Monday June 16, 2025 - Raising my S&P 500 target price
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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. Hey.

And welcome to the Monday morning. It's Monday, June the 16th, and we have got a rally underway. This is Bill Gunderson. It's the Best Stocks Now show.

And I'm here with Jeff Webster, who will be joining us here after we get through these numbers. The Dow right now is up, well, 1.1%. Not too bad to start a new week. And, of course, the quarter ends here two weeks from today. The Dow's up 447 points right now. What gives? The NASDAQ is up 255. It's up 1.3%.

S&P 500 is up 64%. That works out to 1.1%. And even the small caps are up here today having a good day. They're up 92 basis points. The bond market is basically flat. The 10-year is at 4.43%.

Oil is starting to back down big time. It's down 3.5%. That's good news. Oil is down to $70.43 this morning. And, of course, with the big move up in stocks, you're going to get a move down in gold, and that's exactly what's happening here. They tend to work in opposite directions these days, gold working more as a hedge.

On the scary days in the market, gold is down 1.37% right now. And last but not least, Bitcoin, poor old Bitcoin. No, it's up 1,700 today to 107,188. So welcome to today's Best Stocks Now show. I'm your Bill Gunderson, President of Gunderson Capital Management.

And I'm here with Jeff Webster and the whole team headed down to Florida today. I'm leaving here right after the show, probably. Barry, too, leaving after the show. Jeff later today. We'll all be there tomorrow meeting with folks. And the workshop tomorrow night at 7 p.m. at the Evan Hotel, evenhotel.com.

How do they answer their phones, Jeff? Have you called them? I have not called them. I don't know if it's Even or Evan. I'll find out when I get there, when I pay my bill. That's right. When they hand me my bill. Here's your bill, Mr. Gunderson, for the Evan Hotel for your stay and all the facilities that you use. But I love going down there. It's going to be a fun trip. Jeff, you know, look, I have to come to the conclusion of a couple of things.

And number one, as I did my macro outlook in the newsletter Saturday morning, I found that earnings estimates for 2026 and 2027 had gone up.

fairly significantly. Not a lot, but enough to matter. And, you know, I think the market, when all of this happened, number one, they expected tariffs to cut into earnings, obviously, because we had the big swoon in March. And then the war breaks out between Iran and Israel. And you're thinking, what impact will that have? Well, I would just say that with the action in the market today,

This is my conclusion for now. Number one, the tariffs are not having any impact yet. They haven't shown up yet. They certainly haven't shown up in inflation yet. CPI numbers continue to be benign. PPI numbers continue to be benign. And the market continues to behave well. And the earnings estimates for 2026 and 2027, defying all the bears out there,

and all the negative tariff talk, they've gone up. And so I raised my S&P 500 target price. I'm just a numbers guy, mathematician, not biased towards the market, definitely not a perma bull or a perma bear. I go by the numbers. And number two, I've got to come to the conclusion, and I weighed this out in my mind over the weekend and pondered it greatly, what impact will the war in the Middle East have

on uh the markets and on the u.s economy i have to come to the conclusion and i think the market has come to the conclusion also that it's going to have very little impact on u.s earnings what say you uh jeff what are your observations of this well terrific start to the market today yes so first of all happy monday bill i hope you and all of our our fathers out there had a great uh

Great weekend, you know. Yeah. Had an opportunity to grill something on the barbie, smoke something on the grill, and enjoy some time with family. But, I mean, my take on the whole situation was, you know, how big of an escalation is this going to be? Is this a very short conflict? Is this going to turn into a war situation?

I think the market's reading this right now as a conflict as opposed to a war. Who knows? I mean, we could get news at any moment that something changes, and it'll be interesting to see how things play out. But certainly the market right now is saying, you know what, we're not too worried about it. In fact, it's business as usual, and...

Let's do goodness out here. I just find it amazing how the market is able to shrug things off. And you know what does it? It's the earnings that do it. I mean, when the earnings go up, expectations go up, how can the market be chewing its fingernails and worried about a recession and worried about a market big sell-off?

when the earnings expectations have actually gone up. I think for an escalation to happen, you'd have to get more countries involved. And I think the market looks at this and says, you know, Iran really has no defense. They've inflicted some damage, yes, in Tel Aviv. But overall, I mean, they don't have much left. Hezbollah's gone. Hamas is gone.

