On October 10, 2025, DKM Wealth Management, Inc. disclosed a new position in Invesco QQQ Trust, Series 1, acquiring 7,935 shares for an estimated $4.76 million in Q3 2025.

What happened

According to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission dated October 10, 2025, DKM Wealth Management, Inc. initiated a position in Invesco QQQ Trust, Series 1 (QQQ -3.47%), purchasing approximately 7,935 shares in Q3 2025. The estimated transaction value is $4,763,936 in Q3 2025. This brings the fund’s total QQQ position to $4.76 million, with no prior holding reported last quarter.

What else to know

This is a new position for the fund, now accounting for 3.8% of DKM Wealth Management, Inc.’s $124.58 million in reportable U.S. equity assets in Q3 2025.

Top holdings after the filing:

• (NASDAQ:TBLD): $18.72 million (15.0% of AUM) in Q3 2025
• (NYSEMKT:TCAF): $14,341,015 (11.5113% of AUM) as of September 30, 2025
• (NYSE:SOR): $12.86 million (10.3% of AUM) in Q3 2025
• (NYSEMKT:GRNY): $9.22 million (7.4% of AUM) in Q3 2025
• (NYSEMKT:ITOT): $7,186,455 (5.7685% of AUM) as of September 30, 2025

As of October 9, 2025, shares of Invesco QQQ Trust, Series 1 were priced at $610.70, up 23.84% for the year through October 9, 2025, outperforming the S&P 500 by 8.38 percentage points

Company overview

Company snapshot

The investment strategy seeks to track the performance of the NASDAQ-100 Index®.

The portfolio is periodically rebalanced to maintain alignment with the index.

The fund is structured as a trust.

Invesco QQQ Trust offers investors targeted exposure to the NASDAQ-100 Index. The fund’s strategy uses periodic rebalancing to closely mirror index composition and weights.

Foolish take

DKM Wealth Management opened a new position in Invesco’s popular QQQ Trust in Q3 2025, to the tune of $4.8 million and over 7,900 shares. Because QQQ tracks the NASDAQ-100, it gives DKM Wealth Management and other investors a more balanced exposure to tech stocks without nearly as much risk as would be present in investing in individual technology companies.

This has pros and cons, since any individual tech holding can suddenly become a hot commodity and its value balloon dramatically in the current market environment. However, by selecting a basket of tech giants, investors can largely avoid the dramatic ups and downs involved with this sector, and are protected from the more serious losses that can also be present here.

QQQ is an ETF that’s frequently and sometimes aggressively traded, more preferred by active traders than its very similar cousin, QQQM.  QQQ also has higher liquidity, which may be preferred by DKM if the fund feels that this is a shorter term investment, rather than a permanent portfolio balancing move. It can certainly be held long term like QQQM typically is, but it has a higher expense ratio and a higher per share price. Don’t expect this to be a long-term move.

Glossary

13F reportable assets: Assets that U.S. institutional investment managers must disclose quarterly to the SEC on Form 13F.
Assets under management (AUM): The total market value of investments managed on behalf of clients by a fund or firm.
Position: The amount of a particular security or investment held by an investor or fund.
Trust (fund structure): An investment fund organized as a legal trust, often holding assets on behalf of investors.
Periodic rebalancing: Adjusting a portfolio’s holdings at set intervals to maintain target asset allocations or index alignment.
Dividend yield: The annual dividend income from an investment, expressed as a percentage of its current price.
Total return: The investment’s price change plus all dividends and distributions, assuming those payouts are reinvested.
NASDAQ-100 Index®: A stock market index comprising 100 of the largest non-financial companies listed on the NASDAQ exchange.
Outperforming: Achieving a higher return than a benchmark index or comparable investment over a given period.
Market value: The current total value of a holding, calculated as the share price multiplied by the number of shares owned.

On July 31, shares of internet design company Figma (FIG -1.24%) began trading at $85 and finished their first day at over $115. The following day, Figma stock closed at $122 per share, but it’s been all downhill since then.

The stock dropped 39.2% in August even though the S&P 500 was up 1.9% for the month. And things haven’t improved in September. Whereas the S&P 500 is enjoying an unusually strong month with a 3.6% gain as of Sept. 22, Figma stock has plunged another 16.4%.

