Wednesday Apr. 23, 2025 - The market is exploding to the upside once again!
40:05 Share

Thank you.

And welcome to the Wednesday midweek edition. Another four-digit day, this time to the upside. That's two in a row. These thousand-point days are getting to be a regular feature here in the Trump administration. But the Dow is up 1,065 points today. That works out to 2.72, and of course it was up over 1,000 yesterday.

Never mind it was down $1,000 on Monday. Well, the Dow goes on, the beat goes on. The NASDAQ up 626 here today. That's 3.8%. Tech stocks on fire. Semiconductor stocks on fire. S&P 500 up 3.1%. The only thing down today is gold.

which has been the only thing up on many days. But the gold markets today are stumbling a little bit, a little bit of profit taking there. Gold is down 2.7%, so about the same amount that the markets are up. The 10-year is down 11 basis points as there's buying going on, some furious buying it looks like in the U.S. Treasury.

We're at 4.39% there, and Bitcoin is exploding to the upside here today. Wow, it's up 5.5%, which works out to $4,894, $93,655. Never a dull moment. So welcome to today's Best Stocks Now show with professional money manager Bill Gunderson.

President of Gundersen Capital Management. And I'm here with Barry Kite, our Chartered Financial Analyst. And lately, the two elephants in the room have been Donald Trump. Well, actually, there's three, I suppose. Donald Trump, Jerome Powell, and Chairman Xi Jinping.

Is that a fair observation? Oh, my gosh. I would say so. And the amount of news just over the last 24 hours and obviously resulting in looking at the NASDAQ up 3.81% right now. That's ridiculous. I mean, we were down 1,000 on Monday, and then yesterday the news started to break coming from Besant first.

behind a closed door meeting but as soon as that meeting was over there was obviously some leakage coming out of that and Besant said you know China's going to have to give here real soon because it's not sustainable what is going on for them and especially in the semiconductor industry so that helped the market blast off yesterday

to a thousand point gain. Progress with China, that's definitely probably the elephant in the room right now is the trade negotiations with China. Trump seems to be softening his stance towards China, but who knows what tomorrow will bring. And he also, towards the close of the market yesterday, might have been even after the close, he says, I have no intention of firing Trump.

Powell, Fed Chairman Powell, after he spent Monday calling him a loser, a moron, and a Mr. Late to the Party. So there you go. The markets obviously spoke on that day saying, no, we want an independent Fed. We don't want the executive branch having too much power or any influence over the Fed whatsoever. We want an independent Fed.

And that's what causes a big spill in the markets on Monday. So here we go. The roller coaster called the NASDAQ, the roller coaster called the S&P 500, the roller coaster called the Dow.

have been all over the map here. All right, now one thing I wanted to bring you up to date on with the Dow is the valuation. It has gotten better. I saw an article today saying, you know, the Dow really hasn't, the valuations really haven't changed that much. Well, that's not true.

The P.E. ratio on the Dow recently, I mean, we're just going back here to the beginning of February, it was a 23 P.E. ratio.

Today we're at 21.5, so we're down 1.5 there on the P.E. But more importantly, from my perspective, is looking forward. The forward P.E. of the Dow has gone from 20.3 back in February at or near its high. It's come clear down to 18. So that's a pretty material move there. That's about an 11-12% drop there.

in the forward PE of the Dow and the S&P 500 has come down about the same amount we're now looking at 19.2 forward earnings we're up around 21.5 that's a significant drop in valuation and if you're gonna go look at 2027 earnings estimate you're trading at just 17.5 times

So I guess we're seeing in real time, Barry, on the world stage, the art of the deal.

You know, I mean, you come in with a, if you're going to buy something, you come in with a ridiculously low ball offer. And if you're going to sell something, you come in with a ridiculously high, high ball price. And that seems to be the game that Trump plays. And in the meantime, the market's caught in the middle. He said, but it won't be zero. Okay.

We've really narrowed it down, Barry. It's going to be somewhere between zero and substantially lower than 145%, all right? So we're seeing the art of the deal played out in real time here. And we haven't heard any kind of a counteroffer yet from she yet.

