Stock Market

Cheap Stocks, Nervous Market, Big Opportunity: Where to Put $10,000 Right Now


While the market is now trading near all-time highs, it’s been a volatile year for stocks thus far in 2026. Between a war, tariffs, and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI), there have been a lot of things for investors to be nervous about. However, there are still some great opportunities out there in stocks that are still trading at attractive valuations.

If you have $10,000 to invest right now for the long term, I’d split that between Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META). Both are market leaders that have embraced AI to help fuel growth. Let’s dig into why these are two top growth stocks to buy now.

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Amazon: The e-commerce and cloud leader

While Amazon’s stock has shown some life with a nice rally this spring, the stock has lagged the market over the past five years despite solid growth. This has left the stock trading at an attractive forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 31 times. That’s one of its lower multiples historically, and well below that of brick-and-mortar rivals Walmart and Costco Wholesale, which trade at forward P/Es of 40 times or more.

Despite trading at a discount, Amazon still has the better business model. The company is at the forefront of robotics and AI, which are helping it drive efficiency gains and huge operating leverage in its retail operations. This was on full display in the first quarter of 2026, when Amazon’s North American segment saw a 43% surge in operating income on a 12% increase in sales.

At the same time, Amazon is also the cloud computing market share leader. This is the company’s most profitable and fastest-growing segment, and it’s seeing strong, accelerating revenue growth driven by strong demand for compute and AI services. Amazon also has a strong chip business, with its Trainium AI accelerators and Graviton central processing units. This is a $20 billion run-rate business, or $50 billion when including internal use. Having its own chips gives Amazon a cost advantage, and its Graviton CPUs position it well for agentic AI.

As the market leader in two strong businesses, Amazon is a stock to buy and hold for the long term.

Amazon and Meta logos.
Image source: The Motley Fool.

Meta Platforms: The AI flywheel

Meta’s stock has underperformed this year as investors fret over the company’s AI infrastructure spending. However, few companies have demonstrated the ability to use AI to drive growth in their core businesses as Meta has.



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