Who knows? Maybe the Ayatollah will be gone before this is all over, even though, like you say, Trump did not endorse that. But, of course, if Israel wants to take him out, they'll take him out. So anyways, oil prices are settling down and the markets move on. They move on through COVID. Why? Because of earnings. They moved on through the tariff war. Why? Because of earnings. Earnings were never impacted.

And that just goes back to one of the biggest lessons I've learned over the years. And as I pass my knowledge on someday to the next generation of money managers that follow in my footsteps, I'm going to say follow the earnings, boys and girls. That's where it's at. Those are the breadcrumbs that are left behind by these S&P 500 companies today.

And you can fret over all you want to fret about in the markets. And at the end of the day, on Friday evening, Saturday morning, I focus, the focus returns to earnings. And that's driven me since 2009 as earnings have been going up since then. Now, at some point in time, those breadcrumbs, Jeff, are going to come to a halt and they're going to start going the other way.

as earnings estimates start to be whittled away at and be lowered. But that has not happened. I mean, we had a brief spell of that during COVID. It didn't last very long. We had a little spell of that during the tariff wars. And I would also say this about the tariff wars, okay?

Like I say, they're not showing up in inflation yet. Will they? Maybe. Down the road. China's at 30%. We buy a lot of Chinese goods. Prices are going up on Chinese goods. Maybe people will buy less Chinese goods. I don't know. But not showing up in inflation yet.

I think, Bill, it's also a testament to the resilience of these companies. I mean, there's a reason they're called the best stocks. Yeah. Because they're the best companies. They're run by very, very smart people that are resilient, they

They have teams that help them adapt their strategies. And, you know, it may be a bump in the road for a quarter or two, but most of these organizations are able to pivot and

and make changes that are appealing to the capital markets out there. 100%. And, you know, I would say that most financial managers don't pivot and don't adapt to the circumstances.

money managers they do the same thing no matter what the circumstances are I would just say that the CEO said a pretty good example they are in no means passive did you ever work for any passive managers in the software business job I'll bet you didn't they're pretty yeah way they have to be active they have to keep the momentum going and when the markets in the economy zigs a little bit they better zig with it or they're going to get zagged that's the way I look at things

And that's the way I look at money management also. And, of course, I'll be talking about this and a whole lot more tomorrow evening at 7 p.m. in Lakewood Ranch at the Evan Hotel. Edie, I'm sure, is traveling at some point here today, but she can be reached, if not her. Jennifer at 855-611-BEST to reserve a spot, 855-611-BEST.

6-11 Best. I don't know where we stand on the appointment calendar. I haven't even looked. I've been so busy. But you can call and see if there's a private meeting available with us on Tuesday and Wednesday between the hours of 7 and 7, a one-hour meeting with the team at 855-611-BEST. We'll be right back, and we're going to dig into this market a little bit more. We'll be right back.

And welcome back here to the second quarter of today's Best Docs Now show. Well, I flipped through a few charts here today so far. A couple of them really jump off the page quickly.

And I know you're going to like one of them, Jeff. The first one that jumped off the page is AMD. Man, that thing has turned around. We added it to the relative value portfolio a few weeks back or maybe a month ago, something like that.

And it's certainly headed in the right direction right now. It seems to have shrugged off the China restrictions, which according to Jensen Wang, those restrictions are not coming off. So they're just going to have to live with it. And in the meantime, China races towards an NVIDIA chip of their own through Huawei. They're not there yet. They're a generation behind China.

