Tuesday June 24, 2025 - NY signs up CEG for a new nuclear power plant.
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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 Tuesday morning. It is June the 24th and it is the Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management. I'm here with Barry Kider, chartered financial analyst and certified financial planner if you need a little help with planning. Well, we've got a tentative ceasefire which has already been broken and

But the market likes the news. Oil doesn't like the news. Gold doesn't like the news. But the Dow is celebrating here today with a rise of 253 points.

which puts the Dow at 19,833 as it continues to creep towards 43,000. The Nasdaq is creeping towards 23,000. It's at 19,833. It's up 202 points today.

NVIDIA having a nice day. It's up 1% right now. Meanwhile, the S&P is up 70 basis points. It's up 42. It's above 6,000 again. It's at 6,067.

You know, so much for that March 8th tariff tantrum and everything else that was thrown at the market. It's totally recovered and almost back to its all-time highs. Small caps up 65 basis points today. The bond market's up three basis points. The bond market doesn't react well to peace. It likes, you know, for a flight to safety, it likes danger in the world. It's up to 4.36%.

Oil is clear down to 65.51. You're going to see a big drop at the gas pump here. So welcome to today's Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management. And I'm here with Barry Kite, our chartered financial analyst. And you know, look, when we went home on Friday, Thursday we had a holiday, right?

Friday may have well been a holiday because very few people were participating in the market. And then all heck broke loose over the weekend and extended into yesterday's trading. And towards the end of the day yesterday, all of a sudden I saw the market taking off after a pretty dull day.

I figured something's happened over there in the Middle East, and that something was a ceasefire brokered over social media, I guess, through Truth Social and Donald Trump. And that ceasefire has already been broken, but...

The Dow yesterday scored a 375% gain. The S&P was up 57% and the NASDAQ was up 184%. And we're adding on again here today.

As we may have finally peace in the Middle East, we'll see how long... The oil markets are acting like the ceasefire is going to hold, right? I mean, we're at 65. I was following the chart of crude oil over the last week. I think we got over 80, and now we're back to 65. Yeah, I mean, that's where I look, really, for an indication of how serious this is, this peace deal. And you see oil just getting clobbered today.

And I also hear Trump telling our oil producers to step it up, boys, get the drilling going. And I also see Europe ordering a bunch of liquid natural gas from us this time around instead of Russia. But oil is down to $65 per barrel.

You know, it may be time to trim back a little bit on gold. I'm just thinking that's just the thought in the back of my mind right now. I'm going to watch the chart here. There's a lot of uncertainty that's been taken out of the world. Oh, it's always uncertain. Will it hold? Will it not hold? Where's the next hot spot in the world? But, you know, gold went a long ways. I can remember not that long ago when it was $1,700. Now it's $3,400 today.

It may be time for a little cooling off in the gold market. Silver also cooling off a little bit. It got as high as 36. Iran did make an attempt yesterday to strike back at the U.S. There were explosions heard over Qatar.

But apparently whatever Iran has to fire at us, we have a pretty easy response for. Yeah, it was almost like they were wanting some kind of ceasefire because I saw something where they basically announced that they fired them. In other words, give us a bit of a heads up in terms of maybe it would look like they're doing something, but at the same time, you know,

didn't really want them to land because they don't want, you know, a retaliation from us. Yeah, and I heard one analyst saying it's kind of like to save face, you know. Right. They can at least tell the people. Who knows? Well, I have to look at the Tehran Times today. It probably says that Iran scores a big hit on American air base, you know. Who knows what it says, but...

The safe face. But oil was down 9% yesterday. I think that was a sucker bet, investing in oil. And I said that as I watched oil break out two weeks ago. I said, something's up in the Middle East. It broke out, I think, two weeks ago this Thursday. And I said, you know, I wouldn't get sucked into this. I think it's going to be temporary oil.

