Patience isn't just a virtue. On Wall Street, it's a formula for building wealth. Despite the broad-based S&P 500 declining by a double-digit percentage on 38 separate occasions since the beginning of 1950, each and every one of these pullbacks was eventually erased by a bull-market rally.
Put in another context, it really doesn't matter when you put your money to work in stocks. The more important aspect is how long you hold onto your investments. History shows that the longer you hold, the greater your chance of generating life-altering returns.
Best of all, with most online brokerages eliminating commissions and minimum deposit requirements, any amount of capital -- even $200 -- can go a long way toward achieving your financial independence.
If you have $200 ready to invest, which won't be needed for bills or emergencies, it can be put to work in this trio of no-brainer stocks right now.
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Bristol Myers Squibb
Although growth stocks have ruled the roost on Wall Street for the better part of 12 years, it's value stock Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY -0.62%) that stands out as a jaw-dropping, no-brainer buy at the moment.
The great thing about healthcare stocks like Bristol Myers Squibb is they're money machines in any economic environment. Since we don't get the control when we get sick or what ailment(s) we develop, demand for things like drugs, devices, and healthcare services doesn't change just because Wall Street had a bad day or the U.S. economy enters a recession. Operating in a defensive sector means pharmaceutical stocks like Bristol Myers are veritable cash cows.
As you might imagine, internal development has played a big role in lifting sales for the company. For instance, it's on track to generate north of $10 billion in sales from Eliquis, which was developed in cooperation with Pfizer. Eliquis has quickly become the world's leading oral anticoagulant.
There's also cancer immunotherapy Opdivo, which brought in about $7 billion in sales in 2020. Opdivo has 10 approved indications, but it's being studied in dozens of clinical trials as a monotherapy or combination treatments. While not all of these trials will pan out, label expansions are likely over time. This should expand Opdivo's sales potential, lift Bristol Myers' pricing power on the drug, and further insulate its cash flow from future competition.
Bristol Myers Squibb further solidified itself as a great company with its late 2019 acquisition of cancer and immunology company Celgene. This deal added multiple myeloma drug Revlimid into Bristol Myers' portfolio. This is a drug that brought in more than $12 billion in sales last year, and that's grown by a double-digit annual percentage for over a decade. Revlimid is protected from a full onslaught of generic competition until Jan. 31, 2026, which means years of exceptional cash flow still to come.
There's no reason investors should be able to buy this company for just 7.4 times forward-year earnings, and with a 3.3% yield.
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Planet 13 Holdings
If high-growth small-cap stocks are what wet your whistle, cannabis company Planet 13 Holdings (PLNH.F -2.02%) is a no-brainer stock just begging to be bought.
It's no lie that marijuana stocks have been nothing short of a buzzkill the past seven months. Shortly after President Joe Biden took office, the expectation was that cannabis reform could actually happen at the federal level. But nearly a year after the election, change still hasn't come to Capitol Hill.
However, what's being overlooked is the fact that 36 states have legalized medical marijuana in some capacity, with half of those states having rules on their books to allow (or eventually allow) recreational consumption and/or retail sales. With the U.S. Justice Department allowing states to regulate their own pot industries, companies like Planet 13 have more than enough avenues to thrive.
Planet 13 is a multistate operator (MSO), but it's absolutely nothing like the other U.S. MSOs. Rather than opening dozens of stores in as many legalized states as possible, Planet 13 has focused on the experience of shopping for cannabis.
It has two operating dispensaries at the moment. Its original location is the SuperStore in Las Vegas, just west of the Strip. This is a 112,000-square-foot store that features a consumer-facing processing center, events stage, café, and more selling space than you can ever imagine for dried flower, paraphernalia, and derivatives. The other SuperStore is located in Santa Ana, Calif., and will span 55,000 when fully complete. It currently has 16,500 square feet of selling space. No other dispensary comes close to the experience or layout Planet 13 offers its guests.
With the Las Vegas SuperStore a success, Planet 13 is setting its sights on Chicago, where it was recently awarded a license, and Florida, where it's acquiring a cannabis license from Harvest Health & Recreation. Both markets are magnets for tourists, and they're already generating more than $1 billion in annual weed sales. With the company turning the corner to recurring profitability, these new locations could cement Planet 13 as a premier pot stock.
Image source: Getty Images.
Western Digital
A third no-brainer buy with $200 right now is storage solutions giant Western Digital (WDC -1.85%). If you thought Bristol Myers was cheap at 7.4 times forward-year earnings, Western Digital can be had for less than 4.9 times Wall Street's consensus forward-year earnings.
Traditionally, storage is a highly cyclical and commoditized industry. That's why you'll occasionally see Western Digital valued at a single-digit price-to-earnings ratio. Analysts simply assume that storage providers will increase their output to take advantage of higher prices and oversupply the market, eventually leading to a move lower in prices and profitability. But things could be different this go-around -- especially with the pandemic wreaking havoc on global supply chains.
As I've noted in the past, Western Digital is perfectly positioned to benefit from the gaming console replacement cycle. New gaming consoles typically hit the market every five years. The launch of new consoles last November, and the increased storage capacity needed to operate these next-gen consoles, should provide a healthy short-term bump for Western Digital.
Also helping out in the short run are higher sales for notebooks and personal computers. With the pandemic keeping people in their homes and workforces going remote, demand for notebooks and PCs have soared.
But it's the company's long-term catalysts that could send shares markedly higher. I'm talking about Western Digital's role in providing storage capacity for data centers as businesses shift their data into the cloud. It's quite possible that the company's NAND flash solutions become the preferred storage option in data centers by as soon as mid-decade.
The company will also benefit from the next-generation vehicle replacement cycle. New vehicles, including electric vehicles, are more reliant on storage solutions than ever to operate entertainment systems and other dashboard components.
The point is that Western Digital has more going for it now than at any other time that I can remember in my more than two decades of investing.