But, you know, it was Bessent that got this whole thing rolling yesterday. It was revealed that U.S. Secretary Scott Bessent told the closed-door investor summit that he expects the tariff turmoil with China, the situation will de-escalate as the situation is unsustainable. Okay, well, yeah, 145% tariffs.

That's the understatement of the year, that that's unsustainable. Something has to give. But at least, I guess the parameters have been set, if anything. The president and the administration are setting the stage for a deal with China. This came from Carolyn Leavitt, you know, who's the press secretary. She says things are happening in the background.

So anyways, that's where we stand right now with the elephant in the room, China. Now, in the interim, we've still got other countries to deal with. The U.K., the U.S. aims to negotiate with the U.K. a steep drop in automotive tariffs. Right now, they charge a 10% tariff on our cars bought in the U.K., and the U.S. is shooting for 2.5%. So I know the auto industry is all in a tizzy today.

and fretting a lot. But at the end of the day, they may have a lot better deal than they had before. If you can get a 10% tariff down to 2.5%, that's good for everybody.

And, of course, yesterday, you know, was the fact that over in India, Vance is negotiating for very low tariffs on Amazon and Walmart's online service, opening up one of the biggest markets, second biggest market in the world to these two companies. So, I mean, they should be rooting Trump on and his team because they're getting good to get markets open to them that they're

were very difficult on them before, all right?

And nothing has given. The most important thing, as you've mentioned in the past, the most important thing is that they're talking, right? Yeah, they're talking. They're having these meetings. And they're bringing up individual companies, right? I mean, in individual industries, they're out there fighting for each one of these industries, trying to open these markets up to the U.S. In the meantime, it doesn't help Europe that they record a big trade surplus of $24 billion in February. Right.

So China has a huge trade surplus. India has a huge trade surplus. Europe has a huge trade surplus. So the negotiations, there's a lot of room there to negotiate when they're carrying such heavy trade surpluses. Europe's trade surplus in February was $24 billion. And, of course, we run a giant trade deficit. So

Right now, the pinball trading machine is on tilt, big time, you know, towards our competitors. And Trump is trying to, and in the meantime, bells are going off and whistles are going off and the market's swooning. But you know what?

When all is said and done, and we have a lot on this today, it comes back to earnings. And the earnings picture is very, very solid so far. And we've got a lot of companies reporting today. We'll be right back. I can't blow. They call me free. I can't blow. I can't blow.

And welcome back here to the second quarter of today's Best Docs Now show. Well, you know, there's evidence coming out of China that they are feeling the heat.

And that's why Besant, I'm sure we've got plenty of boots on the ground in China measuring their economy and the impact that the tariff war is having on them. Chinese e-commerce platforms including Alibaba, which by the way, their e-commerce platforms are trading at eight to nine times earnings right now. That's how discounted the Chinese market is because of this current situation.

But their e-commerce platforms, including Alibaba, PDD, JD.com, are set to end the practice of refunding customers without requiring the return of goods. I didn't know they had that practice, Barry.

I mean, you could order something really nice from PDD, Alibaba, or JD and say, you know what, it just doesn't look right to me. You don't have to send it back. They'll send you another one. I guess it's got to be defective or something. Or on the other hand, so much of their manufacturing is not very good, not very good high quality products.

that they just send you another one. It's a lot cheaper than sending the old one back and getting it fixed, right? Yeah, I mean, I've seen even things, ordering things every once in a while on Amazon where it's like, you know, going to return it, and they tell you, just keep it. Just keep it. But that's been their practice, you know. I mean, that's the exception with us rather than the rule. And I can just tell you, boots on the ground, right?

You know, I have with my grandchildren a little model railroad, right? O-Gage and two. I got a second locomotive, steam locomotive that chuffs and puffs and pretty neat, actually. Second one, defective. Both of them made in China. One from MTH and the other from Lionel. Lionel does have some of their locomotives made in China. Both of them right out of the box, defective, okay, and had to be sent back.