Adding it all up, the stock reached an all-time high on its second day of trading and is already down 59% from that peak. With this big of a drop, is Figma now a bargain for long-term investors?

Two reasons Figma stock is down

This isn’t one of my two reasons, but it’s worth mentioning that Figma had its initial public offering (IPO) only weeks ago. Regardless of whether an IPO stock is high quality or low quality, volatility is common in these early months.

Figma was practically guaranteed to give investors a wild ride, simply because it’s a recent IPO. It’s why some investors avoid IPO stocks entirely.

General IPO volatility aside, Figma reported results for the second quarter of 2025 on Sept. 3, its first report as a publicly-traded company, and it underwhelmed the investor community. This is one of the reasons the stock is down.

In the second quarter, the company generated revenue of $250 million, which was good for 41% year-over-year growth. In isolation, 41% growth is absolutely stellar.

But there is a twofold concern here. First, this is a deceleration from the 46% growth it reported in the first quarter. Second, the deceleration is only just beginning, according to management.

For the third quarter, Figma expects 33% revenue growth at the midpoint of its guidance range. Again, this is a strong number in isolation but a sharp drop-off for its growth rate nevertheless. And for all of 2025, the company is guiding for a 37% jump from the previous year. This full-year guidance implies just a 30% growth rate for the fourth quarter.

Figma went public and initially surged based on its potential as a growth stock, but its growth is quickly slowing — that’s the first problem. Here’s the second problem: At its peak, the stock traded at over 66 times sales.

Data by YCharts; PS ratio= price-to-sales ratio.

I’ve seen stocks trade at a lofty valuation such as this and still provide investors with positive long-term returns. That being said, this is usually the case for businesses that are still accelerating their top line.

In short, it seems that investors were willing to pay a high price for Figma stock out of the gate, assuming its growth would continue to impress. But looking beyond the initial hype, revenue growth is trending downward, and investors are rethinking the valuation.

Projecting Figma’s performance from here

The Forbes 2000 is a list of 2,000 of the largest publicly-traded companies in the world — these are big fish. And to its credit, Figma has already landed most of them. It counts 78% of the Forbes 2000 as customers, showing how widely adopted its software is.

Moreover, around two-thirds of its customers use three or more of its software products. As far as software businesses go, that’s a strong adoption rate.

However, for investors looking to buy the stock today, this is counterintuitively a headwind. There are relatively few big customers that it could win from here. And upselling its customers to more services is challenging because of how many have already adopted multiple Figma products. With this context, a slowdown in growth makes perfect sense.

In other words, Figma’s business is already so successful that it makes incremental growth harder to find. Some investors may object to this statement, considering the company is still calling for double-digit growth in 2025.

But consider that the company raised its prices by over 20% earlier this year. Much of the growth it’s projecting comes from charging higher prices, which can’t be too regular an occurrence without risking excessive customer churn.

Personally, I believe Figma stock will underperform the market going forward. After all, it’s still trading at over 30 times sales despite the recent sell-off, making it one of the more richly valued software stocks out there. If its revenue growth continues to slow, the valuation will likely keep coming down.

Figma needs something that will truly help the business sustain its growth. The good news is it has $1.6 billion in cash and marketable securities at its disposal that can fund a lot of research and development or fuel acquisitions. But for now, the valuation risk is elevated due to its slowing growth — I wouldn’t buy the stock right now, even after its 59% drop.

Broadcom (AVGO -2.69%) has been one of the biggest winners of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, with its stock already up nearly 50% this year and hitting new all-time highs. A move like that often raises the question of whether it’s too late to buy the stock.

In Broadcom’s case, the answer is no. The company has a much larger AI opportunity in front of it, and the market is only starting to recognize how big that could be.

A custom AI chip powerhouse

Broadcom’s edge comes from its custom AI chip business, where it works with hyperscalers (owners of massive data centers) to design chips built for specific workloads. This is very different from Nvidia‘s off-the-shelf graphics processing unit (GPU) business, although in many cases, these custom chips are taking the job of a GPU.

Broadcom helps its customers develop what are called application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs. These chips can take years to design and are created for customer-specific purposes. As such, they tend to deliver better performance and have lower power consumption for the particular tasks for which they’ve been designed compared to the more flexible GPUs.

