Monday June 23, 2025 - Big pop for Tesla after Robotaxi launch
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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 Monday morning surprise, surprise, surprise. I mean, after a wild weekend, the market is up, up, up today so far.

What gives there? I got my own take on that. This is Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management. I'm here with Barry Kite, our chartered financial analyst and certified financial planner. We have the Dow has ignition now, and it's up 185 points. That is 0.44%.

The NASDAQ is up 105 right now. That's a half a percent. We're at 19,552. The S&P 500 is up 34 points, which is 57 basis points. The bond market was down a few ticks. We're down three basis points this morning.

We didn't get any action out of the Fed, but things kind of looking possible for July. Maybe, Barry, you can look up that percentage possibility of a July rate cut at this point in time. And the 10-year is at 4.34. Oil is up a little. No, now it's down a little bit. Oil is actually down a little bit after a wild weekend in the Middle East. Gold is up.

to 3,401. It's up almost one half of a percent right now. So welcome to today's Best Stocks Now show. Money manager Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management.

And I'm here with Barry Kite, our Chartered Financial Analyst and Certified Financial Planner. And, you know, after a wild weekend, you really didn't know what to expect in the market. But obviously the market, like we've said it before, it's a weighing machine. It has weighed these matters out in its head, and it's looked forward. And the market right now is saying, you know,

Iran really doesn't pack much of a punch. I don't know what they're going to do to strike back at the U.S. I mean, certainly there's going to be some disruption somewhere, somehow, but...

As far as their military strength, there isn't any anymore, it would seem. Well, and the market's shrugging it off pretty well. Absolutely. And number two, if they threaten to block the Straits of Hormuz, where 20% of all the world's oil flows through, well, that's cutting off their own nose despite their face because a lot of that oil is Iranian. And China is still pretty much funding Iran through their buying of their oil.

which I think it's okay right now. I don't think there's the sanctions against Iranian oil, but there could be. And, of course, they depend on oil to finance their country. They're an oil-based economy. And oil is pretty much shrugging this off, even though we're at an elevated price right now. We're at $73.44 today.

We were at 59 not too long ago. We're down a half a percent. But, I mean, as of now, the market does not see too much disruption to the global economy with what went on over the weekend. Now, Iran is going to visit Russia today, or they may be visiting already with their hat in hand, you know, looking to Vladimir Putin and Russia for some help and some aid today.

But it just seems like Russia doesn't really have an appetite right now with what's going on in Ukraine. And I'm sure they would love to have access to those Iranian oil fields, and they're still getting those drones from Iran to attack Ukraine. I don't know how that flow is going these days.

But anyways, we'll see if anything comes from that meeting between the Ayatollah and Putin here today. So anyways, very little disruption. The futures were down quite a bit last night. And then as the market opened, it opened very, very flat.

And it's gained some steam here since the day started. And there are some stocks. I was just looking here at some of the leadership stocks here in the market today. Tech seems to be seen as that safe harbor these days.

Some of our leading stocks right now are Spotify, Arista Networks, Palantir, Flutter, DoorDash, et cetera, having a very good day so far. Arista's up 5.1% this morning. Well, and you've got the Treasury all the way down to 4.35%, so that warrants a bit higher multiple. You've mentioned from a market perspective the...

You know, earnings continue to grow. And when you put those two together, you've got with the 10-year, it was more important than obviously the most rate cut you're talking about percentage-wise. The market's only counting for a 16.5% chance of a rate cut. Is that it? For July? Yeah. In July? 16.5%.

Okay, all right. It's not zero. Seven to one odds. You know, it could happen. I'm hoping for it. Trump is hoping for it. He says, you know, I think he blew it again, but he's also becoming a little more conciliatory towards Jerome Powell saying, maybe I won't fire him after all. Well, you know, the subject of the newsletter this past weekend was we've seen a leveling off in the market. Summer doldrums is part of it. We are in between earnings season.

We had a run from 4,800 in the S&P up to 6,000, just like that.

