The stock market drawdown has opened up several investment opportunities, but few are more attractive than The Trade Desk (NASDAQ: TTD) right now. Some unfortunate timing hit the stock, and it has actually been hit by two sell-offs in a row, which has made the stock much cheaper than it has been in some time.

The Trade Desk's growth runway is massive, and if you don't buy shares of this top-tier company, you'll regret it years down the road.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

The Trade Desk is bigger than it was the last time it was valued at this level

The Trade Desk has been a rock-solid performer for its entire life on the public markets. It had never missed management revenue guidance but failed to meet those expectations in the fourth quarter. As a result, the stock plummeted more than 30% after it reported Q4 results on Feb. 12. That was just a few days before the S&P 500 notched its last all-time high before the stock market moved lower.

As a result, the already beaten-down stock fell even further, leading to the current point where The Trade Desk is down 65% from its all-time high. You'd have to rewind back to January 2023 to see the last time the stock traded this low, but investors need to ask themselves: Is The Trade Desk a far better company than it was in January 2023?

Part of the reason The Trade Desk missed its revenue guidance was its transition from one platform to another. The Trade Desk's primary product is a software platform that helps ad buyers (companies with a product or service to advertise) place their ads in the most optimal locations. The Trade Desk may not have access to some areas of the Internet, like Facebook or Google, but it does have reach into important areas like podcasts and connected TV.

The 100% transition from its old Solimar platform to its new Kokai platform caused some issues, which is why The Trade Desk missed revenue expectations. Over the long term, this will be a much better platform for the company and its clients because Kokai is an AI-based platform that can adjust ad campaigns based on the data that it sees instantly.

Another reason why The Trade Desk dropped was that it gave fairly mundane Q1 guidance, with revenue only expected to grow 17%. We'll find out the true growth rate when The Trade Desk reports on May 8, but I expect them to exceed this projection. After a revenue miss, management wants a guaranteed win, so "underguiding" for Q1 so it can get back on track seems like a wise move.

But even if The Trade Desk just meets expectations, the stock looks like a great value here.

The stock looks like a strong buy at these levels

After the sell-off, The Trade Desk's stock is starting to look extremely attractive, especially considering its market value at the start of 2025.

TTD PE Ratio (Forward) data by YCharts

Though 27 times forward earnings isn't cheap, it has a massive growth runway, especially as society transitions from linear to connected TV. Wall Street analysts expect 17% revenue growth in 2025 and 20% in 2026, so the stock is clearly expected to put up market-beating growth.

The market was willing to pay a sky-high premium for the stock heading into the new year, but a revenue miss and a market-wide sell-off caused the stock to plummet to lows not seen for a long time. This seems like the perfect opportunity to scoop up an industry leader for cheap and hold onto the stock for three to five years as the recovery begins.

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Keithen Drury has positions in The Trade Desk. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends The Trade Desk. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Although the market rebounded sharply on Wednesday on news that President Trump was pausing tariffs and only levying a flat 10% rate, except for China, the Nasdaq is still in a bear market. Bear markets start when an index drops 20% from its all-time high and technically remain in bear market status until a new all-time high is reached, which then kicks off a bull market.

Regardless of the technical definition of a bear market, there are still plenty of bargains to be scooped up right now, and I think investors should still be buying. Two near the top of my list of best buys are Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and The Trade Desk (NASDAQ: TTD). Investors received a pop on Wednesday, and these are fantastic buys that should be great investments over the next three to five years.

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Amazon

While most people view Amazon as a potential casualty of the trade war with China due to the large amount of goods sourced from China on its e-commerce site, I think that's the wrong way to view the stock.

Although e-commerce is the way most people understand and interact with Amazon, it's far from the best reason to own the stock. Amazon has multiple segments, ranging from its online stores to advertising services to its cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services (AWS). It's well documented that retailers don't have huge profit margins, but ancillary segments like advertising services and AWS do. Both of these segments won't be as affected as the commerce division should the price of goods from China rise.

Amazon derives a lot of its profits from these two divisions, which is why I think right now is a great opportunity to buy the stock. Investors are worried about the segment that doesn't matter as much to Amazon's bottom line.

In 2024, AWS made up 58% of Amazon's operating profit despite only making up 17% of sales. While we don't know what operating margin its ad services posted, a 20% operating margin isn't out of the question, especially if you consider what margins an advertising-focused company (like Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META)) puts up. If we use that 20% margin as a baseline, we can estimate that advertising brought in $11.2 billion compared to the $68.6 billion Amazon generated companywide.

Remember, that's a conservative estimate, so the actual figure is likely much higher than that.

