Monday June 2, 2025 - Escalating trade tension with the US and China continue to damper the market…but May was a banner month for equities.
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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.

Good morning and welcome to the Monday, June 2nd edition of the Best Docs Now show. I am Barry Kite, planner and analyst here at Gunderson Capital Group.

Sitting in for Bill today as he's doing a bit of traveling. And it looks like markets are taking a bit of a break from what we'll get into. It was a pretty hot May, but we've got currently the Dow down 357 points. That's about 0.8%. S&P down 40 points here to 5,871, down just under 0.7%.

NASDAQ actually leading the way, but also negative, down just about a half a percent, down 108 points to 19,005. So it'll be interesting to see how that round number provides a bit of support today for the NASDAQ. We've got crude oil up $2 to $3, or to $62.84. That's about 3%.

Gold at $3,366. It's been really a hedge as we'll get into some Chinese and U.S. tensions there. So anytime that happens, we've got gold going up, up $77. That's 2%, a little over 2%. And Bitcoin down 1.5% at the moment. So

Good morning again and welcome to the Monday, June 2nd edition of the Best Docs Now show. I am your host, Barry Kite, planner and analyst here at Gunderson Capital Management. Sitting in for Bill today and excited. I think we've got Jeff Webster on the line here, advisor at the firm. Happy Monday to you, Barry. Yeah, good morning. I hope you had a good birthday week last week.

Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah. I'm just happy to be back in the office today. Had a busy and exciting weekend celebrating our oldest. I think Bill and I talked about it on Friday, but he graduated from high school on Saturday, so hosted some friends, family, a lot of work done on the grill and the smoker, so he's

I needed a break for the weekend, so glad to get behind the desk. I'm a little bit worn out and still smell like a campfire over here. A couple more showers, I think we'll be able to get the barbecue smell out. I think the grill was on for 24 hours straight, so it needed a break as well.

But excited to get the first trading day of June. I guess not the official start of summer, but summer is upon us here, Jeff. I hope you'll sell in May and go away.

uh adage uh hopefully uh that's uh you know that doesn't uh you know hold true completely especially we had a you know pretty pretty pretty massive uh pretty massive may in terms of the the market right as uh as we uh bounce back from some of the volatility certainly in in in march and april um so opening uh you know all of us who you're about to get your statement opening it just go around to be a uh

It would be a better feeling than the last couple of times with some of the

particularly the volatility that we had. But when you look at, you know, looking at the, I guess on Friday we kind of had some little flare-up of some trade tensions, and we'll get into some of that kind of back and forth between the U.S. and China. It kind of built, had my eye on it over the weekend as kind of the rhetoric built up a little bit. But,

We ended last week, the S&P was up 1.9%. NASDAQ was up 2%. And Dow was actually up 1.6%, held back a good bit by UnitedHealth over the last month or so. But in terms of the last week, Jeff, stock prices, I guess, continue to follow earnings.

We had, what, 14 S&P companies reported last week. I think 11 beat their estimates. Of course, the most important one that beat last week was NVIDIA, right? Well, it was interesting. I was looking at their report, and it was certainly a good one.

I mean, again, I'm no analytical expert as it relates to how they evaluate, but it looked like a report that was not maybe quite as favorable as the prior reports, but the stock did real well. Yeah. So markets could be very interesting. And, you know, those earnings remain visible, you know, kind of pretty good earnings visibility into the future. And, you know, frankly, I think with –

With their earnings, I think we looked at their forward PE last week, and it's 31. You want to take every other 31 PE ratio stock out there, right? Probably, if you had your choice, you certainly would take NVIDIA at 31. It seems fairly cheap there at that rate.