But, obviously, they're playing catch-up. And ARCIT, look at ARQQ today. I just came to that one. I'm going through my charts in alphabetical order. It's up 23% today. What the heck? Unbelievable. The quantums today are, again, you never know what's going to happen each morning with their, you know,

Up as well, 16%. So not sure what's happening in their realm. I think I saw something about Jim Cramer indicating that maybe we should pay attention to a couple of those. I don't know how much money you can put on that opinion. Well, that makes me a lot more bearish on him now. I was just getting excited. You know, me and Jim Cramer. Well, you know, actually, Jensen Wang turned around.

and did about face and said we've reached an inflection point after he crushed the sector. I'd still be in the sector had it not been for that 55% crushing overnight by Jensen Wang several months ago when he said, oh, they're years away from quantum. Now he says, no, we're at an inflection point. Thanks a lot, Jensen. And, you know, he scared me out of the quantum stocks. They don't have much.

Yeah, ARQQ, I was going to say, they're good because they're very specific on an application as it relates to cybersecurity. And a lot of these others are more platform-oriented. ARQQ tends to be a little more vertically oriented towards helping people

organizations with cyber security. Okay. All right. So they're a little more specific. The one I like, I think, is probably maybe the best in the class is QUBS, isn't it? Is it QUBS or QUBTS? There's QUBT and then QBTS, which I believe is...

That's D-Wave. That's the one I like. It's up 7.7 today. But the other one, QUBT, is up 17% today. So maybe you just put a little bit in all three of them or all four of them and just look at them a couple years from now. I don't know. There seems to be something there. Now, looking at the Israeli stocks, they haven't been hurt whatsoever, even though Israel is under constant barrage today.

from missiles, you would think at some point Iran is going to exhaust their supply of cruise missiles. I hear that they're getting them from China is what I hear is where their missiles are coming from. And they seem to have an endless supply. But getting through that Iron Dome there,

It is no easy trick there. They get about 97% of all the missiles fired at them. Nuclear talks collapse, well, obviously. And, you know, I was looking. I've done a lot of reading about Iran over the weekend. Talked to somebody who actually had a lot of dealings with Iranian people over the last couple of years. They do not like their leadership.

They would like to see a regime change, the people in Iran. But they're afraid, obviously, because it's a crushing, brutal regime. And whether or not we see it. And I didn't realize this. I was told by this young man that the Ayatollahs actually was born in India. He's not even an Iranian, you know, born in Iran. And somehow, I mean, they came to power here.

when the Shah of Iran fell, and they've ruled with an iron fist ever since. So we'll just have to see what happens. Nature, you know, people are going to have to determine. I think that's why Trump, I think Trump has the belief that countries should determine who their leaders are, that we shouldn't be involved in regime change and whatnot. But there is a lot of backlash out there. I see that France...

They closed the Israeli company booths at the Paris air show. Said, hey, you guys are welcome here.

Told them to get out. Okay, over to China. China's retail sales fastest in a year. I find this to be interesting because it was our guy here in Charleston, the Treasury Secretary. Give me his name. Scott Besson. Yeah, Besson said. Scott Besson. Yeah, he said that, you know, China needs to become more of a consuming nation, which the U.S. is.

and less of a manufacturing nation, and the U.S. needs to become less of a consuming nation and more of a manufacturing nation.

And I find it interesting that China's retail sales are the fastest in a year as their consumption. Maybe they're consuming some of these products that we're not buying anymore. I don't know. But their jobless rate also dipped. I just got to believe that China is going to be hurt on the world stage. That 30% tariff. In the meantime, you know, everybody's shifting their manufacturing to Vietnam, which is 10%.

and to India, which is 10%. And I'm reading this morning that they're very close to a deal with Europe to a flat 10% tariff across the board on all goods coming out of Europe. A couple things come to mind there. Number one, we're penalizing China, obviously, quite a bit with the 30% tariff. It's going to show up in China's economy.

Now, 25% of that is the, maybe 20%, is the fentanyl. So I'm thinking maybe that one could be whittled down if they can prove to us that the fentanyl thing is under control. But the other thing that comes to mind, Jeff, we're going to collect a heck of a lot of tariff money into the U.S. coffers, and I think that was Trump's goal all along was,

I mean, 30% from all Chinese sales, 10% from Vietnam, 10% from India. That adds up. You know, 10% from Europe. That's the cost of doing business. And, of course, the U.S. Treasury is going to keep that entire 10%. Now, it's born that cost is spread out amongst the manufacturer.