And now the market has cooled down. There's not a lot of catalyst out there right now. It's vacation season. And, you know, that's kind of the market. I would say it's a rather dull market right now. And I think we also probably saw a four-day weekend with that holiday last Thursday. I think a lot of people took Friday off also. And here we are starting a new week. The quarter ends next Monday.

The second quarter of 2025, we hit the halfway point, and it won't be long after that quarter comes to an end that the companies start counting the beans and finding out where the sales were, where the bottom line was, and earnings season kicks into gear once again.

And we had, of course, the strike happened, what, it was early Sunday morning in Iran. So I guess it was late Saturday night here. The U.S. did get involved. And, you know, we kind of figured that the way they would get involved would be with those bunker busters here.

Because Israel doesn't have the planes to carry those. And there was some decoy action taking place out in the Pacific off of Guam and whatnot. In the meantime, the bunker busters were on their way with those 30,000 ton bombs. Oh my gosh.

I was supposed to... I grew up between two Air Force bases in the Panhandle, Eglin Air Force Base in Hurlburt. And they actually tested the Moab bomb, which I think is one of the earlier versions of the... I think they converted that to the Bunker Buster. But...

You know, literally 30 miles away, you could feel it. You could feel it, I'm sure. It was amazing. Yeah, they actually showed it on TV. At the time, I think it was the largest ballistic missile test, non-nuclear missile test ever. Yeah. It was pretty amazing.

Pretty powerful things. I saw breaking news over the weekend that an earthquake hits Tehran. I don't think it was an earthquake. I think it was the bunker busters. And, of course, Iran is now weighing retaliation. They seem to dig in their heels. They don't seem to be ones to come to the table and talk diplomacy.

I mean, they've pretty much been wiped out with their nuclear ambitions. Although, I don't know, they were talking about how many grams they have of enriched uranium. Material that could be certain places, right? Who knows where that is? And it can be turned into a nuclear bomb very quickly. Whether we got that or not, nobody knows. Well, the question is, yeah, I mean, if it's under...

If it's underneath, I mean, it's underneath a bunch of rubble. So it's almost hard to find. It seems like it would be hard to find either way, right? Yes. If they got it out of there somehow or if it was there. But, of course, you know, the Ayatollah says, don't worry, we've got it. It's safe, blah, blah, blah. A lot of bluster. There are a lot of bluster and not much else. But we'll see. Major airlines continue to trim flights to the Middle East.

Yeah, I don't think I would want to be visiting Tel Aviv right now. Hold off on that little vacation to Tel Aviv if you've got one planned because the action is not over and it's going to remain a very hot spot for some time to come. Trump goes after Powell again, but he says he may change his mind about firing him

Yeah, well, I think Besson would be a very good Treasury Secretary. I don't know if he wants it. He might want to go back to money management after what he's been through with flying around the world trying to put out hot spots, you know. Okay, when we come back, we've got a lot of individual stocks to talk about. More news on DeepSeek.com.

We lose a great CEO. He dies at the age of 80. And Tesla launches their robo-taxis in Austin on Saturday. That's a big deal. We'll be right back. Oh, we're going up. What are you feeling?

And welcome back here to the second quarter of today's Best Stocks Now show where the market seems to shrug off the events over the weekend in the Middle East.

Oil prices are actually down a little bit here today. Gold's up a little. Interest rates are down about three or four basis points and the market has a little bit of lift underneath it and it's the tech stocks right now that are giving it that lift.

Well, you know, the advanced semiconductors, that seems to be our end of this whole trading dispute between us and China. That seems to be the one that gives us the most grief, and we want to solve that. On the other end, China has those rare earth minerals, or elements, and that's their biggest bargaining chip. In the meantime...

Our senior intelligence, senior U.S. official says that Deep Seek is aiding China's military operations.

And they went around the export controls. AI firm DeepSeek is supporting China's military and intelligence efforts, according to a senior U.S. official. He added that the Chinese startup attempted to bypass U.S. export restrictions by using Southeast Asian shell companies to obtain advanced semiconductors.

So that's part of that problem that we're trying to control.