We also had a good report, I think, from CRM, Salesforce, Costco. It continues to just be a beast when it comes to the earnings game. But overall, what we've had for the quarter, we had 473 sales.

report so far and 368 of those beat the earnings estimate. I can't do my math real fast here but percentage wise, Bill puts this in the newsletter every week too, 78% so far have beat on the bottom line on the earnings there.

which is pretty impressive. 18 of them were in line, so really only 87 kind of underperformed the analyst estimate. So on the revenue side, you had 299 companies have beat so far, 173 missed, so not quite as good there. It's a little easier to manage earnings sometimes than it is revenues, but

I think all of that, right, in terms of stock prices following earnings, all that kind of translated into a great month for U.S. equities. S&P was up 6.1% for the month of June.

month of May, which is actually the best performance since I think it was November of 23. I think that was an 8.9% rise. But just like I said, solid bounce back month in terms of what we saw there. And it was all also in spite of, look at the Dow, I mean, in spite of

United Health's issues, we've been talking about this a good bit, but I think United Health was down 27% for the month of May while the market rate was up 6.1%, and that name just being owned, I think, institutionally by 90% of the stock there. So that's been a pretty rough story.

It'll be interesting to see how that, you know, kind of plays out. But, you know, they've gotten hit from a few different directions, you know, over the last year. They had to, you know, recently the CEO, you know, backed out, I think left. I think that was Andrew Witte. They've got a new CEO change. Obviously, the...

You know, the death of the CEO on the insurance unit, Brian Thompson. He also had the DOJ launch a criminal probe over some Medicare fraud. And lastly, I think, was they also had another deal about them potentially paying, I think it was in May, late May 21st, they had nursing homes closed.

They were essentially trying to do stuff behind the scenes to get some additional Medicare enrollees. So it's just a company that's important, really, to the health care system as a whole, just really in shambles. And Bill and I have been talking about who would come in and actually save that company, right? There's really no...

You know, big player. I mean, they are the big player. So, you know, you either have potentially to go down this path for too long and need some kind of government intervention potentially. But so good month, good month and for the market, not so great a month for UnitedHealth. But in terms of in terms of market movement, you know, 6.1, pretty, pretty strong month.

Especially if we annualize that out. But in terms of this week, we've got pretty quiet. We're wrapping up earnings season. It was really eight companies this week reporting. We've got Campbell Soup, I think, today. We've got CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike will be an interesting one. So that's one we'll have our eye on.

Dollar General. I guess Dollar General, Lulu, and Dollar Tree might be interesting to see from potential tariff issues or some of their manufacturing. It would be interesting to what they have to say because I know a lot of that Lulu is certainly made overseas from fabric and putting it together. Well, we're just getting started this morning on the Best Docs Now show. We'll be right back.

Oh, we're going on What are you feeling now that I've caught my love?

My energy, yeah.

Some of you folks out there, obviously, talk to myself, talk to Jeff. You can always give us a call. Edie's always ready and willing to get something on the schedule, right, Jeff? Yeah.

That's right. You know, Barry, you were talking about some of the upcoming earnings this week. I mean, certainly as we wind down, you know, CrowdStrike, Broadcom, you know, two big tech companies reporting. But, you know, just for our listeners out there, a lot of these retailers, you know, they're later in the reporting season because their quarters and year ends are normally –

a month later than most companies because they, you know, particularly as it relates to that holiday season, they're in typically at the end of January. And so they want to take time to, you know, check inventories. You've got to put your hands. Yeah, those inventory counts, you've got to put your hands on that stuff, right? Yeah.

especially nowadays, trying to figure out how much leakage you had. That's right. You look at some of the dollar companies out there, Sportsman Warehouse will report tomorrow, Tilly's.

And Zoomies, you know, a couple of surfwear companies, Duluth Trading, you know, we see a lot of fun commercials from them. Victoria's Secret will report Thursday, lands end. And so, you know, those folks, again, they typically wait longer because the nature of their business is they need to wait for some of that seasonality to settle down and, you

Just allow things to count out from an inventory perspective, make adjustments as needed so they can provide good financial clarity as opposed to what was represented in maybe some holiday hype.

