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Continued growth on both fronts should be powered by the company’s rising oil production thanks to drilling projects in places like Kazakhstan and the Gulf of Mexico. However, investors considering buying this energy stock should be aware that its short-term returns will be highly dependent on the unpredictable swings in oil prices.

IBM’s stock is beating the market through mid-November this year, even though the tech giant just announced lackluster results for the third quarter. Revenue rose just 2% on a constant-currency basis. Pre-tax earnings underwhelmed, too, with its profit margin landing at 5.5% for the first three quarters of the year, down from 11.1% in the prior-year period.

The pressures faced by its massive business mostly came from weaker discretionary spending in areas like consulting services and a hardware segment that’s in the midst of transitioning to the next generation of mainframe products. Buying IBM stock today is more of a bet on its attractive software and AI services businesses, which have long runways for growth ahead. As a result, I’d recommend investors consider taking advantage of the recent price drop in this tech stock, which now yields just over 3%.

Ever feel like you missed the boat in buying the most successful stocks? Then you’ll want to hear this.

On rare occasions, our expert team of analysts issues a “Double Down” stock recommendation for companies that they think are about to pop. If you’re worried you’ve already missed your chance to invest, now is the best time to buy before it’s too late. And the numbers speak for themselves:

• Amazon: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2010, you’d have $23,818!*

• Apple: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2008, you’d have $43,221!*

• Netflix: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2004, you’d have $451,527!*

Right now, we’re issuing “Double Down” alerts for three incredible companies, and there may not be another chance like this anytime soon.

See 3 “Double Down” stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of November 11, 2024

Demitri Kalogeropoulos has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Chevron, Cisco Systems, and Merck. The Motley Fool recommends 3M, Amgen, International Business Machines, Johnson & Johnson, and Verizon Communications. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Should You Buy the 3 Highest Paying Dividend Stocks in the Dow Jones? was originally published by The Motley Fool

Amtagvi is currently approved to treat advanced melanoma after patients have been treated with an anti-PD-1 medicine as well as another type of drug. But, with Iovance’s R&D work, it could soon be approved to treat non-small cell lung cancer as a second-line treatment. More importantly, it’s also being tested to see if it could be used as a first-line treatment for melanoma when administered alongside pembrolizumab, a common immunotherapy that’s used along with many anti-cancer drugs.

Per a report by Global Market Insights, the market for melanoma drugs like Amtagvi will be as large as $7.5 billion in 2032. Assuming Amtagvi performs as favorably as it did in its clinical trials, in which around 31.5% of patients responded to treatment, it has a chance of capturing a significant share of the market. That’s especially true considering there aren’t any other therapies that are directly comparable to it in terms of the mechanism of action.

So, with a long runway of expanding Amtagvi’s availability to patients as well as the conditions that it’s approved to treat, Iovance is set for a highly profitable decade, which is a smart reason to buy it.

Before you buy stock in CRISPR Therapeutics, 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 CRISPR Therapeutics wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $899,361!*

Stock Advisor provides investors with an easy-to-follow blueprint for success, including guidance on building a portfolio, regular updates from analysts, and two new stock picks each month. The Stock Advisor service has more than quadrupled the return of S&P 500 since 2002*.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of November 11, 2024

Alex Carchidi has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends CRISPR Therapeutics, Iovance Biotherapeutics, and Vertex Pharmaceuticals. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

2 Top Biotech Stocks to Buy Now and Hold For 5 Years or More was originally published by The Motley Fool

With truly staggering sales growth — $27 billion in fiscal 2023 to an estimated $180 billion in fiscal 2026 — it’s not surprising to see investors piling in.

Yet there’s a half-dozen reasons to believe the perfect storm is brewing for Nvidia, which needs nothing short of flawless execution to sustain its nearly parabolic move higher.

When Nvidia delivers its fiscal Q3 operating results in four days, there’s a good chance it’ll top consensus revenue and profit forecasts. Over the last seven quarters, Nvidia has handily outpaced earnings-per-share (EPS) expectations. But simply surpassing what was expected of the company in its October quarter is unlikely to be enough to support additional upside for a variety of reasons.

To start with, external competition has officially arrived. After Nvidia secured an estimated 98% of GPU shipments to data centers in 2022 and 2023, based on a study by TechInsights, it’ll likely cede some of this market share to Advanced Micro Devices this year. AMD is quickly ramping up production of its MI300X AI-GPU, and recently introduced the MI325X, which should go into production before the end of the year. With Nvidia’s GPUs backlogged and businesses eager to gain first-mover advantages, it wouldn’t be surprising to see companies scoop up AMD’s AI hardware instead.

However, a bigger threat to Nvidia might just be internal competition. Many of its top customers by net sales, including Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Amazon, and Alphabet, are internally developing AI chips for use in their data centers. The cost to develop/produce these internal chips, coupled with their ease of access, could make them more favorable than Nvidia’s hardware in future quarters.

To add to this second point, AI-GPU scarcity has played a critical role in lifting Nvidia’s pricing power. As more chips become available and scarcity wanes, Nvidia’s pricing power and gross margin will be negatively impacted.

The third issue to consider is that Nvidia is still constrained by its supply chain. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, which produces chips for Nvidia, is aiming to boost its chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) monthly production capacity to 80,000 wafers. CoWoS is necessary for the packaging of high-bandwidth memory in AI-accelerated data centers. Being at the mercy of its suppliers means Nvidia isn’t able to meet all of its orders and could cause it to lose valuable data center real estate to external and internal competitors.