So, you know, there's that too. India mulls zero tariffs on Harley Davidson bikes. Okay, so there's another example of fighting for industry. You know, how, I don't know. I can't really vision people in India driving big choppers around. But, hey, you know, maybe. But zero tariffs is what they're going for over there. You know, right now it's like 100% tariff.

MoDi's administration is considering scrapping import duties on motorcycles with engine capacities of 750cc and more, primarily benefiting Harley-Davidson. Interesting. Okay, so it's pretty interesting. They've been struggling, Harley-Davidson, here recently. And J.D. Vance is on a four-day trip to India. He's there. India seems to really be coming around right now.

Now, Beijing's not done, you know, planting their feet in the sand either. They're asking South Korea not to supply rare earth minerals to the U.S. Well, China is threatening, you know, our trading partners to not cooperate with the U.S. or there will be a problem.

But I doubt that South Korea is going to listen to China. I don't know. But rare earth seems to be one of the bargaining chips that China has. And you've seen the ramping up here in the U.S. of rare earth, not only excavation out of the ground but processing,

And that does seem to be a big chip that China holds over us. Gold takes a breather after touching $3,500. J.P. Morgan sees $4,000 gold next year. Well, you know what? I don't think J.P. Morgan has been very right about the markets. I mean, they were pretty much calling for doom here recently. And their $4,000 call on gold, I mean, that remains to be seen.

But that's what they're saying. I guess we'll take it, right? We'll take it where we've got a gold position. But, yeah, in terms of forecasting prowess, it hasn't been there for a while. They haven't been very sharp lately. Okay, Oklo. We've owned Oklo in the past. We don't currently own Oklo. That's the small, portable, smaller nuclear reactors. I did not know that the chairman of the board was Sam Altman.

of OpenAI fame. Well, the stock is down today because the chairman of the board is resigning, Sam Altman. I don't know why. Actually, the stock's up 10.4% right now, so I guess he clarified his position there. It was down 13.5%. That's why you don't want to do anything in the aftermarket between the time the market closed

uh and uh and and the time that the market opens the u.s auto industry warns about the damaging impact of tariffs on consumers and employees well yes okay and we'll be headed to detroit i'm sure we'll be hearing plenty from them after cleveland after lakewood forest and then or lakewood ranch i'm sorry and then

Out to Bloomfield Hills, we'll be hearing from them. But General Motors, Ford, Stellantis, Toyota, O'Reilly, and the auto dealers themselves, you know, the Baker Auto Groups of the world complaining about this. But, you know, it's all being worked on right now, as far as I know. And it will settle down. But they're screaming over there. They're really hurting and want some kind of a relief. In the meantime...

The EU has a cottage industry. You know, they don't need to charge taxes. That's all they need to do is fine the big magnificent seven, the fabulous seven. Today it's Apple. They're getting a 500 million. That's just half a billion fine.

And META gets a $200 million penalty in the European Union. You know, the European Union is suffocating. It's a suffocating environment to run a business, to open a business. The regulations there for an American company to run a business, they have a commission for everything. They have a regulator for everything.

And they come up with some reason. You know, you owe us $500 million and you better not do it again. It's almost like

It's almost like doing business with the mafia in Chicago or something, right? Well, it's that old adage that we've talked about where the U.S. innovates, China replicates, and the EU regulates. Not a good situation. Okay, I would say that the biggest earnings story of the day is

And it wasn't a very good earnings report, but the stock is up 6.9% today, and that's Tesla. And looking at a chart of Tesla, it has built a pretty firm bottom there. You can look at that thing. A couple of things here. I thought the earnings report was dismal, and I think that the prospects for Tesla are pretty tough right now.

Now, if they can get this situation with the tariffs resolved, that would help them. Also, the backlash against Elon Musk has been pretty bad, but he's about done with his doge.

or volunteer assignment that he took on. And when we come back, we'll talk a little bit about that and why the stock is up 7.1% right now, and that's helping to propel the NASDAQ. We'll be right back. I don't understand anymore

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. I'm the instigator because there's something in me.