Yeah, and fashion retailers, they're in kind of a catch-22 situation, especially if you wanted to front-load some inventory, right? And so the problem with their front-loading inventory is the fact that you've got different styles go in and out. And fashion, sometimes like the market, right, always called the market of fashion show at certain times, and in this case,

you get a lot of inventory obsolescence, right? Sometimes if you can't have a huge warehouse of a million styles because at some point, right, that's going to go...

go out and you're going to be selling it at pennies on the dollar. It'd be interesting, some of those calls, particularly the Lulu call, just because it's been a well-run company, obviously been a big growth player over time and is one of the

kind of retailers, brick and mortar retailers also too that are still you would think are somewhat successful given those challenges and so it would be interesting to kind of hear that call. To me the Dollar Tree

call. It always amazes me whenever, you know, every once in a while I'll go on a Dollar Tree and, you know, just the amount of stuff they have for the prices that they have, you know, to me is unbelievable sometimes. And I'm like, where was this secret? You know, Dollar Tree. But, you know, in terms of where, obviously, it doesn't, a lot of those goods are

certainly coming from overseas, coming from China, and so it'll be interesting to see. My guess is they won't give any guidance, but it will be interesting to read, kind of go through the transcript and read some of the Q&A's

that you get from some of the analysts too who will ask. That questions and answers section sometimes, they field some pretty tough questions. The prepared information is all written, all meticulously written, certainly SEC guidelines, this and that, but the Q&A sometimes can give you information

It certainly gives you a lot more insights, but that'll be, I think, will be an interesting read. And you said Broadcom. That's been a sneaky good stock. I mean, we own the bond. We've owned the stock over the years off and on, but that stock's up 74% in the past 12 months.

So just a huge move there. They expect their year-over-year profits to increase 43% and revenue growth at 20%. So they've certainly, not NVIDIA, but they've certainly been benefiting from that AI-related demand there. We also get DocuSign. We get DocuSign on Thursday. So that's a little...

you know, at least helps us do business. That's right. Even if we don't own them, I'll root for them. Yeah, you know, so we've got, you know, the info of the day, and we'll kind of get into this in the second half of the show. But, of course, as, you know, kind of over the weekend, you had that kind of on Friday in terms of,

Trump's message in terms of China not holding up their end of the bargain. We were talking about it, kind of thought that it had to do something with the, likely had something to do with some of those rare earth minerals.

It looks like that is kind of the sticking point really between the escalation, in my opinion. It's really kind of a – it comes down to two things. Rare earth minerals is what we'd like. Of course, I think China has 70% of those minerals.

deposits that are in the globe, around the globe. And then, of course, China wants semiconductors, right? And so I think that this kind of tit for tat back and forth really kind of comes to those two sticking points. Of course, the fentanyl issue is another big one, particularly in terms of hearts and minds of voters and something that affects no matter what side of the aisle you're on.

But, you know, also on Friday, talking about doubling the imports for steel and aluminum. I think those are scheduled to, it's hard to keep up with some of this stuff. I think that's supposed to kick in maybe June 4th. So, you know, back to, you know, a little bit of the tension we saw, you know, kind of,

Markets have been pretty soft. Even Friday was a mixed bag. Today, fairly everything's kind of red. NASDAQ's actually only down 17 points at the moment, basically flat for the day. So NASDAQ's holding in. But I think along these lines, we'll get into some of the repercussions of what this affects. We actually got some Chinese markets.

in terms of PMIs

But, you know, this is kind of as we go from this 90-day period of pause, right, you know, we're going to, as you kind of get closer, I think, towards that end of the 90 days, right, at first, you know, reduces uncertainty because you've got a 90-day window. And then, of course, as that window continues to get tighter, you know, my guess is without any good news, you're going to end up, you know, probably injecting a decent amount of volatility for a period of time there. Yeah.

