Friday May 2, 2025 - Apple is now a soggy stock
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, Friday the May 2nd. It's the pre-Kentucky Derby Day version of the Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management. And I'm here with Barry Kydar, chartered financial analyst. And we have a full-blown rally taking place. And believe it or not, we have regained almost all the gains from

or all the losses during the tariff fear sell-off in the market, believe it or not. And I'm just going to review the article I wrote at the bottom of that sell-off in a bit. But right now the Dow is up 373 points, which puts it back to 41,125. The S&P 500 is up 59 points. That's a 1% move.

$5,662. And the NASDAQ, despite Amazon and Apple weakness, is up 195. That's 1.1%. That puts the NASDAQ at 17,906. The small caps back above 2,000 on the Russell 2000, it's up 1.32%.

And we've got the bond market I haven't even looked at yet today. We had a good jobs report, depending on which headline you read. I'm going to read a couple of headlines here and show you. There's different takes, one a very negative take. On the same job report. Depending upon the source, right? The 10-year is at 4.27, so it's up a little bit. Gold is up a percent to 3,253.

So welcome to today's Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management. And I'm reading here that Wall Street's eight-day win streak brings it to the cusp of erasing all tariff-related losses. All right, now why do I bring that up? Well, on April the 8th,

published at 5.34 a.m. was the article that I wrote. Only the second article I've written this year. I think the tariffs are going to work. That was at the very bottom of the tariff sell-off. Sentiment was at its lowest. I'm going to wear my shirt all weekend. Someone printed one up for me. It's hashtag BWRA. Bill was right again.

But I'm just going to read one line from that. Well, there's a couple. I'm the guy that said to go all in during the darkest days of COVID in an article that I wrote on March 19th, 2020. Go back to March 19th, 2020.

I tried to remember how dark it was, and then I gave a link to the article. I followed up just eight days later with my, a new bull market has been born. Okay, that's pretty gutsy. I mean, you could be really wrong, you know, and you could look really stupid, and those articles could not age well.

And then I wrote back on December 31st of last year, I said, hey, the NASDAQ's going to be a little choppy. We've got some high valuations. Well, a lot of that valuation...

was taken out but i said now i'm ready to make a another gutsy call the nasdaq is now down almost 20 so far this year and now i'm ready to make another gutsy macro call and then i made the case for a bottom in the market and a rebound in the market uh coming why would you listen to any other guru that's my next shirt uh barry why would you listen to jim kramer

I like your choose your gurus wisely. That's a good one for this. There's some horrible gurus out there. I mean, if you do the opposite of what they say, Mike Wilson and Stanley Kalanovich or whatever his name is, Kalanovich, I would follow Bill Gunderson. That's who I would follow. You can follow me on SeekingAlpha.com.

You can follow me on my radio show every day where I put my neck on the line. I lay it on the desk with the guillotine above it here because you could be really, really wrong. And anyways, here we are with a big rally in the market. We've erased almost all the gains. Now, as far as media coverage goes, unfortunately, most of the media outlets are slanted.

and influenced by their bias. Okay, I've been blamed for having a bias. I just look at the facts. I'm a logical person. And I don't care who produces the plan, what party they come from, but most of your negative bias here, it was horrible. Like the market's going to, the economy's going to collapse. Here's a good example today.

I thought it was a very good jobs report. It was, what, 192,000, something like that? Here's the ABC News. Yeah, 177. The consensus was 130. Okay. This is so stunning. Here's the ABC News headline. You can look it up.

Hiring slowed in April amid turmoil set off by Trump's Liberation Day tariffs. Okay, that's about as negative as you can get.

I would not get my news from ABC News, even if they were slanted the other way. I don't want slanted news. I want the truth. That's all. I want the truth. And the truth is becoming a very precious commodity in the world today because it's very hard to find. Now, MarketWatch, same news.

Same day, within minutes of ABC News, Market Watch says, April jobs report, little sign of damage from tariffs on labor market. Okay, a 180-degree different headline than ABC News. And I just say, shame, why would I ever watch ABC News? Never. Hiring slowed in April. And there's only an 8,000...

