With the new year just getting started, it's a great time to put your money to work. Stocks are fantastic wealth-building tools, and it's easy to find some great buys, even in this increasingly inflated market.
The market will continue to experience volatility over the next couple of years as the economic shockwaves from the coronavirus health crisis develop and then fade away. The two stocks below have been skyrocketing in recent months, and neither of them are cheap by any traditional measure. I'm still very comfortable buying them today because their long-term returns will soon make you forget about the market corrections along the way. As master investor Warren Buffet likes to say, it's "far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price."
On that note, let's take a closer look at why you should buy Fiverr International (FVRR -2.00%) and Fastly (FSLY -3.35%) right away.
Image source: Getty Images.
I own Fastly and so should you
Fastly is an up-and-coming player in the market for content delivery network (CDN) services. The company is much smaller than sector leader Akamai Technologies, but it's also growing much faster, thanks to a more contemporary business model.
Signing up for Akamai services typically means jumping on the phone with a sales rep to negotiate a deal, while Fastly lets you point and click through the entire process in a couple of minutes. This highly automated account-management approach is an important cost-saving step, and also a selling point for many Fastly customers. I could point out a few other companies that make the all-digital sales process look good and wouldn't be surprised to see software-and-services companies moving in this direction en masse in the near future.
But Fastly is already there, a leader of a nascent revolution. When a plethora of media giants needed CDN services for their video-streaming platforms over the last year, many of them turned to Fastly first. Sales are surging and the important TikTok account doesn't look like it's going away after all. The company turned in positive free cash flow in the recently reported third quarter.
I bought some Fastly stock for myself in October because I'm convinced that this company is going places in the long run. Fastly's share prices rose 386% in 2020, and that's just the beginning of a long wealth-building story.
Image source: Getty Images.
I can't buy Fiverr unless I stop recommending it to you
I've been meaning to build a Fiverr position for some time now. Every time I think about it, I end up writing another article recommending that you -- my reader -- should buy it instead. Due to The Motley Fool's ironclad disclosure policy, I can't buy or sell the stock for another couple of business days. And when I come back to the idea of buying shares of the freelance-services marketplace operator, the whole cycle starts over.
Here we are again, with my own Fiverr purchase being delayed by another article. I seem to prefer opening your eyes to a fantastic investment instead of taking action for myself.
You're welcome.
Fiverr is a leading service provider of the so-called gig economy. Many of the platform's sellers are sharing their skills mostly for fun or just to put together a bit of extra money in their spare time. For others, it's the closest thing they have to a day job. Through the Fiverr service, both types of sellers are helping other people and even enterprise-class businesses accomplish creative tasks in dozens of different categories.
The company recently launched a new service called Fiverr Business. There, large-scale companies can use Fiverr's proven task-management tools to organize and manage work among their own teams -- with full access to Fiverr's broader pool of third-party freelancers.
Fiverr's stock surged 730% higher in 2020, driven by millions of people having a lot of time on their hands during the coronavirus lockdowns. Some wanted to make extra money as a seller. Others used Fiverr's freelancers to start up or boost their own businesses. Need a logo? Go to Fiverr. How about a website with an e-commerce solution? Again, check Fiverr. It's a win-win situation where both buyers and sellers get what they need, and Fiverr makes some money along the way.
You're really getting in on the ground floor of a huge growth story here. Fiverr's third-quarter revenues stopped at just $52 million, but that's an 88% year-over-year jump. The company is staring down a global freelancer market worth hundreds of billions per year today -- and the market itself is growing quickly.
I do plan to add Fiverr to my own portfolio in the near future if I can only stop talking about it so much. In the meantime, nothing is stopping you from taking advantage of this amazing long-term growth stock.
Again, you're welcome.