The importers that import the goods, the sellers that sell the goods, and the consumer. And, you know, I think you're going to eventually see maybe a trillion dollars a year coming in in tariffs. I mean, you'd have to do the math on the amount of sales we do with these countries and put some kind of number to that. But a trillion, even half a trillion in tariffs,

That's going to at least help, help somewhat with this massive debt that we carry and also help to balance the annual budget. Well, when we come back, it's Fed Week again. What is the Fed going to do and what do they think of Trump's economic policies?

Don't know that they like them very much. 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

The instigator, because there's something in it. We've got to get together sooner or later. And on the back here to the second half of today's Best Docs Now show, I did notice one other nice breakout chart here today. BEP, B-E-P.

which is Brookfield Renewable Energy, and that's the one that owns 51% of Westinghouse. And, of course, Westinghouse has a lot of exposure to nuclear power plants.

So that one breaking out too. Okay, let's see. We've got the Fed meeting. Oh, boy. There's not enough going on in the world right now. You know, my wife and I every morning, what's not in the news today? There's just so much news coming at us from all different places.

And the Fed will meet Tuesday. They'll announce their decision on Wednesday. They obviously do not like the tariff policy, even though it seems to be working. I made the bold claim in my article back on March 8th at the bottom of the market. I said, I think the tariffs are going to end up working.

And I think so far, I mean, it's pretty hard to make an argument that they're not. The market is roaring back. The coffers are being filled with tariff money. The agreements have been made with most of the countries out there. It looks like it's going to be pretty much 10% across the board, except for...

China, which is 30, and that seems to be movable under some conditions. I haven't heard Canada and Mexico yet. I don't know where we're at on that. But, I mean, the market's working. What can I say? And earnings estimates are going up for 2026 and 2027. That's the bottom line. We are looking at probably the Fed doing nothing this week.

I don't think Jerome Powell likes Donald Trump. I don't think Donald Trump likes Jerome Powell. Most presidents don't like the Fed chairman. And I do think that when Powell's term is up, I would say Scott Besson is the number one, if he's interested in the job. That's a powerful job. When you look back on time, you know, Jeff, you had...

You had Volcker, who was a major force during the Reagan years in getting rid of inflation and putting us into a recession to get inflation down. You had Alan Greenspan, who was a very powerful man. You had Ben Bernanke, who worked us through the 08-09 recovery with the TARP funds and everything like that. And then, of course, since then, we've had Jerome Powell.

as our secretary and i do think besant would be a a major candidate for that job which pretty big job as it relates yeah influencing uh the world and trade and the economy and all this and that apple could face new charges in the eu this is all the eu does it seems to me they regulate

They penalize, they fine, and they collect fines. This is over Apple's App Store rules. Okay, their rules. And, of course, constantly, if it's not Google, it's Apple. If it's not Apple, it's Meta. If it's not Meta, it's Amazon.

forking over a fine to the EU for something or another. They don't like the rule that you have to make an appointment to go see them or something like that? I wonder what rule they have a problem with. If you want to open a business in Europe, it's just mind-boggling, the red tape and the paperwork and everything. But they say that they're changing their ways because they realize that

Their economy is growing by about a half a percent a year. And restrictions and regulations is one of the reasons why. But whether they're changing or not, I don't know. Their numbers aren't changing. Their GDP remains very, very, very sluggish. Estee Lauder Chairman Emeritus Leonard Lauder.

who took the brand global, dies at the age of 92 years old. That stock, that's a company that is trying to make a comeback. And, you know, they're trying to get YouTube influencers like the others have done. They're trying to become more current. It's thought of as an old ladies brand.

But he did die over the weekend. Corweave in focus as Bank of America downgrades on valuation. There's no way you can justify the current valuation of Corweave. We own Corweave, but I did cut my position in half.

Just for sanity's sake, I took our cost out is basically what I did. What we have left is total gravy because we were up more than 100% on it. This thing just went public in April. It was $33,000 and now it's $155,000. From what I understand, there's another one out there called Databricks.