Yeah, mid-term oil. There's only 8,000. Yeah, think about this. There's only an 8,000 job difference, 185 in March, right? 177 added in April. So you're talking, what, we're talking 8,000 jobs? And then read that ABC headline one more time. Yes, okay. ABC News, one hour ago, hiring slowed in April amid turmoil set off by Trump's Liberation Day tariffs.

Try to find any positive headline whatsoever. And conversely, try to find a negative headline on the four years of Biden. So you know what? You guys are so... It's so easy to spot what you're doing. It's just horrible. You should really be ashamed of yourself for being...

That's not news. The news is what happened yesterday. Okay, that's news. We don't need opinion pieces. That's for the columnists to do. But somehow they've all become columnists. And someday I'll tell you about my story. With the old dragnet? Yeah, just the facts, ma'am. Just the facts, ma'am. Okay, now, it would appear at this point in time

Even though I have my issues with Donald Trump myself, I have my issues with, you know, the way he treats people and calling people morons and this and that. His policies, the tariffs seem to be working. Last night as I was getting ready for bed, I saw a headline. China says it's assessing U.S. initiative on trade talks.

Okay, China is evaluating proposals by the United States for tariff negotiations aimed at resolving the trade war that has unsettled financial markets, but it wants Washington to show sincerity. Okay, China currently has 145% tariffs slapped on their goods earlier this year,

prompting Beijing to impose retaliatory levies of 125%. In the meantime, ships in our harbor are not being unloaded. They're sitting there. There's only three ships in the harbor. There's usually six to eight ships, and something's got to give. Now, this may be pushing things here. It is called, okay, we're calling this de minimis exemption ends.

Ends today. The e-commerce players and shippers brace for impact. In other words, D-Day has come here. The de minimis trade loophole, which allowed duty-free access for cheap shipments from China and Hong Kong, has ended with e-commerce players and the shipping industry basing for potential disruption.

the provision allowed shipments worth $800 or less to avoid the U.S. duties. Now,

Most Chinese shipments will be subject to the new 145% tariff plus other levies based on the product. So what they've been doing in the background, Barry, they didn't have enough inspectors to go through all these little boxes under $800, you know, of artificial flowers and little parts for model trains. And anything could be in there, by the way. Oh, man. So now they're geared up. They're ready to go.

You know, and Chinese discounters like Shine and PDD and Timu are now going to be hit with that tariff starting today. The de minimis loophole ended and the inspectors are ready. That's pushing China to the bargaining table. We'll be right back. Whoa!

And welcome back here to the second quarter of today's Best Docs Now show. The Asia markets are surging on China's U.S. trade talk signals today.

FXI is the ETF I look at there for China. It's up 2.8%. And you know what? Look, we've got the leverage over China. There's no question about it. Scott Besson was right. He said, you know, what we're doing to China, it's unsustainable for them. Something has to give. And it finally is starting to crack. And I think because there's a...

you know, a deadline here. Now they're going to start adding that tariff to everything that's unloaded from China going forward. I don't know if you watched the... I watched Brett Baer. I like Brett Baer from 6 to 7 p.m. because it's basically the old just the news, folks. Okay, here's the news. Did you see where it was from last night, Barry? It was from Hugie, South Carolina, which is basically...

Our backyard, that's where the Nucor steel plant. And guess who was there yesterday? Yeah, which is spelled, by the way. I was wondering, that was where J.D. Vance went, right? Yes, I mean, his motorcade went right down Clemens Ferry Road yesterday.

And showed up there and was interviewed by Brett Baer. And, of course, they entered into the U.S. Steel with their hard hats on. I have two people at our church that I go to church with that work for U.S. Steel. Not U.S. Steel, Nucor. Nucor. One's retired from Nucor. He was there for like 35 years.