Well, we've gotten through the first half of today's Best Stocks Now show. We'll be back in the second half and get into some of the repercussions of some of the U.S. and Chinese tensions, and we'll go into some individual stocks. 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. The Instigator Because there's something

We've got to get together sooner or later. And welcome back to the second half of the Monday, June 2nd edition of the Best Docs Now show. I am Barry Kite, planner and analyst here at Gunnarsson Capital, serving as relief captain for Bill this morning as he's doing a little bit of traveling.

I also have Jeff Webster joining me as usual on the show. Of course, to stay up to date with our thoughts on the market, if you want to get Bill's newsletter, the live trading, go to GundersenCapital.com. Or if you'd like to have a discussion with Jeff or myself, give Edie a call at

855-611-BEST. That's 855-611-2378. Always here to be a resource. I've been talking to a lot of folks out there. Of course, anytime you've got...

Kind of a market that's, you know, trading primarily at least on news, you know, certainly, you know, having an active approach can be more attractive. In terms of, you know, in terms of, you know, volatility, it'll be interesting as we get, you know, Jeff and I were talking on the last segment, you know, as we get through

We don't have much left on the reporting side. We get into this lull where it's really just almost strictly news-driven. Of course, you still get some economic data and other data points along the way, but that lull between earnings season where

you know, kind of narrative can take over and the numbers and the math kind of, you know, kind of go by the wayside for, you know, seems to be for a little period of time. So those are always some parts in the market where you get, you know, you can get a little soft, you know, and provide, you know, frankly, can provide some opportunity. So we're kind of starting out the month of June here with, you know, with,

Those trade tensions, we've heard from Besant over the weekend. He had a pretty good interview and, frankly, kind of basically explained the reasoning behind wanting to decouple a bit, particularly in certain industries, in why and really kind of making the world less reliant on

you know, on China, you know, potentially holding back things, products and, you know, in the supply chain or they can, you know, make slow things down, right, by whether it's their own regulation and getting things to us or if they're intentionally holding stuff back either or. It still makes an argument, particularly for those things that you, you know, kind of have to have to,

expand those supply chains and COVID was no kind of a great example of why that's important. So that's where we kind of stand right now in terms of kind of tit for tat. China firmly rejects the Trump's accusation in terms of them violating the trade agreement. Of course,

China wants more. Their folks mentioned they think that we're discriminating against them for keeping some of these NVIDIA chips out of their hands. So that's really, to me, the two big kind of back-and-forth parts of the whole thing in terms of the trade disagreement. Regardless, we kind of need each other.

And we've hit on that, you know, over this whole discussion of, you know, it's not a – it's not we're getting rid of them completely. They both – you know, they need us and we need them in some capacity. So China's factory activity actually, you know, is still contracted. It was up at 49.5%.

from 49. Anything under 50 is going to be a contraction. So it was, uh, you know, the, the 49 and a half, that 49 in April was a 16 month low. Uh,

So them just getting back a half a point to 49.5, even though it did expand a little bit, it's still full contraction, and that's the second month in a row of contraction. So there are certainly reasons, right, Jeff, for China to want to get this resolved. And not only is it obviously they would like some of those chips, but they certainly –

you know, want to keep their majority of their population employed and, you know, continuing to be a manufacturing power that they have been. But it's all, you know, all along those chips, right, in terms of, you know, I know we've got some interesting stories and interesting info on some data center projects

Yeah. You know, whether it's Stargate or the Golden Dome, there's been a lot of activity in terms of investment and future investment for those data centers. Yeah. I mean, the big one, of course, Stargate, you know, the two big players there, NVIDIA and Oracle. And, you know, analysts are speculating that that will be about a $500 billion project, right?

They're anticipating that the data center that will be in Abilene, Texas, will require about 400,000 NVIDIA GB200s. So that's about a $20 billion deal. As Bill indicated last week, that wouldn't be bad to be the sales guy on that opportunity.

