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You usually don’t find great companies executing at the top of their game that also happen to be on sale. Stocks that are on sale are more commonly fallen angels, which are great companies that are facing some near-term hardship. From an investment point of view, the goal is to buy the fallen angels that seem likely to earn their wings again.

That is the backstory behind Hormel Foods (NYSE: HRL) right now.

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If you are looking for a dividend growth stock the very first thing to consider here is Hormel’s status as a Dividend King. It has raised its dividend every single year for 58 consecutive years. You don’t build a streak like that without doing something right along the way. And, to focus on dividend growth, the annualized dividend growth rate over the past decade was a huge 11%. That’s over 3 times the historical growth rate of inflation, which means the buying power of Hormel’s dividend has been growing over time.

Also of note, Hormel’s dividend yield is around 3.7% today. That’s much higher than the 1.2% you’d collect from an S&P 500 index fund or even the 2.6% from the average consumer staples stock, using the Consumer Staples Select Sector SPDR as an industry proxy. Hormel’s yield also happens to be near the highest levels in the company’s recent history.

Hormel’s business, meanwhile, is backed by dominant brands focused largely around protein. The list includes, but is not limited to, Hormel, SPAM, Skippy, Planters, Applegate, Jennie-O, and Columbus. Outside of the protein, the company also owns Wholly Guacamole and distributes Herdez. Behind the scenes is the company’s strong position in food service, where it sells pre-cooked meat products. And it has been expanding its portfolio internationally, as well. From a big-picture perspective, there’s a lot to like about Hormel today.

Of course, a company doesn’t end up with a historically high yield for no reason. Hormel’s business makeup is attractive, but it just isn’t hitting on all cylinders today. In the third quarter, the company’s adjusted earnings fell 8%. Sales dropped 2%. And the volume of product it sold was off by 7%. Those are not the types of numbers investors want to see and continue a recent trend of underperformance.

This is why Hormel’s stock price is trading roughly 45% below its five-year high-water mark. The list of problems is fairly long, including difficulty passing on inflation-related cost increases, a slow pandemic recovery in China, avian flu, and a slowdown in the nut segment of the snacking category (which happened right as the company bought Planters). Individually all of these problems are solvable, but all of them at the same time sound pretty bad.

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If you’re looking for a growth stock investor to follow, it’s hard to find one more prolific than Masayoshi Son, the CEO and largest shareholder in Softbank (OTC: SFTBF), a massive diversified holding company based in Japan.

Among Son’s best-known investments are Alibaba, Yahoo, Uber, DoorDash, WeWork, and Arm Holdings (NASDAQ: ARM), in which Softbank owns roughly a 90% stake.

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That investment in Arm, a chip design company that went public last year, has been one of Softbank’s best investments in its history. Softbank took the company private in 2016 for $32 billion, and today that stake is worth roughly $130 billion. The stock has soared since its IPO last September on strong growth from AI-related demand and in the smartphone market.

Son, who had also invested in Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) but regretfully sold his 5% stake in the chip stock back in 2019, now sees more opportunity in the AI sector. Softbank was one of several investors to participate in OpenAI’s latest funding round, investing $500 million into the ChatGPT creator as part of a round that values the start-up at $150 billion.

Son also made a bold statement on the future of AI at a recent conference.

Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative, Son said, “I think Nvidia is undervalued.” He went on to explain that bearish estimates predict that artificial general intelligence (AGI) will only displace 5% of GDP 10 years from now, which is equal to $9 trillion based on expectations of GDP growth.

According to his thinking, that means that there will be $9 trillion in capital expenditures for those chips and data centers and that the AGI running on that infrastructure would be able to generate $9 trillion in revenue a year at a net profit margin of 50%, meaning it would make $4.5 trillion in profit.

Son also said that getting there would require 200 million chips and that it would demand 400 gigawatts, which is more than what the U.S. currently uses in electricity.

That might seem farfetched, but most tech revolutions seem that way beforehand.

The Softbank chief is known just as much for his failures as for his successes. He was a major investor in WeWork before the global coworking business blew up, and he lost $11.5 billion on that investment. In the dot-com bust, he also lost $77 billion in paper wealth at one point, at the time more money than anybody in history had lost.

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Realty Income (NYSE: O) has increased its dividend payout every single year for 30 consecutive years, which is an impressive streak. But Realty Income is a real estate investment trust (REIT), so most investors view it as nothing more than an income stock. It does, indeed, offer a high yield.

But if you change your framework just a little, you’ll see how the stock could be attractive to growth-minded investors, too. Let’s dive in and see why.