Because their big interest, one of their main interests in AI is for military use, okay? Right. And as most technology, right, not too surprising, right? I mean, Huawei had some issues, right? Isn't that why we banned some of these companies prior to? And, I mean, a lot of the world's technology somewhere or another comes from

comes or finds its way to the military pretty early on in the process, right? Isn't that where we got the Internet from? How important is having the superior technology? I mean, look, Iran has, they must have no air defense at all, right? Okay, we see all these missiles coming into Israel, and 97% of them don't get through because of the technology, right?

to sort out those missiles that could be a problem. You know, like I said, they bypass missiles. The AI says, oh, it's going to drop in an empty field out there. It's not a threat to any people, and it doesn't waste a missile on that. And look at Iran, on the other hand. They're just open to fly in there with all these giant bombers, and they're pretty much defenseless because they don't have the technology yet.

for the air defense systems. Now, supposedly, that's what they're going to talk about with Russia today. Russia does have better air defense systems than Iran has.

And they're going to go hat in hand looking for some way to keep these intrusions out of their airspace. Right now, they just seem pretty defenseless. Speaking of airspace, one of the pioneers in the industry, you know, they used to have Fred Smith on all the time on the financial channels. He was an absolute pioneer in.

It was in Nashville. Was it Memphis? No, it was Memphis. Memphis Company. He was the executive chairman of FedEx. He finally retired in 2022 after a long career. He founded the Air Delivery Service in 1971, and he finally passed away at the age of 80.

He came up with the idea for FedEx, which was formerly known as Federal Express, in a term paper while an undergrad at Yale University. And he was more than just a pioneer in the industry and the founder of FedEx. The new CEO, Raj Submaraniam, said in a memo to employees, he was the heart and soul of FedEx.

Its culture, its values, its integrity, and his spirit. He was a mentor to many and a source of inspiration to all. I had a client at one time many years ago. He was a pilot of one of those big, giant, those things are huge when you see them on the runway. I remember at Lindbergh Field there in San Diego, they used to come in and out of there a lot. Man, those are massive planes carrying stuff everywhere.

all over the world, all kinds of cargo. We had a very well-known seafood market that had their seafood flown in every day from parts all over America so that they could sell some of the freshest seafood from all over the country. And I'm sure it was

flown in every morning on some kind of FedEx service. Tesla launched... He's also a veteran, by the way. He served in Vietnam. I think he did two tours in Vietnam in the Marine Corps after Yale. All-around good guy, right? I mean, an all-around good guy starts... It was a very, very successful stock for many years.

And then, of course, competition started coming in, and now you look at where delivery is today. FedEx still does play a huge major role today.

because, you know, you can get it here a lot faster. If you had to send that fish from Hong Kong by boat to San Diego, it wouldn't be too good by the time it got here. But FedEx still plays a very major role. Fresh frozen at that point. Yeah, yep, yep, and now Fred's frozen. No, I'm just kidding. Tesla launches a limited robo-taxi service. Okay, this is the one everybody's been waiting for.

They did it on Sunday, which marks a significant milestone in the company's goal to become the autonomous driving leader. Well, you know, I would say that they definitely have the tools and the knowledge to do that. I would say Waymo probably has a bit of a head start and has been testing their self-driving cars a lot longer than Tesla has.

Social media accounts, I haven't seen a picture yet, have already posted pictures of the self-driving vehicles out in the wild.

It's highly controlled and invite only with access granted primarily to select Tesla enthusiasts, investors, and social media influencers. The robo taxi service will use Tesla Model Y, Model Y vehicles equipped with an advanced version of the company's full self-driving software.

It features a camera-based sensor suite and powered by AI, which is different from many companies that use additional sensors like LiDAR and radar. And Tesla is definitely taking a different course with camera-based sensors and AI. Despite some earlier promises of fully driverless vehicles, Tesla has opted to include a safety monitor. That means a person...

a real person sitting in the cockpit, or a Tesla employee, I'd want a little extra pay on the first few days until they get the kinks worked out, in the front passenger seat for the initial rollout. The driver's seat will remain unoccupied during ride. So I'm sure that that passenger can override what the robots are doing.