Broadcom first proved itself when it helped Alphabet design its Tensor Processing Units. Those chips are now a critical piece of Alphabet’s cloud computing infrastructure and have given it a performance edge over rivals. Broadcom has since landed multiple new customers, including Meta Platforms and ByteDance. Management has said these three customers alone represent a $60 billion to $90 billion market opportunity in fiscal 2027 (ending in October 2027).

That would be a huge win by itself, but Broadcom recently revealed a fourth customer, which analysts widely believe is OpenAI, with an order topping $10 billion for next year (fiscal 2026). The timing matters here, as Broadcom had been talking about fiscal 2027 as the year its custom chip business really takes off. If OpenAI is already moving to production much earlier than expected, it means that growth is going to accelerate before then.

OpenAI and Apple change the picture

Adding OpenAI into the mix is a game-changer. The company has become the face of generative AI, with its models powering ChatGPT and its close ties to Microsoft helping power its AI offerings. With AI workloads exploding, OpenAI is looking to reduce its dependence on Nvidia and control costs. Broadcom is stepping right into this need, and with the inference market expected to eventually far surpass training, the demand for chips that can lower inference costs is a big one.

Apple, meanwhile, is an even newer customer, earlier in its development timeline. Apple has been trailing in AI, which is something it surely wants to remedy, and one way to do this is with its own custom chips. Once that happens, Broadcom will have another massive revenue stream layered in on top of Alphabet, Meta, ByteDance, and now OpenAI.

This is why the stock’s rally isn’t the end of the story. Broadcom is in a position to be the go-to designer for the biggest names in tech wanting to create their own AI chips. Companies are looking for an alternative to Nvidia and for ways to reduce inference costs, and Broadcom is starting to fill that need.

Networking and software add support

That said, Broadcom isn’t just a custom chip play. Its networking business is also critical to AI infrastructure, supplying components like Ethernet switches and optical interconnects that move data inside the largest AI clusters. And when the company wins custom AI chip deals, that will feed into this business as well.

On top of that, Broadcom now has a meaningful software business thanks to its acquisition of VMware. It has been streamlining VMware and shifting it to a subscription model, while also positioning it to manage AI workloads across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. That makes Broadcom an increasingly important player in enterprise AI as well.

Why the stock still looks attractive

Broadcom’s stock has already had a big run, and it’s not cheap on a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) basis, with a 38 multiple. However, the opportunity in front of it is huge, and it just got bigger with OpenAI.

The pace at which OpenAI’s custom chips moved from concept to production suggests that Broadcom may be able to speed the process along more quickly than expected. When a company the size of Apple is next in line, that’s absolutely huge. Networking and software provide additional growth levers, but the real story is Broadcom’s position as the custom AI chip partner to the biggest players in tech.

That’s why even after hitting new highs, Broadcom stock still looks like a buy.

Geoffrey Seiler has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom and 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.

Chevron’s stock declined sharply this week before paring back losses, as mounting concerns about volatility in the global oil markets spooked traders.

Another group of worried market watchers? Tech companies, big and small.

Casual observers sometimes wonder why technology stocks—often seen as disconnected from the oil industry—sometimes react sharply to oil price movements and related news.

But the two sectors are much more connected than you might realize. That link largely stems from the broader economic signals these markets send and the intertwined nature of global supply chains.

When oil prices rise, fears of inflation and slower economic growth often intensify, leading investors to reassess their positions across sectors.

Tech stocks, which are sensitive to macroeconomic trends and interest rates, can react as part of a risk-off adjustment. Conversely, falling oil prices may signal a more supportive environment for growth, prompting gains in technology shares.

Additionally, some technology firms are directly affected by energy prices through their supply chains: manufacturers rely on transportation and electricity, like companies making data centers or rockets. That makes their costs responsive to oil fluctuations.

Investor sentiment also plays a role, because a sharp move in oil markets can serve as a proxy for economic stability, influencing valuations across all sectors, including high-growth tech companies.

This interconnectedness underscores how macroeconomic developments ripple across the markets, blurring traditional sector boundaries and emphasizing the importance of a holistic view when analyzing stock movements.

Why did Chevron wobble and will that shakiness spread?