That is a very hot private company. But CoreWeave is the number one, whatever Databricks does, it's data warehousing. Yeah, Databricks would be very comparable to a stock that we like called Snowflake. Yes, exactly. They're their competitor. They're going to provide data management, data warehousing, data analytics, data

I know a number of people that work for Databricks, good companies, still privately held. So, you know, no one can take any kind of positions unless you're, you know, doing something in the private markets with them right now. But certainly one to watch here today.

At some point in time, I think they will go public. But like you say, I mean, Snowflake is already public. And when I read that, that Snowflake competes, Databricks' main competitor is Snowflake.

I said, you know, I've got to look at Snowflake again. It's definitely a lot cheaper than CoreWeave is. Snowflake's just been a little bit sluggish in their earnings growth. They're kind of just turning the corner, really, to profitability. I don't know. Is that...

Data warehousing and all that, is that a high-end, high-margin business, or is that more of a lower-end, lower-margin business? No, it's absolutely a high-end business there. Think about it, Bill. All the different data sources that you go through to pull together a report and

You know, again, it falls back to AI. It falls back to quantum computing. It takes a lot of horsepower. And these data warehouses allow you to go out and slice and dice data

And when someone needs to go out and get an answer from their various databases, those are the systems that allow that outcome to be delivered much, much quicker. Well, I think the market definitely agrees that this is a high-end margin business. Snowflake's trading at 226 times earnings. 226. Yeah.

What about our friends in the micro-nuke business? I mean, micro-nukes are way up. I mean, Nano, SMR, Oclo. You know, I haven't even gotten to them yet because they're later on in the alphabet. I'm only to the Cs right now. I'll get to them about 1230 or so. But, yeah, I mean, it's a risk-on kind of move today, and that generally spreads to the nuke stocks.

I did see Talon, and those were also doing pretty well here today. Now, here's my trivia question for you. Where is Snowflake? I talked about this about a month ago. Where is Snowflake headquartered? Are they Scandinavian? Bozeman, Montana. Bozeman, Montana. The Silicon Valley of Yellowstone, right? Can you believe that, that it's headquartered?

And if I'm not mistaken, the same guy that was involved with ServiceNow, this is one of his other brainchilds, was Snowflake. And, you know, hence the symbol has now in it.

Well, the former governor, I'm trying to remember his name off the top of my head. He started a company called RightNow, and he was based up there. And so I think he actually enticed some of these tech companies to consider this.

the Big Sky Country as a place for corporate headquarters. That's crazy. I have ties to the Big Sky Country. I have cousins, second, third cousins that live in Bozeman. I don't know if they work for Snowflake. They were all fly fishermen.

My cousin was a world-renowned builder of custom fly rods. He never would give me one. They're like $10,000 for a fly rod. I said, Tommy, when am I going to get one? Well, someday, Bill, but he finally passed away. But a very famous Tommy Morgan, world-renowned fly rod maker, was my second cousin up in Bozeman, Montana. We'll be right back.

And welcome back here to the final segment of today's Best Docs Now show. Well, I've got one, two, three, four, five more here to mention. I did get through the C's here during the break.

Cameco, total breakout to new highs on Cameco. It owns 49% of Westinghouse and, of course, has a lot of exposure. The leading miner of uranium in the world, CCJ. We do own Cameco in our ultra-growth portfolio, which is really having a good year this year.

And Constellation Energy is breaking out today. That's the big one back in the Baltimore area, Three Mile Island made a deal with Microsoft and I think Meta was the other one to sell nuclear energy to them. Chipotle, total different end of the spectrum here is breaking out here today. It's definitely a risk on kind of day.

And then this recent IPO, Circle, that's the hot one right now. It's totally linked to cryptocurrency.

It would be probably comparable to Coinbase. Circles up 22% today. It's the new kid in town. Now, here's the little one I'm going to bring to your attention here today. This one caught my eye this morning, Jeff. You might want to jot this down. Because they got $120 million from the U.S.,

EXIM, which I think is the exports and import bank for a Greenland rare earth project. Now of all the rare earth projects, we're looking in Las Vegas area, you know, their mountain pass just south of Vegas. We're looking under the sea.