The revenue anticipated for Oracle, they don't – I think it looks like it will be about 10% of what NVIDIA's revenue ends up being in that space. The other data center deal that has caught my attention today, and, you know, Barry, myself coming from the tech space, you know, I'm like a moth to light when it comes to some of these things are –

is a big data center announcement between Applied Digital, which is a stock that we've owned in the past, and CoreWeave, which is one of our new favorites. They announced that Applied Digital is going to – which is a designer, builder, and operator of next-generation data centers. They've entered into a 15-year lease agreement with CoreWeave. It's going to be –

a situation where Applied Digital will deliver 250 megawatts of critical IT load to host CoreWeave's artificial intelligence and high computing platforms in the sprawling metropolis of Ellendale, North Dakota, which sits right there on the border of North Dakota and South Dakota.

The size of these data centers, they may need to put it out in the middle of nowhere and let it grow to somewhere. It's crazy. Yeah. I was like, okay, I've been up to North Dakota a few times on business over the years, and I said, okay, I need to see where that is. That's not a place I'm familiar with, but it sits down there in the southern part of North Dakota. Okay.

And kind of equidistant from Fargo and Aberdeen, South Dakota. So, you know, my guess is that if you're looking for a job, you could probably head out that way and maybe find something.

Yeah, I mean, at worst you bounce between fracking and data center build, right? I mean, it's pretty amazing. I mean, and this is one, you know, this Abilene, Texas project, right, is one, it was supposed to be one of many in terms of, you know, around the U.S., so you're talking in terms of

future revenue. I mean, I'm talking about what, I think it's 25 billion worth of revenue potentially for overall opportunity for NVIDIA. And then, of course, you know, if they've got, you know, okay, they do 10 of these centers. I don't know how many they've got planned, but, you know, it's pretty, you know, opportunity-wise, it's one that's not going away. I mean, the thing with NVIDIA that we've talked about for, it seems like the past few years now, right, is how long

you know, will their dominance last? How long, right? Is this, you know, is this ramp up or build up of these data centers going to last? And, you know, based on some of these contracts, it seems like it might have got a good bit of runway here at least.

At least given current technology, technology can always change. But given current technology, it's pretty interesting. The other piece of that was the potential open AI opportunity. Obviously, that one, not a publicly traded company. But Microsoft has a very big beneficial ownership there.

But they're going to be a big player in Stargate as well. And then Palantir, I don't know if you saw some of these numbers, Jeff, but Palantir is just, from a future revenue standpoint, has just had a bunch of wins recently. It was funny, they were one of the big names, if we remember, that dropped recently.

significantly after February 18th. And we'll get into some of their wins they've just had, and we'll talk about some of the stocks that are moving to markets. But we're blazing through the first three quarters of the show, and we'll be back for the final segment. It's The Best Stocks Now. ♪♪♪

You gotta go where you wanna go, if you wanna talk, if you wanna live, if you wanna walk, if you wanna go, if you wanna do whatever, if you wanna talk. And welcome back to the fourth and final segment of the June 2nd edition of the Best Docs Now show. I'm Barry Kite, planner analyst here at Gunderson Capital. Sitting in for Bill today, and we've got Jeff Webster on the show, advisor here.

at the firm as well and looks like I was hoping we were going to get a little bit of green before we got out of here Jeff but taking a little probably about the worst it's been since we've been on we've got the Dow down .9% that's

down 380 points, hovering right around 42,000 at the moment. And then we've got the S&P actually down 11 points, 0.2%, and the NASDAQ's basically flat at the moment. So I was looking through kind of what's moving, and we'll get into that in a second, but

Not a lot of stuff. I think CoreWeave, in terms of exciting stocks, CoreWeave is probably the most exciting stock that's moving today. It was up 7% when I looked at it a moment ago at the break, but clicked on the old S&P 500 to see it was moving today, and it's all moving.