And so anybody that was buying these oil stocks up there after the big moves, that was a sucker bet, not a good move.

at all. So anyways, it seems that Iran has very little that they can strike back with. We have superior military, superior in the skies, superior weaponry. Iran basically has no air defense whatsoever. And you've got to believe that their nuclear ambitions, which I'm sure were for peaceful purposes, have been...

really dashed. I mean, to start that all up again, it seems like next time they're going to have to buy a nuclear weapon from Russia or something like that. Right. I mean, their whole knowledge base in terms of scientists taking out, so you're losing not only actual centrifusion and actual assets to create nuclear material, you're also losing the

knowledge base that creates it. We don't know where that bottle or vial or can or whatever it's in of enriched uranium went.

But Iran is kind of tight-lipped about that. They're claiming they still have it somewhere. I was talking to my dad yesterday. It's like a picture, you know, some kind of superhero movie, right, with the Ayatollah with a green jar, right? Yes, smuggling it out. Cryptonite or something. Indiana Jones hot on his trail to get it, you know. Wow, yes.

Well, anyways, that's one less worry we have. Although Iran did fire a missile. They just can't keep their hand up. Maybe the memo didn't go out. I don't know. But they did fire a missile at northern Israel, and Israel fired one back. So it's already been broken.

Trump not having it right. Yeah, he fired away. I saw a clip this morning. One of the funniest things I heard this morning was that he basically used a little bit of language. He was using a four-letter word to describe it. I heard somebody say he dropped a different type of bomb.

Well, those Canadian winds are blowing, and they're blowing inflation right out of the country. The inflation rate is at 1.7% right now in Canada. Wow. And, you know, the only place we're really seeing inflation picking up seems to be Japan with the issues with their bond market not being used for the carry trade anymore. Right.

And that's hurting them. It's causing some inflation. It's causing higher interest rates. But no inflation in Canada. You know, what's up here? I lost 3% in my home. According to Kay Schiller...

down. Home prices slipped. Should I put in a sell stop, Barry? Where would you put in a sell stop? Down 10%, down 15%, down 25%? Probably the 3% that we're at now. It seems that way at least around town. It doesn't seem like prices ever go down, but

I did see a big, in terms of talking about inflation, saw some economists projecting a real drop in shelter costs coming up in future readings. That's a huge component of inflation, which...

That story at least gives the Fed a bit of reason to potentially cut down the road. Yeah, and the shelter element is they're just building apartments like mad. This Greystone here in Charleston, they're the biggest builder of apartments in the country. And we now have about five or six kids in our church that are here working for Greystone. Wow.

I think we had one read into the records on Sunday, and they said he works for Greystone.

Or is it Graystar? Graystar. Graystar. Graystar, yeah, yeah, yeah. Graystar. And they've got some impressive headquarters there in downtown Charleston. I guess that's our one publicly traded company here. No, we've got a few others. We've got Blackbaud. Blackbaud. And we have, I think there's one other one out there somewhere. Okay, yeah, your home price slipped.

You can call up your realtor and put in a little sell stop. If it goes down 7%, 8%, you're automatically out of it, and you've got to move tomorrow. We'll be right back. ♪♪♪

And welcome back here to the second quarter of today's Best Docs Now show. Well, yesterday we were looking at the odds of a rate cut, and the percentage probability was at 16%, which is pretty low. I think you can cut that in half. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is going to testify before Congress today, and in his prepared notes he says,

Yeah, you know what? We're in no rush to cut rates. Basically, Trump can go pound sand. Trump yesterday said, you know, I may not fire him after all, but we'll see how it goes after his testimony to Congress today about being in no hurry to cut rates, even though inflation is basically gone. I think our rates are too high.

And I think the home builders would agree. I think the lenders would agree. And I think those trying to buy a home would agree also. New York to build, get this. I mean, New York State. Kathy Hochul, governor, is going to approve the building of the first nuclear power plant in a generation.

Hochul tells the Wall Street Journal, well, it's been in my generation where I've seen nuclear go completely out of favor and like never again to all of a sudden they can't get the plans on the drawing table fast enough. And I saw really nice action yesterday in the market in GE Vernova.