Fourth, export regulations offer little reason to cheer. In 2022, U.S. regulators clamped down on Nvidia’s ability to export its AI-GPUs to China, the world’s No. 2 economy by GDP. The following year, Nvidia’s toned-down AI chips, the A800 and H800, which were designed specifically for China, were also added to the export restriction list. With President-Elect Donald Trump promising to get tough on trade with China, Nvidia’s prospects of generating big bucks from exports of AI hardware to China are quickly dimming.

Insider trading activity provides the fifth puzzle piece of the perfect storm for Nov. 20. Over the last 47 months, no executive or director has purchased a single share of Nvidia stock on the open market. While there are plenty of reasons to sell stock, not all of which are nefarious, the only reason to buy shares of a company is if you think they’re headed higher. The actions of Nvidia’s executives and directors make it clear that Nvidia stock isn’t viewed as a good value.

The sixth and final reason I’ll be looking for Nvidia stock to hit a brick wall on Nov. 20 is history. Over the past three decades, investors have consistently overestimated how quickly a new technology or innovation will gain utility and/or adoption. This leads to lofty growth expectations that eventually (key word!) come up short.

Despite ample demand for the Hopper and Blackwell, what’s sorely lacking from Nvidia’s customers are well-defined plans to monetize their AI investments. In other words, businesses are buying, but there’s no clear use case. All technologies need time to mature, and artificial intelligence is unlikely to be the exception to the unwritten rule. In my view, this puts Nvidia stock in a precarious position come Nov. 20.

Before you buy stock in Nvidia, 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 Nvidia wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $899,361!*

Stock Advisor provides investors with an easy-to-follow blueprint for success, including guidance on building a portfolio, regular updates from analysts, and two new stock picks each month. The Stock Advisor service has more than quadrupled the return of S&P 500 since 2002*.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of November 11, 2024

John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, 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. Sean Williams has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Prediction: Nvidia Stock Is Going to Stall Out on Nov. 20 was originally published by The Motley Fool

Writing on Vistra for JPM, 5-star analyst Jeremy Tonet sees plenty of potential in the company, based on its strong production capacity. He says, “Top pick VST offers the optimal mix of all angles, in our view. We see very attractive upside from current levels, with a healthy step up in a blue sky scenario. In addition to nuclear upside, we see meaningful gas power leverage for VST, particularly as islanded gas in West TX (with the gas bottleneck wall moving east across TX) and Appalachia should support spark spreads, particularly given Permian electrification demand growth and a great call on gas due to PJM tightening.”

Quantifying this stance, Tonet puts an Overweight (i.e. Buy) rating on the stock, with a $178 price target that implies a 28.5% gain in the year ahead. (To watch Tonet’s track record, click here)

The Strong Buy consensus rating on Vistra is unanimous, based on 10 recent positive analyst reviews. The shares are trading for $138.46, and the $156 average price target suggests that the stock could see a one-year gain of nearly 12.5%. (See VST stock forecast)

EverQuote (EVER)

The second stock we’ll look at is EverQuote, an online insurance marketplace. EverQuote’s platform connects the players in the insurance industry, allowing agents and agencies to publicize their offerings and buyers to browse, contact, and choose. The company’s umbrella covers most aspects of the insurance industry, including such major products as life insurance, car and vehicle insurance, and home and renter insurance.

The platform is designed to be intuitive and easy to use. Agents can post policies, along with pricing, and buyers can use search functions to locate insurance products and specific pricing points. These services are provided without charge; Everquote takes its own fees after policies are purchased, in the form of fees paid by the insurance policy issuers.

EverQuote is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where it was founded in 2011. Since then, the company has built up a market cap of $713 million. Last year, EverQuote brought in $287.92 million in total revenue – and the company has already surpassed that total by a wide margin this year.

That was clear from the Q3 financial results. EverQuote saw quarterly revenues of $144.54 million, beating the forecast by $4.19 million and growing by an impressive 162.8% from the prior-year period. The company realized a bottom line figure of 31 cents per share, or 10 cents per share better than had been expected. Looking ahead, EverQuote published Q4 revenue guidance in the range of $131 million to $136 million, which would mark year-over-year growth of 140% at the midpoint.

This stock is covered by JPM’s Cody Carpenter, who notes both the strong Q3 results and the solid prospects going forward, writing, “EVER reached record revenue and profit in 3Q, but expects healthy Auto carrier growth to continue in 2025 as more states re-open and carrier spend broadens. EVER shares have traded down 28% since 2Q earnings (vs. RTY +9%) on investor concern that the auto carrier recovery is mostly played out and uncertainty around the pending 1×1 consent rule, but we think the insurance cycle still has more room to run with impact from the 1×1 consent change manageable.”

Carpenter goes on to outline where he thinks this stock will go, adding, “We expect another year of outsized industry growth in 2025, and while the magnitude of beats/raises likely moderates going forward, we are still increasing our 2025/26 revenue by a healthy ~5% and our adj. EBITDA by 8%/13%, with our estimates above the Street’s. We reiterate our Overweight rating and EVER remains a top pick.”

The stated Overweight (i.e. Buy) rating is accompanied by a $28 price target that points toward a one-year upside potential of 49%. (To watch Carpenter’s track record, click here)

All in all, it’s clear that Wall Street agrees with Carpenter’s call on this. The stock has 6 recent analyst reviews on file, 5 Buys and a single Hold, making the consensus a Strong Buy. With an average price target of $31 and a current trading price of $18.81, this stock shows a one-year upside of 65%. (See EverQuote stock forecast)

To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks’ Best Stocks to Buy, a tool that unites all of TipRanks’ equity insights.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.