The stock market has been largely shaken from the historically abrupt declines that made headlines earlier this year. the Dow Jones Industrial Average only dropped 6%, the S&P 500 is sitting near the equilibrium point, and the NASDAQ it is up about 17% to date.
While it’s unclear what will happen on Wall Street in the near future, one fact is indisputable: Investing in high-quality stocks remains the surest way to generate wealth in the long term.
Assuming you have enough emergency funds to go back and $ 4,000 (or less) that you don’t expect to need in the next three to five years, here are four stocks you could invest in that will stand the test of time and earn you rich in next decade, even in the face of continued uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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1. Facebook: Staying connected in the home age
With new coronavirus diagnoses rising to record levels in this country (and others), many people continue to curl up at home, only occasionally venturing the essentials or breaking the monotony. But that is not changing your desire to keep in touch with family and friends, and one of the biggest beneficiaries of that need to feel connected will continue to be Facebook (NASDAQ: FB).
Every month, 2.6 billion people log into the social media platform, and more than 1.7 billion use it daily. The unmatched network effect created by that vast user system gives Facebook unmatched advantages in its space. Another important data point is that despite scandals and the growing threat of regulatory intervention, Facebook’s actions have been remarkably resistant to external factors, gaining over 57% in 2019.
Facebook’s reach also extends far beyond its eponymous platform, with Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger completing its family of services. Nearly 3 billion people use at least one of those apps every month, and more than 2.3 billion log in daily. And when the pandemic hit, user engagement naturally increased.
It’s also important to remember that the company still has a couple of great untapped revenue opportunities. Ads are common on Facebook and slightly less on Instagram, but the company has just started to exploit the vast advertising potential that exists on WhatsApp or Messenger. Monetizing them offers Facebook an avenue for years of lucrative growth.
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2. PayPal: Help make digital payments the standard
One of the trends that received a significant boost as a result of the pandemic was the shift to digital payments. This was in part the result of increased adoption of e-commerce, but it was also due to the pressing desire for contactless payments, as individuals and companies looked for ways to reduce the chances of customer interactions spreading the coronavirus. No fintech company is better positioned to benefit from that continuous change in consumer behavior than PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL).
The digital payments pioneer was already thriving, but COVID-19 fueled its growth at full speed. PayPal quickly moved to implement QR codes to provide additional contactless payment options.
In the first quarter, PayPal added more than 20 million new net accounts, as its growth rate on that metric increased 17%. This brought his total to 325 million accounts, and that could be just the beginning. The company reported that after the close of the first quarter, it saw dramatic gains in transactions throughout April, and adoption and engagement trends accelerated in May.
“I would say April was probably the strongest month for PayPal since we became a public company,” CEO Dan Schulman said in a May interview with MarketWatch. That strength continued in May as PayPal reported the largest day of transactions in the company’s history, beating the 2019 Black Friday and Cyber Monday results.
Digital payments are the future, and PayPal is helping to bring that future to the present.
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3. Shopify: Bringing Main Street merchants into the e-commerce universe
As widespread as e-commerce seems to have become, it still has a long way to go. In the first quarter, online sales accounted for about 11% of the total retail in the US That’s about three times the percentage they were a decade ago, and growth shows no signs of slowing down. Arguably, no company is better placed to benefit from this change than Shopify (NYSE: SHOP).
As large numbers of shoppers decided to forgo visiting brick and mortar retailers in person to reduce their risk of exposure to the coronavirus, family stores were among the hardest hit. In response, many of those merchants turned to e-commerce for the first time. Shopify specializes in helping those companies make the transition and keep their online operations running smoothly. The company offers turnkey technology solutions for those who are making the leap to online sales, with plans starting at as little as $ 29 a month.
Shopify offers much more than help to build a website. Connects retailers with payment, shipping and logistics solutions, inventory management, analytics, advertising, and even working capital loans.
That was just what the doctor ordered when the pandemic occurred. In April, Shopify reported that it helped thousands of startups get online and said it was generating Black Friday-level traffic on its platform every day.
Thats not all. Between mid-March and the end of April, the number of new stores that joined the Shopify platform grew 62% compared to the previous six weeks, and customers who made purchases from merchants who had never before purchased online increased by Four. Five%.
The growth of e-commerce is just beginning, providing a massive opportunity for Shopify.
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4. Microsoft: cloud computing and much more
When tens of millions of employees left their offices and started working from home at the start of the pandemic, the move to a remote working model posed challenges for many companies. Companies that were able to help smooth that transition positioned themselves to reap the rewards, and one of them was Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). More importantly, the same things that made its shares buy as COVID-19 also made it a compelling option to keep in the long term.
The need to do business doesn’t just stop, even if the work has to be done remotely, and remote work really plays on many of Microsoft’s strengths. Millions use their commercial software products, including Office 365 (now called Microsoft 365) and Dynamics 365, on a day-to-day basis, and their Teams work collaboration platform has become a key tool for many companies in recent months. .
Cloud computing has also become more important than ever. Microsoft’s Azure was experiencing impressive growth even before the pandemic, and that continued in the last reported quarter. Smart cloud segment revenue grew 27% year-over-year, primarily driven by Azure’s 59% earnings (61% excluding currency fluctuations), making this one of the fastest growing areas of the company.
“We have seen two years of digital transformation in two months,” said CEO Satya Nadella. “From teamwork and distance learning, to sales and customer service, to critical cloud infrastructure and security, we are working alongside customers every day to help them adapt and remain open to business in a remote world. ”
With your fingers on everything from day-to-day business to cutting-edge cloud computing, Microsoft is a solid purchase now and for the future.