And this happens to be Constellation Energy here that is involved in this. New York plans to build a large nuclear power facility. I think they're going to tear down Trump Tower and put it right there, downtown New York in Manhattan. In an interview Monday, adding that she has directed the state's public electric utility to add at least one GW. I'm guessing that's a gigawatt.

Yeah, I think it's enough to, what, do a million homes? I was trying to do the math, and I'm thinking, okay, a million homes, and then how many people live in it. So, Mike, how much power is one gigawatt, right? It sounds... Yeah. Seems...

Well, you have to ask the guy in Back to the Future, the professor. There you go. Which, by the way, we were talking about plutonium being carried around everywhere. Me and my dad were talking about a Back to the Future reference. Remember at the beginning of the movie, he's got people chasing him around because he's got the plutonium. Yeah, from Iran. They were from Iran, too. Yeah.

That show was definitely prophetic. It was pretty. And also, let's see. So they have an aging fleet of nuclear generators. The project would be the first major new U.S. nuclear plant undertaken in more than 15 years. Wow.

And it's an important test of Trump's promise to expedite permitting for such projects. Now, I was reading somewhere here recently that they were going to start up the one that they were building here in South Carolina and then abandoned it.

because of all the regulatory hurdles that they had to cross. I mean, the whole concrete, I mean, the part, the thing you think about in terms of the whole dome, right? I mean, that concrete, a lot of that was already built, right?

You know, so that hasn't gone anywhere as far as I know. No, no, they're going to start it up again. I wonder if they're going to give us some money back on our power because remember they said your power bill went up a little bit because of a lot of the money they lost in that particular deal. We had to make up for their bad investment. That's right.

Only five new nuclear commercial reactors have come online in the U.S. since 1991. Thirty years. The most notable retirements of reactors was New York's Indian Point nuclear plant 40 miles upriver from Manhattan, which was closed in 2021.

because of environmental concerns and its proximity to so many people down the Hudson River as a consequence of closing Indian Point, which satisfied 25% of New York City's electricity. So think about that. Think about that downtown skyline of New York City, the city that never sleeps, New York, New York,

25% of the electricity downtown came from that one power plant. So anyways, Constellation Energy and New York are already working together on a federal grant that could help with early work toward adding one or more reactors at the Nine Mile Point Clean Energy Center in Oswego. So Constellation had a good day. We do own Constellation Energy.

Now, wait a minute, more nuclear news. GE Vernova to spend Canadian $70 million to build a service center for small nuclear reactors in Ontario.

So there you go. Here come the small nuclear reactors. It's not Smart Modular. It's not the other one. What's the other one? SMR and Oklo. It's Hitachi. GE Renovo Hitachi Nuclear Energy has committed 70 million to build an engineering and service center in Ontario for small modular reactors as the province...

embraces a technology that has been touted as a way to meet surging power demand from artificial intelligence. So what did it take to wake up nukes? Artificial intelligence, which is kind of an ironic thing here. The service center will be based in the Durham region east of Toronto near the Darlington nuclear site.

where the new BWRX-300 reactors will be located. Ontario's electricity needs are set to jump 75% in 2050, and nuclear power will play an important role in boosting generating capacity.

Well, and it goes to show you the need. I mean, the fact that New York, right, is kicking one of these things off, right? I mean, it's just it tells you that the need all around the globe is going to be just not real. All because of artificial intelligence. Right. Is that our number one need? Yeah.

In the world today, forget about hunger, forget about water. We need artificial intelligence, and we need it now. Is there something else you could do better with the power? I don't know. Australia's biggest iron ore export hub scores its busiest May on record. Oh, this is good news. I saw two. The other one, I think, was in Brazil.

where they make a lot of steel out of iron ore. And, of course, Australia has a lot of iron ore. This is an indicator of the global economy. And, you know, all of this business about the global economy going into a deep recession put out by some of our favorite forecasters out there and pundits,

Instead, it seems to be going the other way with all of a sudden iron ore, which, you know, it goes into steel. Steel goes into buildings. Steel goes into cars. Steel goes into factories. So that's a pretty good sign to have record deliveries from that Australia plant. Amazon expands their delivery network. You know what? Amazon is just going to be a global juggernaut.