Chevron’s drop mirrored other fluctuations in the market.

The energy giant’s shares dropped due to a combination of geopolitical tensions, varying supply levels, and uncertain demand forecasts that have left investors cautious about near-term earnings prospects.

Analysts cite ongoing geopolitical tensions in key oil-producing regions, along with an uncertain outlook for global economic growth, as contributing factors to the market turbulence. Investors worry that these factors could pressure crude prices, which would in turn impact Chevron’s revenue and dividend stability.

Or to put it in Wall Street bro speak:

“Chevron Corporation (NYSE:CVX) stock came under pressure from a combination of uncertainty in oil markets; an announcement of higher than expected supply growth from OPEC+ (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, plus 10 other oil-producing countries),” Carillon Eagle Growth & Income Fund wrote to investors in its second quarter 2025 investor letter.

“And investor positioning around Chevron’s pending acquisition of a global independent energy company. The OPEC+ announcement weighed on all energy stocks,” it said.

Translation: Traders are worried about a new deal they made, a spike in supply from OPEC, and a general uneasiness about the energy sector in general.

Speaking of the energy sector …

Despite Chevron’s strong earnings earlier this year, the energy sector’s overall uncertainty continues to weigh on stock performance, with some analysts warning that volatility could persist until the geopolitical and economic landscape stabilizes.

But trading in the energy markets remains robust. In the trading week that ended August 29, 2025, the energy sector was the best-performing sector in the U.S. market, with the Morningstar US Energy Index rising 2.41%. The sector’s strong performance contrasted with a small decline in the broader market. 

That bullish performance also made Chevron’s weak performance a standout. And a standout is not what you want to be for several reasons, including the risk of short selling, dragging down your trading partners, and a broader selloff from investors.

Last week it was Chevron that was a bellwether. Let’s see this week which sector receives tech’s scrutiny.

 

If you bought $10,000 of Palantir (PLTR -2.14%) stock in 2020 when shares first hit the public market, you’d have close to $187,000 as of this writing. That kind of money can create a solid foundation toward building a $1 million portfolio. Even if Palantir stock merely meets the average return of the S&P 500, keeping those shares for another 15 to 20 years could result in a shareholder reaching millionaire status.

But a lot of people missed the boat on Palantir. The company’s stock has zoomed higher since late 2022, as generative artificial intelligence (AI) has helped expand its capabilities and support profitable revenue growth. And if you’re just looking to invest in Palantir shares today, you may be wondering if you missed the chance to become a millionaire on the back of a relatively small $10,000 investment in one of the hottest tech companies in the world.

Looking into Palantir

Palantir’s software collects disparate data sets from an organization and external sources, cleans them, identifies connections, and provides valuable insights that aid decision-makers in their role. While cloud computing providers might offer their own analytics tools, Palantir’s machine learning algorithms have proven extremely valuable, especially for customers with data spread across various sources.

In 2023, Palantir launched its Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP), which allows an organization to use a large language model to interact with its software using natural language. That has significantly lowered the technical expertise required to get the most out of Palantir while expanding its use cases.

The financial results since that launch have been spectacular. Palantir just reported its eighth straight quarter of accelerating revenue growth, and management’s outlook for the third quarter suggests a ninth is in the making. In that time, Palantir has become profitable, enjoying very strong operating leverage. Its adjusted operating margin climbed to 46% last quarter, up from 37% last year and 25% two years ago.

CEO Alex Karp boasts that this kind of growth is unprecedented for a company with the scale of Palantir. The company surpassed $1 billion in revenue last quarter, and its so-called Rule of 40 score (revenue growth plus operating margin) came in at 94, blowing away the gold standard for investing in software companies.

While the profitable revenue growth is extremely impressive, there’s reason to doubt that Palantir’s stock can continue to produce the same level of returns as it has over the last three years. It’ll be hard for it to even come close.

Can $10,000 invested today turn into $1 million?

Turning $10,000 into $1 million requires an investment to increase 100-fold. To put that in perspective, Palantir currently has a market cap of $445 billion as of this writing. To increase 100-fold would put its market cap at $44.5 trillion. The largest company in the world right now has a market cap one-tenth that size. So, that’s a big hurdle in and of itself.