Before it drives off the cliff and this kind of thing. So anyways, it's underway. And Tesla has now got a toe in the water in the driverless car experience, robo-taxi experience. And we'll take a look at Tesla stock when we come 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

And welcome back here to the second half of today's Best Stocks Now show. Tesla's having a whale of a day. Boy, I'll tell you what. I mean, ever since, do you know that the stock has doubled since March? Talk about volatility.

You know, his stock was getting clogged. He got up to $488 per share, and it went clear down to $170. It went down 60%, really since the beginning of the year. I mean, late December, mid-December of last year is when it hit an all-time high of $488.

Then he got involved in Doge, okay, and then along came the tariffs, and pretty soon, before you know it, it was down from $4.88 to somewhere in the $1.70 area, believe it or not. No, actually $2.14 is where it got to, $2.14. So it got cut in half.

And now it's back to $3.50, just like that. It's up 8.7% right now, 8.7%. That's $28 a share. Look at it. My charts blink every time there's trades. It just looks like beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, like a little Geiger counter or something going off.

It's a $350, up $28 a share. 8.8. Yeah, it's now a $1.1 trillion company again.

And Elon, you know, look at his own personal wealth. I mean, do you even notice it? I don't know. One day you're worth $600 billion, then you're only worth $400 billion. Do you think he cut back on his spending and told his wife, we've got to tighten up the budget a little bit, honey. No more eating out. We're going to cook our own dinners and stuff like that. I doubt it. Okay. Anyways.

This robo-taxi thing has got it going, and it's up 9.2%. But you know what? It's a hard company to invest in and just sit with it because of the extreme volatility. Now, I did make a note to myself. Right in the bottom area there, I put a little note. Consider this for the...

for the relative growth portfolio, the relative value portfolio. Because on a relative basis, I mean, it was way lower P.E. ratio than it has been for a long time. It's currently trading at a P.E. ratio of 153 times earnings. 153, compare that with GM, right, which is about seven or eight times earnings.

And I should have picked it up. I should have picked it up in that low 200 area. But woulda, coulda, shoulda, it doesn't qualify. Now it's a momentum stock once again.

And breaking out here today on that news. Well, it would have been a contrarian purchase at the moment because you had so much turmoil. You named off all the different things that you had going on at the time. It was hard to say. It looked dark. You know what? Let's go. It was.

It was dark, and I mean, the pundits were loving it, right? The people who don't like Elon Musk were loving it. We've driven this stock down, and now look, it's back to $3.50. He's kind of having the last laugh on the investors right now, which he likes to do. He's done it over and over again. Okay, the darling stock, we've got to check on that. It's Circle. All of a sudden...

This reminds me of dot-com mania. Oh, look at Circle. Oh, God. You know, and that's another one I missed. Now I got two giant bruises on my leg from kicking myself, one for not backing up and buying some in the relative value, RV portfolio, and not buying Circle as a new kid on the block play.

Because all of a sudden, you know what the buzzword is, Barry? Stablecoins. They're calling it stablecoin mania. And, of course, Circle came out at about the right time.

Circle extends its rally as investors laud the Senate's passing of a stablecoin bill. So it's entering into the mainstream of currency, really. But the stock, which went public at 31 five weeks ago, is at 276 today. It's up nine-fold today.

since it went public, and it's up another 15% today.

Now, this is where momentum takes over and value goes out the window. And it does happen from time to time. It happened in the year 2000 in a big way across the board when we had dot-com mania. All of a sudden, that's all you needed was a web presence and you were in the stratosphere as a stock market.

And we found out that that didn't necessarily translate to earnings and to sales growth and whatnot. And the dot-com bubble eventually burst. But right now we're in a stable coin bubble.

And I see some firms weighing in here on buying into it at this point. It was a landmark event for the cryptocurrency industry when the U.S. Senate last week passed legislation that would create a regulatory framework for stablecoins.

which is a type of digital token whose value is tied to an actual asset. That's what I've been hoping for, right? Let's tie it to an actual asset so it has some underlying value. And I guess the stablecoin, right now they're doing it to currency or to gold. The so-called Genius Act could lead to stablecoin issuers becoming the world's largest holders of U.S. treasuries by 2030.