Along with the Little Mermaid, you know, for where earths under the sea. How many times have you heard that one, Grandpa? I've heard that song. And it's a small world. After all, I've listened to that one a lot of times. But anyways, we're looking under the sea. Greenland, and we made a deal with Ukraine. That seems like a real long shot. We have the rights to Ukraine. I'm sure they have them.

But, you know, dodging the bullets is another situation there. But this Greenland thing, this is intriguing, okay? The name of this stock, CRML is the symbol, critical minerals, metals, critical metals. It was not in my database because this morning it was $1.29. Okay.

It went public in 2022. It's headquartered in the British Virgin Isles, which seems to me like more baseball players come out of there than rare earth minerals. But this thing's up 23% today on 10 times normal volume, the symbol Carmel, C-R-M-L, Carmel. And they get a big loan from the U.S. government today

to go look in Greenland to finance the Tabriz rare earth mine project in Greenland. Well, you know, I mean, we were giving all of these solar companies millions and millions of dollars in subsidies from the U.S. government and wind and whatnot.

And it looks like the Trump administration going in a little bit different direction, looking for those critical rare earths, which are used in solar and wind. And by the way, there's 17. They all end in U-M. We're going to have a quiz tomorrow night. If you can name all 17 off the top of your head, I'll give you a year's free of the newsletter. My favorite one, Jeff, is scandium.

which is named after Scandinavia. But all those rare earths end in U.M. That's what they have in common. Lithium, et cetera. Yeah. I mean, I don't remember that. We didn't talk about that in chemistry in high school and in college. I did well in chemistry, but I don't remember the rare earths being a big – maybe they've become a big thing with technology in recent years.

The other one that is hot, USA Rare Earth, which is USAR. USAR is up 10.6% today. They signed a memorandum of understanding, an MOU, with Moog Electric Motion Solutions. Moog is a publicly traded company.

They will design and test permanent neodymium magnets. There you go. There's the UM neodymium. There's one of the 17. And they are in magnets. Magnets have rare earth in them, which is driving efficiency in data center deployed globally.

Now, USA Rare Earth has a lab in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Stillwater, Oklahoma is where they're located. And I did notice the one we own is MP, which is Mountain Pass. Oh, look at that chart today. Up 11.1% on three times normal volume. You know, I remember passing that thing many times. It was a giant pit.

Right off the 15 going to Vegas. We drove that way a lot because we owned a lot of billboards. We should have got the mineral rights along with those billboard rights while we were traveling through there. MP is hitting a new 52-week high today. That's in our emerging growth chart.

portfolio, and they're looking for rare earths there. And we are slowly running out of time. I see Adobe, last one we'll talk about. They have got a new model aimed at monitoring AI traffic. Adobe did not have a good report last week. I met a kid at church yesterday. He's from Mountain Pass, California. I said I was just there.

And that's the home to Google. He didn't realize that that was also the home to Waymo because Google owns Waymo. He says, no wonder there's so many Waymos in the parking lot. I could never get the correlation there. And my buddy Douglas, after I was out there fishing with him last week, he sent me a picture over on Saturday. They caught a big sturgeon.

which they had to release because it's out of season. But those sturgeon, man, they are good eating fish. Those are what they get the caviar from. Imagine they're in Sacramento, in the Sacramento River. But I gave them one fishing lesson, and they caught a big striped bass with me on board, but he sent me a picture of a nice sturgeon that they got.

over the weekend. So my next trip to California is being on the planning cycle right now. And, of course, we're going to do a workshop out there in Santa Clara on that trip and maybe catch some more stripers and sturgeon while we're out there.

To get a free trial to the newsletter and hear about all these companies before other people do, go to GundersenCapital.com to set up an appointment with us to put us to work for you. 855-611-BEST. 855-611-BEST. Have a great day, everybody.

This show is not a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. Bill Gunderson or clients of Gunderson Capital Management may have long or short positions in stocks mentioned during the show. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Gunderson Capital Management is a fee-based registered investment advisory firm. All accounts are held at Charles Schwab. Schwab is a member of SIPC and FINRA.