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Real estate investment trusts operate under a specific corporate structure that is designed to pass their income on to their investors in a tax-advantaged manner. As long as REITs distribute at least 90% of their taxable income to shareholders through dividends each year, they avoid corporate-level taxation. Most REITs, including Realty Income, own physical properties that they lease out to tenants.

Realty Income uses a net lease model that makes its tenants responsible for most of the property-level costs of the real estate they occupy, like maintenance and taxes. Most of the company’s assets are occupied by single tenants, which means that there’s a higher level of risk with regard to the rents from each individual property.

However, with over 15,400 properties spread across North America and Europe, Realty Income is the world’s largest net lease REIT, so the actual risk to its finances is pretty low. Add in its investment-grade-rated balance sheet and concerns about risk should fade even further.

In fairness, however, most investors correctly see Realty Income as a conservative income investment. At the current share price, its dividend yields an attractive 5.5%, and it has boosted its payouts annually for three decades. The dividend growth rate over that time? About 4.3% a year. That’s great if you are trying to live off of the dividend income your portfolio generates, but it doesn’t really sound like something that growth-minded investors of any kind would appreciate.

Wait, one second though. What happens if you reinvest those dividends?

One of Realty Income’s most attractive qualities for a certain type of investor is its consistency. It is a slow and steady tortoise. That’s boring — but boring can be powerful when it comes to compound growth. With income stocks, much of that compound growth comes from reinvesting the dividends into more shares. With REITs, that effect becomes even more powerful if done within a Roth IRA, since there will be no taxes paid on the dividend (ever). The numbers speak for themselves.

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Since the turn of the 21st century, Realty Income’s stock price has risen by 470%. That’s actually a better performance than the S&P 500 index — its level is only up by around 300% over that period. With dividend reinvestment, however, the S&P 500’s total return clocks in at over 530%. But do the same thing with high-yield Realty Income and it wins again, with an impressive total return of more than 2,000%.

That’s an amazing number for any company, let alone a REIT that has only grown its dividend at an average of 4.3% a year for the past three decades. The key is that it has always delivered high yields, meaning that investors using dividend reinvestment were adding a material amount of new shares with every payment. Steady dividend growth and a large yield combined to turbo-charge the long-term total returns for Realty Income investors. And, it is worth noting that the compounding effect grows even more powerful when the stock pulls back.

In recent weeks, Realty Income’s stock price has nosedived by about 13%. It is nearly 30% below where it was before the start of the coronavirus pandemic. However, if your investment mindset is to think in terms of decades, and you can look past the dividend yield to see the long-term power of compound growth via dividend reinvestment, Realty Income might just be the type of total return stock you could fall in love with right now.

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Reuben Gregg Brewer has positions in Realty Income. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Realty Income. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

1 High Yield Dividend Growth Stock Down 13% to Buy Right Now was originally published by The Motley Fool

Nvidia has been in magnificent form on the stock market in the past year, recording stunning gains of almost 207% as of this writing. This is thanks to the consistently strong growth in the company’s top and bottom lines on account of the booming demand for its artificial intelligence (AI) chips.

However, there is another AI stock that has outshined Nvidia on the market during this period. SoundHound AI (NASDAQ: SOUN), a small company that provides voice AI solutions to enterprises, has witnessed a 256% jump in its stock price in the past year, and it is worth noting that Nvidia has played a key role in the stock’s remarkable rally.

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Shares of SoundHound AI received a big shot in the arm earlier in 2024 when it emerged that Nvidia held a small stake in the company. Though SoundHound stock witnessed a lot of volatility following that revelation and saw a sharp decline, it has strung together impressive gains over the past six months.

But the question is, will SoundHound AI be able to continue its red-hot rally in 2025? Let’s take a look at the company’s latest quarterly results and its valuation to see what the coming year might look like for this AI company.

SoundHound released third-quarter 2024 results on Nov. 12. The company’s quarterly revenue jumped an impressive 89% year over year to $25.1 million, while non-GAAP (adjusted) net loss shrank to $0.04 per share from $0.06 per share in the same quarter last year. Consensus estimates compiled by FactSet were expecting SoundHound to post $23 million in revenue along with a loss of $0.07 per share.

The company’s guidance was the icing on the cake. Though SoundHound didn’t issue quarterly guidance, it did increase its revenue estimate for the full year. The company now expects to finish 2024 with $83.5 million in revenue at the midpoint of its guidance range, up from its earlier expectation of at least $80 million.