Now they want to get into 4,000 smaller cities and towns and be able to offer them overnight delivery. And they're expanding into the U.K., Amazon, and into India. Wow. One of the great stocks of all time, Amazon. 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

And welcome back here to the second half of today's Best Stocks Now show. Well, a few charts that stood out to me yesterday. Tesla was the stock of the day.

And I saw some news today that the police were monitoring their cars, and a lot of them broke traffic laws. So I guess, you know, the artificial intelligence, you know, patterned after us.

They were speeding in certain areas. They weren't coming to full stops at limit lines. I saw a video. You never know what's real or not real anymore. But I did see a report of one going, I think, the wrong way down the road. Yeah, one of them crossed over on the other side of the street.

So just like us on the way to work. There's a reason it's the most dangerous thing we do on a daily basis. I mean, if you think about the speed that humans travel just in a car nowadays versus what it would have been at the turn of the century, right? And with those big battery cars with those heavy batteries, man, you get run over by one of those cars.

Tesla is down 1.5%. Microsoft had a big day yesterday. It was something about a new language software that they were releasing. That one caught my eye yesterday. Constellation Energy obviously caught my eye yesterday with the deal with New York.

And Amazon's having a pretty good day. They're putting out a lot of news. They want to invest and expand in the U.K. They want to invest and expand into underserved areas here in the U.S. They say everybody wants overnight delivery. That's one of the key drivers for them for growth. Here's your biotech of the day, Nectar.

N-K-T-R, psoriasis. Holy cow, it's up 117% on 24,000 times their normal daily volume. Wow.

Wow, it's traded 13.3 million shares. It's out of San Francisco. Psoriasis is a pretty big deal. I had a football coach. He had psoriasis real bad on his knees and his elbows. Good football coach, but he always had that psoriasis issue. They announced Tuesday that its lead asset, NKTR,

Wow, I can't wait for the commercial for this one. It's resbigaldaslucan. I'm glad you tackled it. It may cause diarrhea. It may cause stomach upset. It may cause brain damage, but don't worry. It's safe. Reached its main goal in mid-stage trial for patients with atopic dermatitis eczema, which is pretty common. Yeah.

characterized by inflamed, itchy, and dry skin. Shares of the San Francisco, California-based pharma climbed 140% after a brief trading halt. Well, now it's up 122%, and that's your biotech of the day. It was a $100 million company yesterday, and now it's a $257 million company. So

The venture capitalists, the owners, the shareholders, the top brass celebrating this one for sure, NKTR. Now that San Francisco, of course, I was there watching the Waymos, and I can't wait to get back to that area, which will be soon.

And we're going to do a workshop there for the folks. And I saw all those Waymos running around downtown San Francisco right next to the cable cars. It's like, what a change in generations, right? You know, on the one side over here, you've got cables embedded in the street pulling cars to the top of the hill. And the big guy with the brake, you know, trying to clamp down on that thing to grab that chain, that moving chain.

And right next to it is this Waymo that looks like it landed from outer space onto the streets of San Francisco with no driver. Nobody, no one on that big pulley there or that big winch trying to grab onto the chains under the ground. But Atlanta. Atlanta.

Uber and Alphabet's Waymo have begun offering robo-taxi rides to the public in Atlanta, making a further step in their partnership. Available exclusively through the Uber app, this service spans about 65 square miles in the city from downtown to Buckhead.

That's a pretty big area to Capitolville. We used to do workshops in Buckhead. I loved going to Buckhead. We used to go there quite often, and then the radio station got sold that we were on in Buckhead in Atlanta. We've never been able to find another station in Atlanta to have our show on. If anybody knows of a station in Atlanta...

that need some good content in the morning on the markets, let us know. Starting today, riders who request an UberX Comfort or Comfort Vehicle could be matched.

with a Waymo fully autonomous all-electric Jaguar. Well, that's nice. I-Pace vehicle at no additional cost. So that's a Waymo in Atlanta? Yes. Uber is the service provider. Google is the builder of the car.