Amazon's ad business and AWS will be fine regardless of what happens with the tariffs. With these two generating the lion's share of Amazon's operating profit, I think now is an excellent time to buy the stock.

The Trade Desk

The Trade Desk stock has been pummeled in 2025. It's down over 50% this year, partially from self-inflicted issues and partially from a marketwide sell-off. The Trade Desk is another ad company on the buy side of the ad market. It helps its clients find the most opportune spot to place their ads on the internet and has a strong foothold in an emerging space: connected TV.

This has allowed The Trade Desk to post phenomenal growth rates over its life as a public company, but it had its first slip-up on the public markets. It missed fourth-quarter revenue guidance for the first time in company history and gave a bit of a weak first-quarter outlook. This caused the stock to sell off over 30% in one day. This decline happened before the marketwide sell-off, so the pressure from that general selling drove the stock down even further. Now, it trades at a level it hasn't been at since before 2020.

TTD PS Ratio data by YCharts

Although The Trade Desk missed expectations and guidance, it's still expected to grow revenue at an 18% pace in 2025 and 20% in 2026. This makes it an excellent stock to scoop up right now, as it's one of the top bargains in the stock market.

Should you invest $1,000 in Amazon right now?

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John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Keithen Drury has positions in Amazon and The Trade Desk. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Meta Platforms, and The Trade Desk. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

With the return of market volatility, anxiety levels are rising for retirement savers, but if you're not going to be tapping into your savings for many years, there's no reason to worry. Stock market dips are historically the best time to invest, because lower share prices allow you to gain more of a company's earnings, which leads to great returns when the markets recover.

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1. Meta Platforms

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) is coming off a year of strong growth as it continued to invest in artificial intelligence (AI) to bring more personalization to its social media platforms. The company is set for strong growth yet trades at a reasonable 24 times earnings.

Meta Platforms spends billions on technology every year to support the growth of its apps, and importantly, AI. More than 700 million monthly active users have tried its Meta AI assistant, and management expects that number to grow to 1 billion in 2025.

Meta AI is quickly scaling into one of the most used AI assistants. The growing adoption highlights the advantage the company has with more than 3.3 billion people using its services every day across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads.

This large user base drives substantial advertising revenues. Last year, Meta Platforms earned $62 billion of net income on $164 billion of revenue, with the top line growing 22%. Other than Meta AI, the company also offers professional AI tools that improve ad targeting across its family of apps, which is benefiting the business. Over the long term, Meta could discover new revenue streams from offering premium AI services that pads the company's bottom line.

Analysts expect Meta to deliver 16% annualized earnings growth in the coming years. While no one has a crystal ball for the stock in the near term, investors that buy shares today should see returns that roughly follow the underlying growth of the business from here.

2. The Trade Desk

The Trade Desk (NASDAQ: TTD) is a leading digital ad-buying platform that is benefiting from the growth in digital advertising -- a market valued at $800 billion and growing.

A small revenue miss compared to expectations last quarter sent the stock plummeting, but nothing has changed the company's competitive position or long-term opportunity, which means investors have a great opportunity to buy shares on the cheap.

Ad agencies and brands love The Trade Desk because it offers a wide range of ad inventory, and it offers the technology to make profitable ad-buying decisions. For example, its Kokai AI platform can quickly sort through millions of ad impressions every second to help advertisers find the right deal. Better pricing, targeting, and ad performance is helping The Trade Desk gain more clients.

The Trade Desk generates revenue by charging a fee of the total amount its customers spend on ads and other services. Revenue grew 26% to $2.4 billion in 2024, and the business earned a healthy profit margin of 16%.

Connected TV continues to be one of biggest opportunities, where The Trade Desk has valuable partnerships with Roku and Disney. The connected TV ad market is estimated to reach $46 billion by 2026, according to Statista, providing tremendous upside for the company.

Revenue is expected to grow 18% this year, yet the stock is trading at its lowest valuation in years. Analysts expect earnings to reach $3.89 by 2028, which makes the current share price of around $50 look like a bargain. Investors that take advantage of the sell-off are likely looking at handsome gains down the road.

Should you invest $1,000 in Meta Platforms right now?

Before you buy stock in Meta Platforms, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Meta Platforms wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $495,226!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $679,900!*

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*Stock Advisor returns as of April 10, 2025

Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. John Ballard has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Meta Platforms, Roku, The Trade Desk, and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

When the market starts to tumble, more aggressive investors often start looking for bargains in the list of previous top performers. For example, American Express has fallen nearly 30% from its early-year highs. But its yield is only around 1.4% even after that stiff drop. At the other extreme, investors sometimes reach for yield with a company like AGNC Investment, which is down nearly 20% from its peak and yields a huge 16%. But AGNC's dividend history includes repeated dividend cuts.