And welcome back here to the second half of today's Best Docs Now show. Here's the reason why I think Tesla is up. Here's what Elon had to say. He says, if we execute well, I think Tesla will be the most valuable company in the world by far. Well, he's got a ways to go. He's got to pass Microsoft and video. I mean, I think Microsoft...

over $3 trillion. He said it may be as valuable as the next five companies combined. Well, now you're talking $20 trillion, somewhere in that neighborhood, I suppose. I don't know, $10 trillion.

So good old Elon, he can talk it up. We'll get to Kathy Wood's evaluation soon enough, it sounds like. She agrees with him. Didn't she say $5,000? Yes, and then others say Tesla cannot make an operating profit without tax credits on their higher value vehicles. So how are they going to make money selling a lower priced car? That's a good question.

And Tesla has always been a stock that carries a very lofty valuation and a lot of short interest. And I think you're seeing a lot of that short interest coming out here today in this stock. He loves to get the short. You know, him and Trump are kind of two of a kind, really, aren't they? You know, yeah.

They both got pretty big mouths, okay, stating next month Musk will be allocating a day or two per week. And, you know, that's another thing. I'm just going to say he said he would find a trillion dollars in waste. And when he was at the cabinet meeting here a few weeks ago, it was $150 billion. That's a far cry from the trillion, and he's winding down his work here.

Is there another $850 billion out there? I don't know. But the stock is re-energized today. ASML plans up to 10% share repurchase program. You know, I was looking at that stock yesterday. It qualifies for the relative value fund big time. It's trading at just 21 times forward earnings when it's traded at 45 to 50 times earnings.

What does ASM do? They make the equipment that is absolutely necessary to build NVIDIA chips. Yeah, but it's so hard just because, like we mentioned in the last segment about regulation, being a European-based company. They are out of the Netherlands. Taxes-wise, there's a reason why, right? I think that it's got that.

you know, kind of knock down multiple, if you will. But it's certainly a compelling play, and it's something you have to have in that chip space. I mean, you have to have the chip-making equipment to do it. Yep. Now, in my mind, about two weeks ago, I saw Boeing come down and do a double bottom.

That's when a stock hits a level, this time around 137, 130 in that area. And then it rallied for several months. And then it came down and it hit that bottom again. Remember the Boeing bottom back in...

The COVID year, and it worked. I mean, it was. It was a great barometer. Boeing is a member of the Dow. Well, Boeing recently hit that 130 level again, bounced off of there, and guess what? It is up 7.6% today. They seem to be back on track.

Of course, China refused a few deliveries, but Malaysia gobbled them up, and I think Australia or someone else said if you don't take them, we'll take them, or maybe it was India. Boeing is hitting 175 today. So you've had a, let's see, 50, you've had about a 40% move in Boeing in the last three weeks today.

And, of course, a member of the Dow. And they beat earnings estimates. Their revenue came in at $19.5 billion. They missed a little bit, but their earnings, they were expected to lose quite a bit this quarter. They only lost $0.49. That beat the consensus by $0.81. And the stock is in big-time rally mode today. And that, of course, helps the Dow increase.

AT&T rises after subscription ads, top estimates, company to resume buyback in Q2. Now, you know, I mean, everything eventually goes out the window. Earnings trump everything, even Trump himself. Eventually, the market comes back to earnings.

And I have not seen any adjustments to earnings hardly at all. And I've seen very few warnings so far on the tariff impacts, unless it's a company that is, you know, directly in the line of tariffs.

that has a big overseas market, especially selling to China, and that would be Apple, Tesla, and a few others that have big markets and depend on China for half their sales or a third of their sales or whatever. But I think the warnings have been kind of underwhelming, really. There have not been that many warnings.

And you've got AT&T, which is a Dow stock, up 1% today. Earnings, earnings, earnings. And if that's not enough, we saw GE have a very good day yesterday. That's the aerospace division of GE. Today, the energy division of GE has reported. GE Vernova.

which has been all over the map recently. Are we going to really turn to nuclear or not? How long is it off in the future? It looks to me like it's 2030 before any new nuclear comes online. This is 2025. That's quite a ways down the road. You don't just build a nuclear power plant overnight. And that has cooled me off a little bit. And there's been a little bit of backing off of the data center need. I mean, for a while there, you thought...