He retires, he builds a machine shop. Okay, I guess he just can't get away from it. And then the other guy I know is kind of an executive there at Nucor. You know, when you think about it, your steel industry is pretty important. Look around the world and how much is made of steel. I mean, when you go over the Ravenel Bridge and you see the...

the freighters coming in and out and the Navy ships and the warships and the roads and the girders and the railroads. I mean, steal your armaments, your battleships.

It goes on and on and on. Airlines, I mean. Driver of Industrial Revolution. Yes, and I think obviously there's a very big emphasis on the blue-collar guy from this current administration. Even though, you know, Biden said he was out for the little guy and looking for the working man and this and that. But J.D. Vance was there yesterday with his hard hat on. Brett Baer does not look good in a hard hat. Most people don't. I don't look good in a hard hat either.

but they were there just a few miles from our home here in Hugie, South Carolina, at the Nucor plant, and they interviewed the Nucor CEO. And that's H-U-G-E-R. Yes, E-R. How do you get Hugie out of that? I don't know. Right. It must be the British way of pronouncing that. I'm going to go drive by that plant here in the next few days just to see where everybody was. It looked like there was a big locomotive or something.

It's kind of blurry in the background. Okay, who's the elephant in China? Huawei. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wang discussed concerns about Huawei technology growing AI prowess with U.S. lawmakers.

Wang met the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee where these concerns were shared. The discussions included talks on Huawei's AI chips and how restrictions on NVIDIA's chips could make Huawei's chips more competitive.

Well, Huawei has already taken away the mobile phone market in China from Apple, and that's why Apple is moving everything to India. They're pulling out of China, basically, is Apple. And Apple is going to move their chip making. They're going to make billions of dollars worth of chips. Guess where, Barry? In the U.S.,

I mean, there's more evidence that the tariffs are pushing jobs and manufacturing. And I'm not talking trinkets. Chips, okay? And they're going to really put the heat on Taiwan Semiconductor on the Arizona plant. That's where Apple wants their chips built.

And there's more results coming from the trade war that's taking place. It is pushing. But Wang, especially China, right? Yes, and the amount of investment is up to a trillion dollars, I think.

Well, I mean, you saw something that's at $8 trillion over a handful of years because you had, I think, $500 billion announced by Taiwan Semi maybe a month and a half ago. And you keep adding these numbers up, and we're not talking...

you know, $5 billion. They're talking, you know, $500 billion. I saw where Intel was going to invest. I think they're trying to invest $125 billion. And then I looked at their market cap, and I think their market cap was like $150 billion. I'm like, how do you invest $125 if you're only worth $150? But, you know, but you've got some serious, I mean, it's kicking off some serious investment, or at least saying that people are going to invest, right, in terms of what they're announcing.

So anyways, this is good that Wang is giving them boots on the ground details of what is going on. I think he doesn't want the chip restriction. I think he wants to be able to sell the NVIDIA chips to China. But he says by far that their most formidable company in China is Huawei.

And, of course, you know, Huawei was kicked out of the U.S., if you remember. Huawei was selling their phones at Best Buy. And Huawei had a spokesman, an American guy that worked as the spokesman for Huawei. And he would go on, no, we're not putting espionage chips in the phones, etc.,

But apparently they were, and Huawei, you cannot buy Huawei phones anymore. So what did Huawei do? I mean, they've really made their phones a lot better. You know, when you make the phones in China at an Apple plant or at Foxconn, I'm sure you learn all the secrets and can reverse engineer everything. So anyways, it's sticky business right now. Trump says countries that buy Iran's oil won't be allowed to do business with the U.S.,

So go ahead, buy some Iranian oil. You will not be allowed to do business with the U.S. It appears that a deal with Iran is coming to fruition, a nuclear deal. He calls it something part two, new and improved or something like that. And oil prices, $58 a barrel right now. It got down to $56 a barrel.

uh let's see we got uh apple okay apple is the elephant in the room two of them well amazon's always the m it's the amazon in the room those two companies have reported earnings and you know what apple i'm just sorry they're i'm sorry they're not coming up with anything new they've lost their innovation and apple is down 3.1 percent

After a very soggy report. Has Apple become a soggy company? Absolutely, yes. I mean, it's not as soggy as Kimberly-Clark. But here's their quarter that they presented. You can't hide behind the numbers. Their sales were up 5%.