It would be better for income investors to stick with their core approach. Buying popular stocks that have sold off, but not enough to give them an attractive yield (like American Express), or ultra-high-yield stocks with unreliable dividend histories (like AGNC) could be a setup for disappointment. It is far better to stick with reliable high-yield stocks that are likely to keep rewarding investors even in a market downturn or recession -- like this trio, with yields up to 6%.

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Image source: Getty Images.

1. UDR's core business is a basic necessity

UDR (NYSE: UDR) is a real estate investment trust (REIT), just like AGNC Investment. Only AGNC Investment is a mortgage REIT, a fairly complex type of REIT, while UDR is a property-owning REIT that focuses on apartments. UDR's dividend yield is an attractive 4.2% and the dividend has been increased for 16 consecutive years. That's in stark contrast to AGNC's dividend, which has been in a downtrend over that entire span.

What's interesting about UDR's business is that housing is a necessity. Bear markets and recessions don't change the need for having a roof over one's head. On top of that, this apartment landlord has one of the most diversified portfolios in the apartment REIT sector, with operations in coastal markets and in the sunbelt, in urban and suburban locations, and with both A and B quality assets. With a downtrend in construction of new apartments in UDR's markets expected to last until late 2026, this high-yield landlord appears well positioned to weather the current market and economic turbulence.

2. Toronto-Dominion Bank is out of favor, but still financially strong

Next up is Toronto-Dominion Bank (NYSE: TD), which is usually just called TD Bank. The bank was in its own personal bear market before the S&P 500 started to waver, in stark contrast to fellow financial giant American Express, which was trading near its all-time highs. That's worth noting because American Express has fallen nearly 30% from its 2025 highs while TD Bank is only down around 10%. That difference is largely because so much bad news is already priced into TD Bank's stock.

The bad news is that TD Bank's U.S. operations were used to launder money. It had to pay a large fine, is upgrading its internal controls, and is living under an asset cap in the U.S. market. The asset cap basically limits TD Bank's ability to grow its U.S. operations, which were expected to be the bank's growth engine. This is a black eye for TD Bank, but it isn't a knockout punch. In fact, the Canadian bank increased its dividend 3% after it announced the resolution with U.S. regulators. And once the asset cap is lifted, which could take a few years, U.S. growth will likely resume.

Meanwhile, TD Bank's Canadian operations are unaffected and the bank remains one of the largest and best-positioned financial institutions in that country. Given the downturn in the company's shares that has already happened, this bank giant is a low-risk turnaround that most income investors will probably find appealing. Note, too, that TD Bank didn't cut its dividend during the Great Recession, as did many of its U.S. bank peers, suggesting it's a resilient business even during the worst of times. Its yield is 5.1%.

3. W.P. Carey is a nuanced selection

Net lease REIT W.P. Carey (NYSE: WPC) cut its dividend in 2024 after deciding to exit the office property sector. Investors didn't like that move even though it has made this globally diversified REIT a better company. Notably, the dividend went right back to its quarterly increase cadence following the cut. That's a sign that W.P. Carey is operating from a position of strength and that the office exit was a business reset, not a sign that the REIT was struggling. And the cut clearly wasn't the start of a trend, like the long downturn in AGNC's dividend. W.P. Carey's dividend yield is a lofty 6% or so.

What's interesting here is that Wall Street has been in a show-me state of mind with W.P. Carey since the cut. And now, as 2025 has moved along, the mood among investors has become broadly negative. And yet the cash from the office exit allowed W.P. Carey to invest in new assets, a large portion of which were bought in late 2024. The financial benefits from those assets are going to start showing up this year. Since most investors aren't likely to be looking for W.P. Carey's return to growth in a bear market, the high-yield REIT remains an attractive bargain.

Don't change your approach in a downturn

Market sell-offs create powerful emotions that investors have to control or they risk making less-than-ideal investment decisions. This is the time to stick to your core investment approach, which is likely to mean buying attractive companies with attractive yields, not reaching for yield and potentially jumping in to buy a falling knife. UDR, TD Bank, and W.P. Carey all have strong stories and strong businesses... and the types of dividends and yields that should help you sleep well at night when Wall Street has become a little messy.

Should you invest $1,000 in UDR right now?

Before you buy stock in UDR, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and UDR wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $495,226!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $679,900!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 796% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 155% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of April 10, 2025

American Express is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Reuben Gregg Brewer has positions in Toronto-Dominion Bank and W.P. Carey. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.