Gee, I mean, the data centers are going to get ahead of the energy supply here. We're going to be in a real mess. And, you know, you've seen the move to coal recently, refiring some of the coal plants. And, of course, liquid natural gas is there to help out with the pinch and nuclear down the road. But GE Vernova is up 7.2% today. That's a pretty good report.

Their sales were only up 5%, but their earnings are up 140% year over year. That's what you call flowing to the bottom line. They did something to get the margins up there today. Okay, Philip Morris International, which is becoming smokeless.

So I guess that means, does that mean all these vape shops with the ugly neon signs and, I mean, just like eyesores? Is that, I guess that's what Philip Morris has gone to here and chewing tobacco and all that. I got behind a guy at Circle K.

He bought like 20 packs of chewing tobacco. I don't know if he's selling it on the side or he should talk to Tony Gwynn Jr. Where's it from? Is it word about territory? It must be from here. I don't know. But how do you chew that much tobacco? Tony Gwynn Sr. died of lip cancer because he chewed tobacco and he died in his late 50s.

And Tony Gwynn Jr., I'm sure, does not chew tobacco. But anyways, Philip Morris International Rallies. That's PM. My father painted the Marlboro Man on giant billboards across the country in many stadiums, Dallas, Irving, Texas Stadium. I mean, several of the stadiums and some of the largest billboards in America on the Dan Ryan Expressway.

Down in Palm Beach, Florida. I mean, all over the world. A lot of them in Chicago. Philip Morris. I've seen that Marlboro artwork. I should have saved some of that beautiful artwork from Leo Burnett advertising. It was gorgeous. And I think we just tossed it when we were done with it. It's one of the most successful campaigns ever. Yes. And I have a picture of my father standing with the four Marlboro men. They were on a shoot up near Bishop.

California, where they did a shoot with the guys with their lassos and all this and that. And, of course, I mean, eventually cigarette advertising was banned. I mean, the back of Sports Illustrated was always the Marlboro man, the sports arenas, the stadiums. You kick a field goal, and there's the Marlboro billboard right there. Yeah, the Winston Cup. Yes. Not anymore. NASCAR before, right?

But Philip Morris is hitting a new high. What can I say? Which kind of surprises me, you know, with the backlash against tobacco over the last decade. Their sales were up 6%, earnings were up 13%, and they pay a dividend yield of 3.2%. The stock hits a new all-time high, $265 billion, a quarter of a trillion, headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut.

I bet you didn't know that. I don't think they've got any cowboys, do they, in Stanford, Connecticut? Altria, however, that must be the tobacco one. It's headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. Now that's tobacco country there, I suppose. Okay, when we come back, we're going to take a look underneath the surface of the market. We're also going to look at SAP and some of these software stocks which are flying today. We'll be right back.

All right. Let's take a look. Well, a couple more earnings reports here. I like the report out of Brazil's.

Embraer, which makes smaller jets, Embraer is up 4.5%. So it's going up along with Boeing, which is up 7.5%. We do own Embraer. Norfolk Southern Railroad, which is a good indicator of the economy, is up 2.45% after reporting earnings today.

And Vertiv, a small little data center stock, which has been a pretty hot stock in the past, definitely associated with AI. And it would definitely qualify as a possible relative value stock, trading at just 20 times forward earnings. It's up 13.3% today, VRT.

after earnings okay now as we look inside the s&p 500 i gotta believe there's some short covering today especially after monday's big thousand point drop or 900 point drop or whatever it ended up being uh you've got some big winners today and they're probably heavily shorted stocks amphinol

which is in the chip business. The chip stocks are rallying in rally mode. They've been under a big, big cloud with all of this licensing and tariff war and everything going on. And I think it was in Besson's comments yesterday to the industry leaders, different industries, that it's going to be resolved today.

The sector that rallied the most after his comments were the chip sector. And Amphenol is definitely in the chip industry. It's up 11.8% today, biggest winner in the S&P 500. AI stocks, super microcomputer to the rescue. SMCI is up 11.3% today.