Year over year, 5%. I mean, those are Johnson & Johnson-like numbers, and their earnings were up a measly 8%. You now have a single-digit grower in Apple who just lacks the innovation these days under the Cook regime. 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 GuntersonCapital.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. Instigate, because there's something in you.

We've got to get together sooner or later. And welcome back here to the second half of today's Best Stocks Now show. Well, we've got a lot of earnings in the books after this week. I just look at the headlines of every earnings report during the week, early in the morning before the market begins.

when I can think straight, and there's been a lot. There's been a lot of earnings. I would guess we're up to about 75% of the companies. The one takeaway for sure is the fear of the tariff impact was way overblown, and that's one of the reasons why you've seen the market come storming back as these earnings reports have come in.

One by one, you know, most of the companies have said, as of now, we see very little impact from the tariffs on our particular business. Now, yes, there have been some that are in the direct line, especially if they offshore in China and bring it here, if it's an important thing like Apple iPhones, they're getting a pass. But if it's a lot of the trinkets and whatnot...

and smaller stuff, you know, they're in the direct line. But that's by far the minority of companies. I've looked at the headlines of every earnings report this week, and I would say maybe 10% are saying, you know, we think it's going to have a material impact on our business. That's just my own, you know, I haven't documented it. I haven't kept track. That's just my own take.

And you're seeing it show up in the markets here with getting back to almost where they were before, you know, at the bottom of the, where they were before the tariff fears. The tariff fears really began, it wasn't Liberation Day, it was before Liberation Day. Liberation Day was exactly one month ago, right? And I think if you go from Liberation Day, which was April 2nd,

to May 2nd, I think we're at least back to where we were then. But the markets did. I think we're back to where we started. Yeah, but before that, we were down just on the fear. There was one, it was when he actually imposed the tariffs, right? Oh, yeah, it was when he had Canada. It was kind of the Canada-Mexico kind of spat. That's when it started. And that's, I mean...

When he was elected, the markets went on a run that was way overblown to the upside, okay?

And the market seemed to have forgot that part of what he ran on was tariffs. I mean, that was probably that and the border were probably the two biggest things that he ran on. And the market just seemed to discount the whole tariff thing. And then they seemed to be caught by surprise when he actually started to announce the tariffs, starting with Canada and Mexico, which is kind of strange. I mean...

Yeah, well, that was the fentanyl. I'll tell you what he was mad about. It was the fentanyl.

And them allowing that fentanyl and killing, you know, 100,000 people, more than 100,000, 200,000 people. And that's why he began there, and that's when the market started selling off. Okay, back to Apple. Apple, a member of the Dow. Apple, a member of the S&P 500. It fits right in the Dow right now because the Dow is full of a lot of soggy stocks. And Apple has now become a soggy stock.

They declared a dividend. Okay, yes, it's a dividend payer. Their earnings of $1.65 beat by 3 cents. Revenue beat by $840 million. But at the end of the day, you've got a single-digit grower in Apple.

these days but you know look you can't knock what it's done it's 2.8 let's see apple's market cap right now a a p l the market cap is 3.1 billion trillion 3.1 trillion and that compares with microsoft 3.1 trillion microsoft is 3.2 trillion

So there's your Trojan dollar babies. And I don't think NVIDIA is $3 trillion anymore. NVIDIA is $2.8 trillion.

I saw a stat where yesterday you had, I think it was yesterday alone, $8 trillion worth of companies in the S&P 500 reported. Of course, $3 trillion of that was Apple. Yes. Now, at the same time, Apple said they're going to source billions of dollars worth of U.S.-made chips in a supply chain shift.

