Got $3,000? Buy These 5 Stocks for the New Bull Market
What a truly wild time to be an investor. In mid-February, following an 11-year bull market, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic pushed equities off a veritable cliff, resulting in the fastest descent into bear market territory in history, as well as a peak 34% decline in the S&P 500 in just 33 calendar days.
Yet fast-forward 10 weeks and you'll find that the S&P 500 has regained nearly three-quarters of what's been lost. In fact, discussion on Wall Street has shifted from wondering whether we'd retest the lows set on March 23 to what stocks should be bought in the brand-new bull market.
If you have, say, $3,000 in disposable cash available for investment (i.e., cash you won't need for bills or emergencies), consider buying into these five
Palo Alto Networks
Arguably one of the most exciting trends for the new bull market (and beyond) is cybersecurity. To be clear, cybersecurity was already important well before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the need to have employees work remotely has only elevated the importance of cloud-based cybersecurity solutions. That's why Palo Alto Networks (NYSE: PANW) is a company
In recent years, Palo Alto
This is also a company that's not afraid to make big investments in its cloud-protection solutions. Palo Alto's management team has not been shy about curtailing very near-term profit growth if it means more cloud-protection market share over the long run.
Teladoc Health
Similar to a lot of big trends brought to the forefront by the coronavirus pandemic,
During the first quarter, which only accounted for a relatively small portion of the time people were asked to stay at home by their respective governors, Teladoc Health saw visits from subscribing members rise 93%, with fee-only visits in the U.S. catapulting 263%!
There's no question that COVID-19 is driving visits through Teladoc's platform. But the fact is that time constraints on physicians coupled with patients' desire for a more personalized and convenient experience makes Teladoc Health's solutions
Square
There's a really good chance we're going to be talking about financial technology a lot following the COVID-19 pandemic. Though we were already seeing fintech disrupt traditional financial services prior to the coronavirus, the demand for personalization and improved convenience in the financial space is going to drive companies like Square (NYSE: SQ) considerably higher in the new bull market.
Even though you probably know Square best for its point-of-sale solutions or perhaps its lending platform, the
Of course, we can't overlook the seller ecosystem, which is
Trupanion
Another thing the COVID-19 pandemic has taught the American public is the importance of having health insurance. With most folks not having nearly enough in savings to cover an emergency, the health insurance industry is liable to see a steady boost in demand in the years to come.
However, it's not just people that need to be insured. The American Pet Products Association finds that 42.7 million U.S. households own a cat, and another 63.4 million own a dog. Yet
Despite clear economic hardships during the first quarter, Trupanion's subscription pet enrollment rose by 14% from the prior-year period, with total enrolled pets up by 25% to north of 687,000. Nearly all pet owners in the U.S.
Amazon
Finally, if you don't already own a stake in e-commerce giant Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), you might want to consider changing that.
The coronavirus pandemic has shown us the importance of online shopping, and I doubt we're going to see this demand for retail convenience ebb much once the COVID-19 crisis is over. Depending on your preferred source, Amazon
But the reason you'll want to own Amazon for the new bull market is due to its role as an infrastructure cloud play via Amazon Web Services (AWS). Cloud services are responsible for much better margins than the retail and ad-based revenue that Amazon generates from its core operations. This means that as AWS grows into a larger percentage of total sales,
10 stocks we like better than Amazon
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