I hope it knows how to merge. I mean, that's a merging town. So, I mean, I've had to go across six lanes in a pretty short period of time before to get over to the exit. So it'll be interesting to throw Waymo in the middle of that. Well, there's something new. There's a new twist in this one. In Atlanta and Austin, the Waymo rides are only available via the Uber app.

In contrast, riders in San Francisco and Los Angeles must use the Waymo One app. So I think I'll have a little fun and download a Waymo One app and see how long it takes for one to come here to Charleston and pick me up. The partnership between Waymo and Uber is limited to passenger transport and does not include Uber Eats or deliveries. I actually had something delivered to me from Lowe's by Uber Eats.

So that is the delivery business. You said that they have tentacles everywhere. I mean, I got a message today from Uber, and I thought about what you said yesterday on the show, but it said rent via Uber app, and you can actually rent a car via Uber rent. So I'm like, I didn't even know that was a vertical. I see that being a big tech platform, Uber. DoorDash broke out yesterday big time to the upside.

Amazon Zoox is a future. Like, Amazon's not into enough things. They've got to get into this, too. They're a future competitor to Tesla in the U.S. autonomous driving market. Globally, Baidu, WeRide, and Pony. I think Pony's up 14% today. It can be up 14% one day and down 22% the next and up 23% the next. It's a wild thing. Wilder than a Waymo on...

on a steep hill in San Francisco. But what are they going to do? Can you give an autonomous car a ticket? Does Elon Musk have to pay the ticket? They're violating the laws. We'll see. Let's see. We've got Chenier Energy. This is another big deal.

This liquid natural gas, Europe, not only did Europe realize that they've been depending too much on the U.S. or on Russia for their energy, but Europe also realizes that they should have kept some of their coal-fired power plants and nuclear plants around because now they're behind.

And liquid natural gas solves both of those problems. And it sounds like they're going to get a lot of it from the U.S., which Trump has been pitching for years. Well, I never understood why. I mean, they needed gas during the Biden administration, too. And, of course, remember, we had the... He never sold them any. Right, which just seemed, I don't know. He put a moratorium on it. Well, and put them more where they needed Russia more than us. I don't know.

It didn't make sense to me. But anyways, and why Europe turned to Russia, I guess proximity maybe. But, I mean, can you really rely on Russia to deliver, you know, and give you good service with a smile and green stamps and wash your window and check your wiper? I doubt it. You know, it hasn't turned out too well. So anyways, Chenier is the big one. LNG is the big one. If you're going to play that space...

But look, oil prices are getting crushed today. They're down $5 per barrel. Chenier is actually up 2% today. I think they're a major player in all of this and that liquid natural gas. And you know what? That's a cheap stock. It's why it's in our relative value portfolio. The P.E. ratio on Chenier right now is just 17, 17. And I would say the blue chip and the LNG.

Okay, a few more stocks to talk about when we come back, including some picks from some firms that I find to be a little bit questionable with their picks. We'll be right back. On a winter's day. You've got to go where you want to go. Do what you want to do with it. You've got to go where you want to go. Do what you want to do with it.

And welcome back here to the final segment of today's Best Docs Now show. And we will be headed to, we've got to get some firm dates. As soon as we get rusted up a little bit, you know, and we're headed for Bloomfield Hills, Michigan next week.

And that will be our next trip. I'm guessing, you know, four or five weeks out, something like that, and then to California and then to Minnesota. So I always keep, you know, my radio equipment, Barry, is now stored in a little suitcase. Right. I know they always give you a little...

Look at you a little funny when you're bringing that stuff through security. It always unnerves them to see that radio equipment with headphones, thinking that I'm going to hijack the plane to Cuba or something like that with radio equipment. I'm sure there's all kinds of transistors and some other weird stuff in there. I'm sure it looks interesting. Yeah, it looks pretty suspicious blinking lights and stuff. But anyways, I carry it on board with me, put it in my overhead storage bin if someone hasn't already taken it from me.