The more pressing issue, however, is the current valuation investors put on Palantir’s stock. Shares currently trade for more than 100 times revenue expectations over the next 12 months. That’s not just a high multiple, it’s stratospheric. Other AI stocks can be had for multiples below 20-times sales. That said, few are growing like Palantir with its profitability and at its scale. Still, such a premium price is hard to justify.

Even if Palantir grows revenue at an average rate of 50% through the end of 2030, its current price would still be about 14 times sales (five and a half years down the line). Only a handful of AI software stocks command a multiple like that for their 2026 revenue expectations.

Palantir should see its price-to-sales multiple shrink over the next five years. Revenue won’t accelerate forever, but many investors are acting like it should. Wall Street is decidedly bearish on the stock, but retail ownership (above 40%) continues to support the rising stock price. That makes Palantir extremely susceptible to an earnings miss or a shift in investor sentiment.

Investors looking at the stock today may want to wait for a significant pullback in price before adding shares to their portfolio. It’s unlikely that a $10,000 investment in Palantir today will make you a millionaire.

Adam Levy has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Palantir Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

August generally isn’t considered the best time to buy stocks. It lands between May, when many investors “sell in May and go away,” and September, which has historically had a pattern of being the worst month of the year for stocks. But the market’s common summer swoons — which can largely be attributed to the behavioral biases of investors — shouldn’t matter to long-term investors.

After all, the S&P 500 has still delivered an average annualized return of about 10% since its inception in 1957. So if you don’t mind a little near-term volatility, August can still be a great time to add to your portfolio, and ASML (ASML -1.18%), CrowdStrike (CRWD 0.45%), and ServiceNow (NOW -0.39%) are three great tech stocks worth buying today.

ASML

ASML is the world’s top supplier of photolithography systems, which are used to optically etch circuit patterns onto silicon wafers. It’s also the only producer of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines — the only ones capable of operating at a fine enough level of detail to make today’s most advanced, densest, and most power-efficient chips.

ASML’s monopoly in that crucial technology makes it a linchpin of the semiconductor sector. All of the world’s top foundries — including TSMC, Samsung, and Intel — use its EUV systems to manufacture cutting-edge chips.

In 2024, ASML suffered a slowdown as it lapped the AI market’s initial growth spurt, its non-AI markets grew at a slower rate, and it was barred from selling even its older lithography systems to customers in China. But from 2024 to 2027, analysts expect its revenue and EPS to grow at compound annual rates of 10% and 17%, respectively.

That growth should be driven by the memory chip market’s cyclical recovery, the AI market’s expansion, and the rollout of its latest high-NA EUV lithography systems for manufacturing even smaller and more sophisticated chips. That’s an impressive projected growth trajectory for a stock that trades at just 25 times next year’s expected earnings.

CrowdStrike

Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike only provides subscription-based services via the cloud. That approach, which is stickier and easier for customers to scale as they expand, sets it apart from older cybersecurity companies, which often install on-site appliances at their clients’ locations that consume more power, take up space, and require regular maintenance.

CrowdStrike’s first-mover advantage in the cloud-native cybersecurity space gives it an edge over its peers. In its latest reported quarter, 48% of its customers were using at least six of its Falcon platform’s cloud-based modules. That was up from 44% a year earlier. As a cybersecurity leader, its business is also resistant to economic downturns because even when belt-tightening is necessary, most companies won’t shut off their digital defenses just to save a few dollars.

From its fiscal 2025 (which ended this January) to its fiscal 2028, analysts expect CrowdStrike’s revenue to grow at a compound annual rate of 22%. They also expect it to turn profitable again on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis in its fiscal 2027 and more than triple its net income in fiscal 2028. Its stock might seem a bit pricey at 18 times next year’s expected sales, but its robust growth rates and cloud-based advantages justify that higher valuation.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow is a cloud-based company that helps large companies organize their unstructured work patterns into automated digital workflows. Its Now Assist AI platform further accelerates that process with generative AI chatbots and automation tools.

ServiceNow’s business is naturally insulated from macroeconomic headwinds. As the economy expands, more companies will use its services to optimize their expansion efforts. But if the economy contracts, they’ll use its platform to cut costs and automate more jobs with AI. During its latest conference call, CEO Bill McDermott proclaimed that “AI is the new UI,” and said that ServiceNow’s platform was becoming the “extensible AI operating system” for agentic AI applications.