So if you want to see evidence, I mean, Besant said it. He said, watch what the companies do. What has Apple done this year? Apple has moved all of their production of iPhones out of China. Obviously, China's been the biggest violator of dumping stuff on the market, counterfeiting, whatever the case may be.

violating patents, copyrights, etc., etc., etc. And so they're taking the brunt of this tariff war. And I think really the tariff war is aimed at China mostly. Look at the tariff on China, 140%. And so Apple not only has moved their production out of China,

They're sourcing, okay, the supply chain. They're moving it in a big supply chain shift. They're going to source billions of dollars worth of U.S.-made chips in supply chain shifts. So I would just say that's a piece of evidence that the media doesn't want to admit that is working in the favor of the United States against the rest of the world. Now, Amazon's caught up in it.

They talk up AI potential on their earnings call. But listen to this. They point to limited tariff impact so far. We'll see what happens today. Now, it's going to be interesting when you log on to – I'm sure they're still carrying a lot of inventory that's not tariff impacted. But you're going to start seeing it on Amazon's website today.

And Timu. I've bought a few things from Timu. I haven't been too happy with it. It takes forever to get, and the quality is garbage. I mean, if that's what you're looking for, I mean, you get the bottom price, that's for sure. But we'll see how this all affects Amazon. Of course, they've seen a lot of front running at Amazon, getting ahead of it before the tariffs hit.

But let's just take a look at Amazon's quarter here. I think if they didn't have the AWS, I think it would be a soggy stock by now, really. Amazon sales were up 9%. I want to say that's their first single-digit earnings or sales growth. I can't ever remember a single-digit number from Amazon.

But their earnings were up 62% year over year. That's a pretty healthy jump in earnings. Right, especially based off that revenue number. Yeah, and it's the front running. It's the front running. I think they're going to have a pretty rough quarter coming up because now the front running is over. The inventory has shifted to people's homes that have gotten ahead of all of this.

Amazon stock is up three-quarters of a percent right now. And we backed out of Amazon stock. We own it in our value portfolio, the relative value. Amazon has had a forward PE average of about 35 over the years, 30 to 35 percent.

And it's currently trading at quite a discount to that. It's trading at, let's see, 188 divided by 7. It's trading at about 25 times forward earnings. So we own it in our relative value portfolio, which, by the way, is off to a very good start. That's my favorite portfolio.

Amazon talks up AI potential, but look at the bottom line. It's a pretty sluggish report from Amazon. Now we get to big oil. This is not a good place to be invested right now. Oil and gas is not a good place to be invested right now. The product that they produce costs a lot of money to get out of the ground and get it to the refineries.

And, you know, oil's selling at $58 per barrel right now. That's a big negative for the oil and gas patch. ExxonMobil, their earnings down 33% year over year, and their sales down 1%. And it is also in the Dow, a soggy Dow stock.

They pay a dividend of 3.75%, but the Spring Texas headquartered company, ExxonMobil, just not a very good investment these days. Now, you could call it a pure value, not a relative value stock. It's always traded at a low P.E. Its P.E. is currently 6, and that's about where it belongs, to be honest. So anyways, we don't own it.

trading at a forward P of 13, and that's about right where it belongs. So it doesn't make sense from a relative value basis, does Exxon. Okay, when we come back, a lot more reports that I want to go through, some good, some bad. We'll be right back. You've got to go.

And welcome back here to the final segment of today's Best Stocks Now show. We talked about ExxonMobil. How about Shell and Chevron? They're both in that same business, that same industry. Shell is up 2.9%.

It's based out of the U.K. I just don't think that's a very good place to be invested right now, the oil and gas sector, because of the price of the commodity that they sell. And it doesn't look like world demand, worldwide demand. Now, if U.S. and China could get a trade deal, Barry, that could set the world economy on fire very quickly.

And get Chinese factories really up and running again. I've got to believe that things are kind of coming. I would say the weakness in oil. Don't you think a lot of the Chinese factories are kind of grinding to a halt right now? You can't afford to produce inventory that's not going to sell, right? Right.