Okay, you know, look, I look at other analysts and what they're recommending, and there's a couple here today that caught my eye, and I'm going to look into them. Teladoc, man, that thing got crushed. We sold it at $210 per share back in 2021, and that thing is now $8 a share after getting as low as $6.

From 210 down to 6, headquartered in New York. Citron, which I believe is Andrew Left. He's left the short-selling business because it hasn't been very profitable, I don't think. Tough to be a short-seller in a booming, raging stock market that's been, earnings have been going up since 2009. You're really swimming against the currents there trying to find short-sells.

Teladoc extends gains. As Citron says, it's a coiled spring. Now, that always catches my eye. A coiled spring. Have you ever pushed down on a spring and let go and that thing, boom, and you never find it again?

It's got two ways to go. It does that or it breaks. Especially in a little sprinkler. You know, it lands in the grass somewhere. The sprinkler's not going to operate without that spring. That's why I'm not a sprinkler repairman. I try.

I usually get about 1,000 gallons of water right in the face when I hit the wrong button or don't do the job correctly or don't seal up the glue or whatever. Okay, but he says it's a coiled spring. Now, here's my issue with Teladoc. They have no sales growth whatsoever. Minus 2%, minus 3%, minus 3%. They have totally leveled off.

And it would seem that most, like MUSC here in Charleston, offers online. I have an online general practitioner that's online only. So that kind of cuts out Teladoc. I mean, they still do about $2.4, $2.5 billion worth of business a year online, but it's not profitable.

They're going to lose $1.15 this year. They're going to lose 89 cents next year. So they have no earnings. When you have no earnings, you have to continue to either sell more stock and dilute what earnings you do have, or you have to raise debt. But Andrew Left is touting it today as a coiled spring, saying that AI will put it over the hump. Now, Morgan Stanley...

who I just find to be awful. That's just me. I'm sure they think I'm awful. They probably say, that guy's awful. Their top pick, a top pick, is Chewy. Well, I drove by Chewy on the way to Florida. Chewy is an $18 billion company, and it's headquartered there in Plantation, Florida.

And Chewy is trading at 141, P.E. ratio of 41. On next year's earnings, it's trading at about 60. And you're looking at a grower, I don't know. Who did they buy a while back? Who was it that...

I don't know. But Chewy is a pet product website. Everybody's in that business now. Home Depot's in that business. Walmart's in that business. Costco's in that business. Petco's in that business.

I think we spend more money on our pets than we spend on our spouses. Well, and Amazon, I mean, you know, a lot of the stuff you can find, you know, short of the, I think, short of the meds for your, you know, prescription meds for your little one, you know, furry one. They've got a lot of choices where to get this stuff nowadays. I mean. They like Chewy. It's on their top pick list. And then I see McDonald's is getting rid of, they were offering Krispy Kreme Donuts.

They're ending their partnership because it didn't make any money for either one of them. It was hard to predict demand. You know who goes into McDonald's to get a Krispy Kreme donut? So that's over with, and Krispy Kreme is way down. Novo Nordisk rolls out their weight loss drug in India following Eli Lilly's Mongero launch. It seems like everybody wants in on the Indian market.

And last but not least, man, they were throwing things at the management at the Nissan annual meeting. The performance of the stock has just been terrible. That and Stellantis was another one. Stellantis is trading at a P.E. ratio of 5%.

You say, well, why isn't it in your value portfolio? Because it has no momentum whatsoever. It continues to hit new lows. Now, if they can do something, I think what Stellantis is going to need is something new, an N, and they did get something new. They got a new CEO this week.

So I will keep my eye on Stellantis, but, man, it's in such a deep hole, I don't know that it ever can climb out of that hole that it's in. All right, well, that's today's show. We had a rollicking good time. There was a lot of good stories here today. And if you want that four-week trial to, you know, the newsletter, the app, and the live trades for four weeks, go to GundersenCapital.com.

If you'd like to set up an online or telephone appointment with us, you don't have to drive downtown, fight the traffic, look for a parking spot. No, you just pick up the phone and talk with us and we can do everything. You can PDF files, email your statements. We'll take a look at them.

Barry can do a plan 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.