Well...

We could use a new buyer, right? Yeah, I mean, China and Japan are... We could drum up some demand. And now you've got all these companies, Lowe's and Home Depot have floated the idea. I think they've gone further than floated the idea. They have intentions to roll out stable coins. Now, not everybody is thrilled about Circle's debut. Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX, CIO at Malmstrom, wrote...

what he called, this is another missive, he called it another missive about stable coins earlier this week. He said, to be clear, Circle is grossly overvalued, but the price could continue to levitate. That's the best way to describe the action in the stock is levitation. The problem is levitation goes both ways in stocks. Eventually there's going to be a big, big,

you know, correction in this thing when the levitation ends.

But he says this listing marks the beginning, not the end, of this cycle. Stablecoin mania. The bubble will pop at some point down the road. And I totally agree. At some point this is going to pop. So I would say play this latest fad with care and don't get caught when that thing turns the corner and the air starts coming out of the tires.

The valuation is absolutely ridiculous on Circle, C-R-C-L. And I would believe that they're a little mad with their underwriters for underestimating. They could have got a lot more money on the initial IPO than what they did, but I'm sure they still own a lot of stock that has gone up on the secondary markets now.

Eli Lilly posts detailed late-stage trial data for their oral weight loss drug, Orforglipron. That's the pill version of the weight loss. And I say to myself, when I see news like that, it's all you've got to do is look at the stock and say, is this good news or is this news that's already been built into the price of the stock?

Well, this is the latest and greatest data out on the pill form of the drug. And the stock is up 1.3% today, 1.3%. So I'm going to say that it's not that big of a deal. And on the other hand, their competitor, Novor Nordisk, they ended their relationship with HIMS and HERS, which was another kind of levitation type of stock there for a while,

Novo Nordisk is down 5.9% today, and Hims and Hers is down 30%, 30% today on that news. And in the meantime, cardiovascular, cardiology experts are saying that obesity drugs should be among the primary option to prevent heart disease.

I totally agree 100%. There you go. I mean, to prevent heart disease, the problem is most of us are carrying too much weight. And now there's a way to do it.

which is unlike anything ever before for weight loss. The price is the biggest concern. I'm still trying to get an answer. I didn't have time to talk to my friend over the weekend. I want to know why and where he thinks the price of Lully's drug is headed, given this latest legislation on bringing the prices of these drugs down to whichever country is paying the lowest price. We want the same price as Donald Trump.

Well, we'll see what that means for Lilly and Novo Nordisk. We continue to own Lilly. When we come back, one of the issues is eating out at restaurants. What's the fastest growing restaurant chain in the country? It's been hitting new highs recently. This is Bill Genderson.

You gotta go where you wanna go. Do what you want to do. You gotta go where you want to do. The final segment of today's Best Docs Now show. I introduced myself to somebody that was visiting yesterday here at our church. And I said, where are you guys from? They were visiting from Australia. A young couple with some young children.

And I said, really, what do you do in Australia? He says, well, I work for Uber. Well, you know, I mean, initially thought, okay, he drives Uber. No, no, he works in management for Uber. And I said to him, you know, Uber is really becoming kind of a tech monster in a way. You know, all of a sudden, Facebook's tentacles started to go into everything, right, Barry? And Amazon, right?

Which just rented videos online through mail. Pretty soon their technicals. It becomes part of the vocabulary, right? Yes. I mean, it's like I'm going to Uber here. I even say I'm going to Uber here even if I take Lyft, which I don't take very often, but I still say I'm taking Uber. And he's told me, he says, yeah, the Uber, they're trying to get me to come back to the U.S. and work here at corporate.

And I said, you know what? The fastest growing restaurant stock, there's two of them. One is Uber. The other one is DoorDash. DoorDash, right. I mean, DoorDash is on a tear right now. And that's one of our holdings. It is now a $92 billion company.

