lone Star Steak. And there was a bunch of them. And now they're kind of on the outs. The Lone Star seems to be the survivor because it's owned by Darden Restaurants. So they have some big money there.

Behind them. So, yeah, I see these fads come along. Don't forget your Shake Shack, which you were never truly a huge fan of. No, no. Okay. In terms of the product. It's a tough business, but there has been some big money made in ideas like Chipotle and Outback and others over the years. Okay, the other one that's in the news today, they reported earnings. I don't think they even have a product yet. Nano...

uh nuclear energy nne which is headquartered in uh i'm not sure where it's headquartered looks like new york

And NanoNuclear is a wannabe player in that nuclear renaissance, they call it. It's had a big week. It's had a very big week. And they reported and gave an update. We got a really important update from SMR earlier in the week. But the bottom line is you're looking at 2030 at the earliest to have a product.

That's five years from now. Nano NNE is up 2.3% this morning, but they did give an update on their endeavors trying to get customers and sales and products, which they don't currently have. And then the last one here that I wanted to mention, which is also in the news today with some earnings of their own,

If I can find that. Yeah, there it is. Okay. We also have, I talked about Applied Materials reporting earnings today. A player in the chip sector. Kava, we talked about. Oh, Newsmax. That was the other one. They recently went public. The stock went nuts.

when it came public because of all the hype around it. I mean, this thing went to $300, $350 on day two after going public at $10 a share.

You don't want to buy a stock like this on day two. It's back to 25 now, okay, from 300 down to 25, round trip in six weeks. And I remember them interviewing the CEO, the founder of Newsmax. He was a billionaire. Maybe he still is. I don't know if he owns enough stock. It's now a $3.2 billion company. But they had their first earnings report. They're headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida.

We used to have a show there, but Newsmax's sales, yeah, 45 million versus 40 million last year, so they're up 12 percent. And their earnings, they lose money. They're not profitable yet. But they lost 13 cents last year. This year, last year they lost 39 cents, so they are narrowing the gap.

But it's also Newsmax is in the news today with their first report. As a publicly traded company, it's up 7.1%. Okay, newsletter goes out tomorrow.

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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.