Yeah, I mean, that's what I said yesterday, where, I mean, we're at a point where it seems like a deal needs to get made or will get made, whether it's China's potentially slowing down on the factory side or at some point, right, we may have some empty shelves on this end, right? So there's a deal to be made. It's just...

When do we get there? Is that a big motivating factor for us to get a deal, to start to see the stuff at Home Depot and Lowe's? How many of the things, you open a box and it says, made in China.

The inventory is going to start drying up on the shelves. And of course in China, however, they're having to shut down the factories and stop production of things because they can't afford to have inventory piling up that they're not going to sell.

So, anyways, I think oil demand will come back if there's a deal made. Magna International is an interesting one to look at. They're a Canadian. They provide a lot of parts to the auto. They build a lot of parts for the auto manufacturers. They're headquartered in Ontario, Canada. That stock is down 2.9%. They give an update on their mitigation, tariff mitigation plans.

And that's another one that we still don't have a deal with is Canada.

And Canada's biggest thing, obviously, their oil, their timber, wood, and I would say also the auto manufacturing. They have a big part of the manufacturing that obviously Trump would like to bring that back to the U.S. on our side of the border. Windy slashes guidance. Now, this isn't a tariff thing. They call it the current consumer environment.

And I would just say, you know, we saw the same thing at McDonald's. We saw the same thing at Domino's Pizza. There's more competition for your dollar out there with DoorDash. That's the fastest growing restaurant company in the world is DoorDash and Uber Eats because they're involved with all of them. And in the meantime, a company like Wendy's is being hurt by,

by all of the competition out there, not a good area to be invested in. Chipotle, Wendy's, McDonald's, the fast food restaurants right now. Let's see, here's another one, Reddit. Reddit had a very good report. We owned Reddit for a while, then it just got slammed during the sell-off, and I backed out of it.

Sold it at $169.82. From there, it went down to $80. It got cut in half after we sold it for a 15% loss. You know, you have to mitigate...

You have to have some kind of a, you know, once in a while one will get away from you where it's like an overnight thing. It goes down 48%. That happens. That happens in the market. The mitigation against that, the mitigation against that is diversification.

You never want one position to be too big in your overall portfolio. You can't own one stock at a time unless, you know, you're owning some great big company. You work for Home Depot or Costco. Costco's been a good one stock if you were going to own one stock. But Reddit had a good report of 2.2%. And I talked to a guy. He's worked for Costco for over 30 years. He's done real well.

with all his options and his 401k and everything like that. Not bad at all. Here's the disaster of the day. And let's remember that this is the guy that used to own Twitter. This is Dorsey's Square.

That is another area with tons of competition. Point of sale software. Payments. Payments. The competition is just unbelievable.

And Block, you know, has so much competition. That stock is down 21.6%. Now, Dorsey's done all right. I mean, he sold out to Musk at a very high price, walked away. He started Twitter, which was a game changer. Twitter was a very disruptive company in the way we communicate, give you access to big stars and whatnot, follow what they're saying, etc.,

Of course, Trump used it heavily during his first presidency. That may have costed him the next four years because he didn't come away looking real good with some of the tweets he sent out. Now you've got Elon Musk at the helm of that company, but Block is just getting destroyed today, down 21%.

Okay, another one is Duolingo. That's been a very good growth stock here recently. It's not cheap, but it's a growth stock. It's used in the high schools. It's used in the colleges. It's the number one software for learning languages. Duolingo, D-U-O-L, is up 14.7% today. Phenomenal growth.

phenomenal growth there for Duolingo their sales up 26% their earnings up 38% and I think we are out of time we are out of time now

That trip to Cleveland, just three weeks out right now, and that's filling up the workshop and the appointments during the day. You can make a reservation for the workshop or to meet with the team in person, the same one you hear here on the radio at 855-611-BEST, 855-611-BEST.

To get a four-week trial to the newsletter, the app, all of the messages I send out during the day, including the buys and sells I make in each of the six portfolios, go to GundersenCapital.com. GundersenCapital.com. 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.