And, you know, when I first, I can remember, we used to go to a place in San Diego I liked. It was a good place. And, you know, I noticed that they started using DoorDash maybe seven, eight years ago. And I said to myself, you know, how can this be a profitable business? Some poor guy's got to drive down here. How can it be profitable for the restaurant?

When they got to pay DoorDash to deliver the dinner to the table, somebody across town said,

And I didn't really see that as a very good business model at that time. Well, I'm wrong. I was wrong. And it's turned into a very good business model. And you've got a couple of them now that are really competing. And, you know, they have a lot more tentacles out there, like Uber has Uber Freight. Home Depot and Lowe's are now using Uber to deliver Uber.

And Uber is letting people tap into their AI technology.

their AI portfolio that they've put together. So there's a lot to be said for both of those stocks. And DoorDash has made just an impressive move here. And it is a profitable business. I mean, I guess the guy who makes all the money in the restaurants is the one who sells the equipment, right? They sell the restaurant equipment.

and the one who seems to be making the money in the restaurant business, which is a difficult business. Now, Darden had a very good report here recently, a very good report last week. But DoorDash is maintaining about 25% growth right now. And look at that chart.

That's a new all-time high on DoorDash, and it's one we own in the Ultra Growth Portfolio, which has put up some pretty impressive numbers. If you haven't looked at the newsletter lately, I created that portfolio back on January 1st of 2019 for Seeking Alpha.

They wanted me to start a subscription, a premium service there, which is the same as the one I do personally for subscribers outside of Seeking Alpha. And, man, that Ultra Growth portfolio has wrapped up some pretty impressive numbers. You look for yourself.

And DoorDash is one of those stocks. And I see there's news on it again today. It's on track for its sixth weekly gain in a row. Okay, now back to the quantum stocks. There is news on a quantum stock today. And here's the issue with the quantum stocks. It's those secondary offerings, Barry.

They get a little bit of a jolt, and they go up higher, and guess what? They hit the market for more shares. Well, and they can't go to the debt markets. It's not like they're going to issue a bond, right? Rating-wise, it's just going to be too cumbersome for them. So you've got quantum computing, which was on a tear last week, and they say, okay, let's use this opportunity, get it while it's hot, and they do a private placement program.

of common stock proceeds $200 million.

So that's a pretty big little, that's going to dilute the shareholders by 10% and water things down. But that's one of the issues that you have with those quantum stocks is they just have to keep going back to the well and printing more shares until they become profitable. Okay, and the last one I want to mention is this is a boring old stock that

But they launched a stable coin. Now this is reminiscent of the day of boring stocks that all of a sudden had a website in the year 1999 and the year 2000. That was called dot-com mania, and it turned into a big bubble. Fiserv, F-I-S-E-R-V.

which has been around for a long time. They provide payments, financial technology to clients worldwide. They're headquartered in the World Financial Hub of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but they're going to launch a stable coin. The stock was way up this morning. It's come back to earth a little bit, but I just think you've got to be careful of this stable coin mania that's taking place right now.

And nowhere does it show up more than in the stock circle, CRCL, which is going to have its comeuppance at some point in time. It hasn't happened yet, but it's out there. Okay, then two stocks here. I just want in the last minute, there's a difference between a relative value stock and a deep value stock. There's a couple companies today in the news. One is Estee Lauder, which has been totally beaten up.

I can see the hardcore value investors looking at Estee Lauder, and the other one I can see them looking at is Stellantis.

which has a P.E. ratio of 4 or 5. Okay, I don't like value just for P.E. ratio's sake. I like to see a little bit of momentum come into the stock and some kind of a catalyst, a new CEO, which Stellantis, I see, did do a big leadership. But now you've got to watch the stock and see if investors start to respond to it.

But I like the other way. I like stocks that one time were high P.E. and now for whatever reason they're at a relatively low P.E. ratio. That's the way I look at things with my new fund, which is off to a very good start. Okay, to get a four-week trial to all the services we offer or to get an evaluation of what your portfolio is doing, your financial plan, etc.,

Call us at 855-611-BEST or go on to our website at GundersenCapital.com. 855-611-BEST or 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.