How about Westinghouse Airbrakes, which every time you hear a train come to a stop and all the squealing and everything. Wabtec, it's up 10.1% today. And then you finally get to a big-name tech stock, Palantir. Look at the chart on Palantir. Oh, man, that's a good-looking chart. Wow, isn't it?

The volume has been building. That was my number one pick for this year. It's been a roller coaster ride, but it's certainly a lot higher than where it began the year at.

I think. Well, and they're in the right space. I mean, they're in the right areas of the market. Everywhere. There's a reason why they've got an elevated multiple, because they're where people want to be. Well, on January the 1st, the stock was trading at, let's see here, about $70.

Ah, 1231. It was trading at 75, and it's 102 today. So that's not a bad pick. You know, I mean, it's up 25% or more. Well, the NASDAQ's in negative territory, and that's a huge breakout today out of a sideways trend.

Palantir PLTR is up 9.3%. Wow. Nice move. That's a bit of a double bottom, too. You see, I mean, it touched that 75 range twice. And since it's bounced from now we're at 102. Yep, not bad. It's touched that 70. That 75 has been pretty solid support. It's up there, one of our largest positions. Okay, now let's see.

Quanta, which builds power, it's up 8.1%. I think they reported earnings today. ServiceNow, big jump there. It's up 8.1%. I know another cybersecurity stock reported today. It was Checkpoint Systems out of Israel.

And that set the cybersecurity stocks on fire. Tesla is a big winner today, up 7.7%, member of the S&P 500. Boeing is up 7.5% today. Amazon, a member of the S&P 500, up 7.4%. And I think there's been some heavy short selling taking place in these stocks recently. AMD.

It's up 7%. A lot of short sellers caught there in the middle of a big rally in AMD today. Raytheon up 7%. Intel, which is laying off 20% of its staff, it's up 6.9% on that news. Man, I'll tell you what, they've got the new CEO. Let's see if he can turn that thing around. Maybe he's a turnaround expert like the guy that came into GE a few years back.

If we look at the Dow today, the biggest winner there has got to be Boeing. Boeing is up. No, Amazon's the biggest winner, 7.2% today. Wow. Boeing up 7.2%. Raytheon up 7%. American Express up 5.5%. And then you've got Nvidia up 5.1% today.

So that's good news for NVIDIA. And on the downside, Procter & Gamble. You know, they're leaving now gold.

The money's leaving gold for now. The money's leaving these big consumer staples for now, like Procter & Gamble and Verizon and Johnson & Johnson, etc., and chasing NVIDIA and chasing Palantir. The pendulum swings back and forth. In the meantime, we've just sat and rode through it.

I've just come to the conclusion in this environment that's the best way to handle this. It's going to be painful. There's going to be some big up days. There's going to be some big down days. But nothing's really changed with the earnings picture. That's the bottom line for me. And so I've just decided, man, I'll tell you what, buying inverse funds in this environment can be hazardous to your wealth big time. The Surgeon General's warning.

So buying inverse ETFs with Trump as president can be very hazardous. Okay, we've got broadcoms happening. As you mentioned, in a news-driven market, I mean, that is... There's no way. You mentioned it. I think you used that term in your note either this morning or yesterday. But yeah, news-driven... Breaking news. Not just news, breaking news, right? You don't want to be on the wrong side of that.

or you get run over by a freight train. Okay, last but not least, Meta is up 5.7% and Broadcom up 6.0%. Okay, I'm done talking. We're done talking.

If you'd like to reserve a spot in Cleveland, I'm going to have the exact date tomorrow. I have it on my calendar, a Tuesday and a Wednesday in Cleveland, appointments all day long. And it's going to be somewhere downtown, either the Hyatt or the Marriott, one of those big hotels downtown. That's what we've decided on.

Give us a call at 855-611-BEST to reserve a spot and to set an appointment with us. That same number over the phone, over Zoom, 855-611-BEST to get four free weeks of the trial. There's some bargains out there right now. Go to GundersenCapital.com, GundersenCapital.com. Have a great day, everybody.

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