From 2024 to 2027, analysts expect ServiceNow’s revenue and GAAP EPS to grow at compound annual rates of 19% and 28%, respectively. Its stock might also seem a bit pricey at 77 times next year’s expected earnings, but it remains a great play on the secular growth of the cloud and AI markets.

Leo Sun has positions in ASML. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends ASML, CrowdStrike, Intel, ServiceNow, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: short August 2025 $24 calls on Intel. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Eight American companies are valued at $1 trillion or more, but only three graduated into the ultra-exclusive $3 trillion club: Nvidia, Microsoft, and Apple. I think Meta Platforms (META 3.49%) could join them.

Meta owns social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, but it has also become a clear leader in the artificial intelligence (AI) race thanks to its Llama family of large language models (LLMs), which are among the most powerful in the industry.

Meta stock soared by 11% on July 31, after the company reported a stellar set of operating results for the second quarter of 2025 (which ended on June 30). The move lifted its market capitalization to almost $2 trillion, meaning investors who buy the stock today could earn a return of 50% if it ascends into the $3 trillion club. Here’s why I think it will get there sooner rather than later.

AI is supercharging Meta’s business

Almost 3.5 billion people were using at least one of Meta’s social media apps every day during the second quarter of 2025. As that figure approaches half of the global population, it will become harder to attract new users, which will have consequences for the company’s advertising revenue in the future. However, Meta can also generate more advertising dollars by increasing the amount of time each user spends on its apps, and AI is central to that strategy.

Meta’s recommendation engine uses AI to learn what type of content each user enjoys viewing, and then it feeds them more of it. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said this resulted in a 6% increase in the amount of time users spent on Instagram during the second quarter, and a 5% increase on Facebook. Simply put, the longer each user spends online, the more ads they see, and the more money Meta makes.

AI also boosts the efficiency of Meta’s ad-recommendation model by targeting users more accurately, which led to a 5% increase in conversions on Instagram during the second quarter and a 3% increase on Facebook. Businesses will normally pay more money per ad when conversions are increasing, which is another big tailwind for Meta.

Higher engagement and more conversions sent Meta’s second-quarter revenue soaring 22% year over year to $47.5 billion, which was comfortably above the company’s forecast range of $42.5 billion to $45.5 billion. Management also issued bullish guidance for the third quarter (which ends on Sept. 30), telling investors the company’s revenue could top $50 billion for the first time ever.

Zuckerberg says AI superintelligence is in sight

Meta launched its Llama family of LLMs in early 2023. They are open source so Meta leans on a community of millions of developers to troubleshoot technical issues, which is why they have caught up to the best closed-source models so quickly. The latest Llama 4 models now rival the most advanced releases from top start-ups like OpenAI and Anthropic.

Meta is using the Llama models to power new features across its social media apps, which is another way it’s boosting engagement. The Meta AI chatbot, for instance, already has over 1 billion monthly active users who tap into its capabilities for homework assistance, image generation, and everything in between.

Zuckerberg says AI superintelligence — which is when AI models surpass human intelligence by every metric — is now in sight. Whoever reaches this milestone first could have a significant advantage over every other AI developer, which is why Zuckerberg recently established a new division called Meta Superintelligence Labs. Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang will lead the team, after selling 49% of his company to Meta in a $14 billion deal in June.

But achieving superintelligence won’t be cheap. Meta allocated $17 billion to capital expenditures (capex) during the second quarter alone, most of which went toward building data center infrastructure and buying chips from suppliers like Nvidia. The company also increased its capex forecast for 2025; it now expects to spend between $66 billion to $72 billion, up from $64 billion to $72 billion previously.

The gigantic capex spending could dent Meta’s profitability in the short term, but the company hopes it will lead to accelerated growth over the long run as AI (and potentially superintelligence) improves user engagement and ad conversions even further.

Meta has a clear path to the $3 trillion club

Fortunately, Meta’s strong beat at the top line led to a very strong result at the bottom line during the second quarter. Its earnings per share (EPS) soared by 38% year over year to $7.14, crushing Wall Street’s estimate of $5.92. It carried the company’s trailing-12-month EPS to $27.62, which places its stock at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of just 28.

