5 Historically Cheap Growth Stocks to Buy With Confidence in the Wake of the Nasdaq Correction

Every so often, Wall Street sends a not-so-subtle reminder to investors that stocks can move in both directions.

Between the closing bells on Feb. 19 and March 13, the iconic Dow Jones Industrial Average, benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC -1.12%), and growth-focused Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC -2.04%) respectively tumbled by 8.6%, 10.1%, and 13.7%. The double-digit percentage declines for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite placed both indexes in official correction territory.

However, these line-in-the-sand corrections were relatively short-lived. The S&P 500 needed only one session to move out of correction, with the Nasdaq Composite following suit on March 24.

Traditionally, stock market corrections have been the perfect time for long-term-minded investors with ample cash on hand to go shopping for bargains. Even if the Nasdaq’s downturn isn’t over just yet, five historically cheap growth stocks stand out as sensational buys.

Image source: Getty Images.

The Trade Desk

The first amazing deal that growth-seeking investors can purchase with confidence is adtech giant The Trade Desk (TTD -5.10%), whose shares are more than 57% below their all-time high. Though economic growth concerns are weighing on the company’s very near-term operating prospects, The Trade Desk is perfectly positioned to take advantage of rising spending in digital advertising.

The Trade Desk’s claim to fame is the digital ad industry’s adoption of its Unified ID 2.0 technology, which is a tracking tool that moves beyond traditional cookies and allows businesses to target their message(s) to consumers. The Trade Desk is making its living as a key player in demand-side connected TV advertising — i.e., ads served during streamed content. This is a sustained double-digit growth opportunity for the company.

Don’t forget that ad companies benefit from the nonlinearity of economic cycles, as well. The typical economic expansion since the end of World War II has stuck around for approximately five years. This encourages businesses to spend aggressively on marketing and will lift The Trade Desk’s sales and profits over time.

The Trade Desk’s forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 27 marks a massive discount to its average forward P/E of almost 89 over the trailing-five-year period.

PayPal Holdings

A second inexpensive growth stock you’ll regret not buying in the wake of the Nasdaq correction is fintech goliath PayPal Holdings (PYPL -1.21%). Despite increasing competition in the digital payments arena, PayPal has the necessary catalysts to push forward and differentiate itself.

The first thing to note about PayPal is that its key performance indicators aren’t as worrisome as skeptics might suggest. Even with very modest active account growth, total payment volume across its digital payment networks jumped by 10% on a constant-currency basis to $1.68 trillion in 2024. More importantly, payment transactions per active account over the trailing-12-months catapulted from 40.9 at the end of 2020 to 60.6 by the end of 2024. Active accounts are more engaged than ever, which means higher gross profit for PayPal.

The Alex Chriss effect is important, too. Chriss became PayPal’s CEO in late September 2023, and he brought over a plethora of small business knowledge from his previous job as Executive Vice President of Intuit‘s Small Business and Self-Employed Group. Chriss understands the innovations that can bring new users to the PayPal network, and hasn’t been afraid to cut operating costs or aggressively repurchase his own company’s stock to respectively boost margins and PayPal’s earnings per share.

PayPal’s forward P/E ratio of 12.6 equates to a 37% discount to its average forward-earnings multiple over the last half-decade.

Image source: Amazon.

Amazon

The wake of the Nasdaq correction is also a great time to scoop up shares of e-commerce colossus Amazon (AMZN -2.19%). Although Amazon’s online retail marketplace is susceptible to weakness during economic downturns, the company’s future is almost entirely dependent on its ancillary operating segments.

Arguably no operating segment holds more bearing to Amazon’s long-term success than Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS is the world’s leading cloud infrastructure service provider, and enterprise cloud spending is still in its relative early stages of ramping up. The incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions into AWS should only serve to accelerate spending. Though it only accounts for around a sixth of Amazon’s total sales, AWS frequently generates more than half of the company’s operating income.

The company’s advertising and subscription service segments should play key roles in its growth, as well. For instance, Amazon winning the exclusive rights to stream Thursday Night Football and select NBA games can strengthen both its ad- and Prime subscription-pricing power. Both segments have sustained double-digit sales growth, sans currency changes.

While Amazon might not look like a fundamental bargain on the surface, it is historically cheap relative to its future cash flow. Shares can be purchased right now for roughly 12.2 times forecast cash flow in 2026, which is 42% below the company’s average multiple to cash flow over the last five years.

BioMarin Pharmaceutical

A fourth inexpensive growth stock that can be added with confidence by long-term investors in the wake of the Nasdaq’s near-14% drawdown is specialty biotech BioMarin Pharmaceutical (BMRN -0.10%). Even though brand-name drugs have finite periods of sales exclusivity, BioMarin offers a couple of catalysts that may be hard for opportunistic investors to ignore.

For starters, BioMarin is focused on rare-disease indications and orphan therapies. Homing in on diseases with few or no treatment options ensures little to no competition for BioMarin, and it often leads to exceptional pricing power. Top-selling drug Voxzogo, which treats achondroplasia in patients aged four months and older, produced $735 million in sales last year, up 56% from the previous year.

Beyond just label expansion opportunities for Voxzogo, BioMarin has a promising pipeline. This includes experimental Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy drug BMN 351, as well as BMN 333, which is being examined in various skeletal conditions. BioMarin’s management team believes the company is on track to hit its target of $4 billion in annual sales by 2027, which would represent an increase of 40% from the company’s $2.85 billion in reported sales for 2024.

BioMarin’s forward P/E ratio of 13.5 is 64% below its average forward-year earnings multiple over the trailing-five-year period.

Alphabet

Last but certainly not least, Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL -3.17%) (GOOG -3.23%) is a screaming bargain in the wake of the Nasdaq correction. While it’s contending with the same short-term advertising uncertainties as The Trade Desk, Alphabet has more than one trick up its sleeve to grow its business.

For the time being, Google is its foundation. According to GlobalStats, Google has accounted for an 89% to 93% share of monthly global internet search dating back 10 years. Having a veritable monopoly in internet search has afforded Google exceptional ad-pricing power and allowed Alphabet to rake in plenty of operating cash flow. Lengthy periods of economic growth are music to the ears of a company that generated 75% of its net sales from advertising during the fourth quarter.

However, Alphabet’s cash flow in the second-half of this decade is likely to be fueled by cloud infrastructure service platform Google Cloud. Incorporating generative AI solutions into its platform should solidify, if not strengthen, its role as the world’s No. 3 cloud service infrastructure platform by global spend. Cloud-service margins are notably higher than those associated with advertising.

Opportunistic long-term investors can buy shares of Alphabet for 16.4 times forecast earnings in 2026, which is a cool 27% discount to its five-year average.