Nucor, a steel stock, right? Newmont Mining, Freeport, McMoran, some energy stocks with Vistra, all of them, EOG Resources, all that driven partly by the data center stories on the power side and then, of course, on those steel stocks popping up because of the

tariffs potentially kicking in on June 4th with the additional steel tariffs, I think, and aluminum. I think it's aluminum and steel, additional 50%. Cleveland Cliffs is one that's moving in that steel area. That's not one that I'm familiar with, but it's one of the top gainers today. Back to the data center, the four companies that we mentioned, NVIDIA,

Um, and Oracle, Oracle, I mean, Oracle is down, down 85 basis points. Uh,

Let's see where NVIDIA is at. I think they were up about 0.8% when I saw them last. Yeah. Fairly quiet for them. Yep, up 72 basis points. I mean, applied digital, man, they're up over 42%, 43%. CoreWeave, you know, about 6% right now.

So people are paying attention to those. I mean, these steel companies that are onshore-based that could benefit, you know, on tariffs, you know, those are ones to keep an eye on as well. Right, and that's more, you know, think of that more as, you know, likely a trade, right, in terms of, you know, as we know, the –

Tariffs can bounce back and forth, right? So certainly those stocks are kind of tough to be a buy and hold spot here. So it's one of those that you've got to pick your points and easier said than done. I don't think Bill would be too impressed with the Cleveland push situation.

I could do a nice downhill ski run on it, it looks like. Yeah, if you'd like to add some volatility. But for whatever reason, it's bouncing today. It is. Yeah, if you want to add some volatility to your portfolio, pick a couple up. But I'll tell you what, Palantir, I was going through some of their wins that they've had, and you know this,

Jeff, being on the software sales side, Palantir recently, last week, awarded a $795 million contract from the U.S. Army. They've also been mentioned, certainly by Trump, in terms of potentially building the Golden Dome, which could be a $175 billion plus project. They've also been working, they've kind of been

going to be working, I think, with, with, with Doge in terms of, you know, improving the Social Security Administration and their, you know, the IRS, you know, kind of improving their systems. They've been, you know, super outdated. We've heard,

Heard a lot of that. So that's another iron in the fire. And then their commercial revenue, so outside of the government, grew I think 70% year over year. So just a lot of different wins there, a lot of different irons in the fire where they're helping health care companies. I think they just got a partnership with the Joint Commission, which essentially accredits lots of health care organizations,

So they're going to be in the mix there. I think they're going to get a deal with or they're working on a deal with Fannie Mae in terms of I saw something where they're using them for some fraud detection. I saw a piece on the news.

I guess a couple of days ago and somehow their whatever their AI what they're running in the background helps identify potential mortgage fraudsters. So pretty vast array of uses, right? We can reduce some bank fraud and shoot down incoming missiles at the same time. So

Just some amazing stuff and a bunch of different verticals there to explore, right? Yeah.

Yes, absolutely. Hey, Barry, one thing I wanted to point out that our listening audience might appreciate. So we broadcast across 10 or so markets. We're live on 1440 up there in Minneapolis, and Bill mentioned that we have a real strong signal out there in the Bay Area, so we're appreciative. But I just got some data this morning that over –

the last five months, you know, starting from the beginning of the year, we've had over 75,000 podcast downloads each month. You know, averaging that, last month we had as high as 83,000 podcast downloads. And so if you think of, you know, the various platforms that we utilize, Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

You know, our iHeartRadio, PodBeans, you know, we're appreciative of all the folks that take time to download and listen to us as they're out, you know, on their walks or in their cars or whatever where they can listen at their convenience. So we're super appreciative of all those folks.

Certainly, and they consume it a bunch of different ways, right? In terms of nowadays, there's so many different ways to listen to it, and we certainly appreciate you guys finding the right way that you would like to listen to it. I always tell folks the longer you wait from when we record it at 10 o'clock Eastern every day, then either the smarter or the dumber we get, right, in terms of...

how long you wait to listen to it. But we appreciate it. And if you want to stay up with Bill's thoughts on the market, certainly get the newsletter and get the live trading at GundersenCapital.com. Or if you'd like to have a discussion with Jeff or myself, look at the portfolio allocation. Happy to do it. Give us a call at 855-611-BEST. That's 855-611-2378. 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.