That’s a noteworthy discount to the Nasdaq-100 index, which is trading at a P/E ratio of 32.7, and it’s an even steeper discount to the median P/E ratio of the “Magnificent Seven” stocks, which stands at 38.1. The Magnificent Seven (which includes Meta) is an elite group of technology companies operating on the front lines of the AI industry.

PE Ratio data by YCharts

Therefore, despite logging an eye-popping 200% gain over the last five years alone, Meta stock might still be undervalued. It would have to rise by a further 36.1% just to trade in line with the median P/E ratio of the Magnificent Seven, which would catapult its market cap to almost $2.7 trillion. At that point, Meta’s annualized EPS would have to grow by just 11% to push its market cap above $3 trillion.

Meta grew its EPS at a compound annual rate of 36% during the recent decade between 2014 and 2024. That growth rate is unsustainable over the long term for any company, but Meta’s EPS soared at an above-trend pace of 37% during the first quarter of 2025, and then 38% in the second quarter, so it should have no trouble mustering 11% growth over the next year or two.

Even if Meta’s P/E ratio holds steady at 28 — which I predict is unlikely because it seems so cheap — it’s only a matter of time before the company’s rapid earnings growth carries it into the exclusive $3 trillion club.

Anthony Di Pizio has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Netflix, Nvidia, and Tesla. 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.

Want to make boatloads of money? Bet on the right stock at the right time. Palantir Technologies (PLTR 4.38%) is an excellent example of how this can work. A $10,000 investment made when the company went public in late 2020 would be worth $146,000 today — a return of 1,270% compared to the S&P 500‘s return of 84% over the same time frame.

That said, past performance is no guarantee of future performance. And Palantir’s rocket ship rally made its shares uncomfortably expensive compared to market averages. Let’s dig deeper to see if the data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) leader is still capable of multibagger long-term returns.

A unique take on data analytics and AI

Since its founding in 2003, Palantir focused on providing software to help public- and private-sector clients identify trends, detect fraud, and optimize their operations through big data analytics. Investors became particularly excited about the stock after it began incorporating generative AI-related functionality into its offerings, allowing it to deliver real-time insights in situations like battlefields or law enforcement.

More importantly, AI-related demand seems to be having a significant impact on the company’s operations. First-quarter earnings were excellent, with revenue jumping 39% year over year to $883.9 million, while profits more than doubled to $217.7 million.

However, investors should note that much of this growth came from Palantir’s commercial segment, where it sells software to private enterprises instead of the government. While this likely represents a larger market opportunity, its economic moat against rivals is shallower.

In the private sector, Palantir is less able to leverage its trust, political connections, and security clearances to compete. And it will face stiff competition from rivals like Microsoft and Amazon, which offer similar data analytics software and services. These companies are also much more vertically integrated than Palantir because they also operate robust in-house cloud computing services, while Palantir is more reliant on third-party infrastructure.

Is Palantir a millionaire-maker stock?

In order to turn a $10,000 initial investment into $1 million, Palantir will have to grow by a further 585% from its current price. On the surface, seems looks easy for a stock that has enjoyed a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of almost 74% since hitting the market less than five years ago. However, things are very different now. The larger a company becomes, the harder it becomes to grow. Customers become harder to find, and bigger contracts are needed to move the needle.

A 585% increase in Palantir’s stock price would give the company a market cap of $2.33 trillion, making it the fifth-largest company in the U.S. behind Amazon. While this is technically possible over the long term, it is unclear if Palantir’s addressable market can support this much expansion. Other tech giants like Amazon, Nvidia, and Microsoft serve much larger opportunities and often boast higher levels of diversification.

For example, while Palantir has a niche focus on data analytics, Microsoft’s competing platform, Fabric, likely only represents a small part of its $245.1 billion software empire.

Palantir’s earnings and revenue also haven’t kept up with its stock price growth, leading to an incredibly high price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 627 compared to the S&P 500 average of 29. This inflated valuation suggests there isn’t much room for fundamentals-led growth. Palantir investors should consider taking profits before there is a correction in the stock.

John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Will Ebiefung has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Palantir Technologies. 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.