The Nasdaq-100 plunged earlier this year following the Liberation Day tariffs, sinking into a bear market. Over the past few weeks, however, the index has come roaring back and now sits less than 5% below the peak it hit in February.
While the economy still remains uncertain as trade negotiations play out and consumer sentiment has weakened substantially, there are several good buys in the index of the 100 most valuable Nasdaq stocks.
Keep reading to see two Nasdaq-100 stocks I’d buy without hesitation.
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1. The Trade Desk
Share prices of The Trade Desk (TTD -3.27%) plunged earlier this year after the ad tech company missed its fourth-quarter guidance. Management was direct with investors about the miss, saying it was due to a few internal errors and delays, rather than competition or a structural change in the market.
The company redeemed itself in its first-quarter earnings report, blowing past estimates. Revenue jumped 25% year over year to $616 million, ahead of estimates at $575.3 million.
The Trade Desk has been a longtime outperformer on the stock market, and the company has several competitive advantages as the leading independent demand-side platform in ad tech. It’s invested significantly in AI, and two-thirds of its customers are now using its Kokai AI platform, with the majority of its customer spend now going through Kokai. The technology has the power to look across roughly 17 million ad opportunities per second, and management believes it will be the most powerful buying platform the advertising industry has ever seen by the end of the year.
The ad tech platform also appears to be in an advantageous position as pressure builds on Alphabet‘s Google, whose “walled garden” commands a large share of ad spend that demand-side platforms like The Trade Desk don’t get to participate in.
Google has been declared an illegal monopoly in U.S. District Court for both search and ad tech, and the company could face a significant fine, forced divestitures, or a breakup. A setback for Google should favor The Trade Desk.
Over the long term, The Trade Desk seems well-positioned to take advantage of tailwinds in the digital advertising market and deliver strong growth. Even after the recent rebound, the stock is down 46%, offering plenty of room for recovery.
2. Advanced Micro Devices
Like The Trade Desk, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD -1.04%) is also trading down sharply from its peak. The stock was bid up significantly in the earlier stages of the AI boom. While AMD didn’t live up to those expectations back then, the business is thriving now, and the stock is much cheaper.
Revenue jumped 36% year over year in the first quarter to $7.44 billion, and importantly, its data center segment is taking off, driven in part by AI demand. In the first quarter, data center revenue jumped 57% to $3.7 billion, driven by growth of EPYC CPU and Instinct GPU chips.
AMD’s momentum also seems to be building in other areas. It signed a $10 billion collaboration deal with Humain, a Saudi Arabian AI company. It also acquired ZT Systems and sold off the infrastructure business, retaining its engineers, which should better position it to compete in the data center market, according to analysts, and Elon Musk said his XAi startup was planning to buy “a lot” of GPUs from AMD and Nvidia.
In addition, AMD announced a $6 billion share repurchase authorization, showing it’s prepared to take advantage of any discounts or sell-offs in the stock.
After the pullback over the past year, AMD now trades at a forward P/E of under 30 based on adjusted earnings. For a company that’s emerging as a clear winner from the AI boom, that looks like a great price.
Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Jeremy Bowman has positions in Advanced Micro Devices, Nvidia, and The Trade Desk. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Nvidia, and The Trade Desk. The Motley Fool recommends Nasdaq. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.