The updated revenue guidance would translate into an 82% increase in the company’s top line. That would be a nice improvement over the 47% revenue growth SoundHound AI clocked in 2023, suggesting that the company’s conversational AI solutions are gaining impressive traction in the market. Even better, it has released a revenue guidance range of $155 million to $175 million for 2025, suggesting that its revenue could grow at a faster pace next year and nearly double from 2024 levels.

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The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) is regarded by many as the best overall gauge of the U.S. stock market, as it includes the 500 largest publicly traded companies in the country. Given the breadth of businesses that make up the index, it is considered to be the most reliable benchmark of overall stock market performance. To be considered for admission to the S&P 500, a company must meet the following criteria:

• Be a U.S.-based company

• Have a market cap of at least $18 billion

• Be highly liquid

• At least 50% of its outstanding shares must be available for trading

• Must be profitable based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) in the most recent quarter

• Must be profitable during the preceding four quarters combined

Palantir Technologies (NYSE: PLTR) is one of the most recent additions to the S&P 500, joining the benchmark on Sept. 23. That makes it one of only 11 companies to make the cut so far this year. Since the dawn of generative AI early last year, Palantir stock has surged 845%, as its expertise in the field drove robust revenue and earnings growth.

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Given the stock’s parabolic move higher, some investors are leery of Palantir’s lofty valuation. However, one Wall Street analyst believes this is just the beginning. Let’s take a look at what has fueled Palantir’s epic run, and if there’s additional runway ahead for growth.

Palantir has been developing cutting-edge AI solutions for more than two decades. The company earned its pedigree devising sophisticated algorithms to serve the U.S. intelligence, military, and law enforcement communities. Its systems developed the uncanny ability to connect seemingly unrelated data to foil terrorist plots and bring wrongdoers to justice.

The company has expanded beyond its humble roots, bringing the same data mining know-how to enterprise. Palantir’s AI and analytics systems dig through data and provide companies with solutions to real-world problems.

When businesses began clamoring for useable AI last year, Palantir was quick to develop its Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP), a generative AI system that provided data-driven answers. The system leverages company-specific data to develop made-to-order solutions.

One of the primary stumbling blocks to adopting AI is that most companies lack the expertise to get started. Palantir developed a go-to-market strategy that takes that issue off the table. The company set up boot camp sessions that pair customer representatives with Palantir engineers to ensure they develop the AI solutions they need. This strategy has proven successful beyond the company’s wildest dreams.

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Prediction markets had a breakout moment during the presidential election, when they proved to be more accurate than most opinion polls.

So with various cryptocurrencies soaring since Donald Trump won the election, maybe prediction markets can accurately answer the question, “How high will Bitcoin go?”

On the crypto-based Polymarket, where the so-called French whale netted a massive post-election windfall, bettors have various options for Bitcoin, which is currently trading at about $91,000.

For a contract on what price Bitcoin will hit in November, the odds are 72% that it will reach $95,000. The price with the next highest odds is $105,000 at 23%, then $110,000 at 14%.

A separate contract that asks if Bitcoin will be above $90,000 on Nov. 22 shows 60% odds, while yet another contract asking if Bitcoin will reach $100,000 in November only has a 42% chance.

On the prediction market Kalshi, a contract that asks how high Bitcoin will get before 2026 shows 52% odds for $125,000 or above and 44% odds for $150,000 and above.

If prediction markets aren’t your thing, and you prefer a forecast from a more conventional Wall Street analyst, there’s Fundstrat Global Advisors cofounder Tom Lee.

Among the forecasters surveyed by Bloomberg, his stock market call in 2023 turned out to be the most accurate.

As for Bitcoin, he said in March that it could hit $150,000 by year-end. While that looks less likely now with just a month and a half left in the year, Lee told CNBC last week that “six figures” is still possible before the end of the year with more gains in 2025 in 2026.

“I think now because post-halving, Bitcoin is becoming a lot more relevant, and I think maybe the regulatory overhang is diminishing, there’s a lot of upside from here,” he explained.

Bitcoin has already soared 32% so far in November alone and has more than doubled this year. To get to $100,000, it would have to climb another 10%.

But there are signs that the post-election rally is stalling as the stock market notched a losing week. Still, key components of the “Trump trade” are riding high, like Tesla stock, Treasury yields, and the dollar.

Meanwhile, Quinn Thompson, the founder of the crypto hedge fund Lekker Capital, told Fortune this past week that he’s optimistic Bitcoin will attain the $100,000 milestone soon.

“I feel good that we hit it by year-end,” he said. “Very possible by end of month, but we’ll see.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com