Last year was a good one for the S&P 500. Much like consumers who opened their wallets en masse after being locked in their homes for months due to the pandemic, the benchmark index turned on the afterburners in 2021 and outperformed both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq by its widest margin in over two decades.
The S&P 500 surged 27%, marking only the sixth time it has beaten the other major indexes. That was also more than double its average return and its fifth-best performance in almost 50 years.
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If you ignore the sudden plunge the stock market experienced at the onset of the pandemic, it has been on an incredible tear since the end of the Great Recession in 2009. The broad market index has quadrupled in value over that time period, turning an investment of $10,000 into almost $43,000 today.
That could suggest it's only a matter of time before the market crashes again, meaning if you've got only a little money to spare to invest in the stock market, you want it to go a long way and not get wiped out in any downdraft. So if you've got $100 or less available -- and you don't need it for emergencies or to pay bills -- the following three stocks are a great place to start.
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JD.com
I'm the first to admit investing in Chinese stocks these days seems risky. Beijing is cracking down on the biggest, most successful companies, seemingly as a reminder of who holds the real power in the country. And JD.com (JD 1.23%) is certainly a fast-growing, profitable e-commerce giant.
Since going public in 2014, JD.com has returned nearly 250% while the S&P 500 has ridden 150% higher in the same time frame. But there's a good reason for the dichotomy. China is a massive market opportunity with 1.4 billion people who -- like much of the rest of the world -- have increasingly embraced online shopping. The company's third-quarter revenue hit $33.9 billion, up 25% over the year-ago period.
Unlike Amazon.com or rival Alibaba, JD.com is more of a marketplace for third-party sellers like eBay than a seller of goods itself. Its broad selection of items is attracting ever greater numbers of customers to the site; active customers hit 552.2 million last year. That's some 25% more than in 2020.
At $76 a share, JD.com trades for just under six times next year's earnings estimate. Analysts, though, are forecasting that the e-commerce giant will grow earnings 24% annually for the next five years. So it could be a good deal for someone with just $100 to invest.
Image source: Lovesac.
Lovesac
Sit back and relax with modular furniture maker Lovesac (LOVE 0.84%), something of a contrarian stock pick for an investor with only a little money to put to work.
The "sactional" maker is hard at work changing how people shop for furniture as the pandemic forced consumers to switch from being hands on and having a natural revulsion to paying shipping costs to willingly buying online. Because Lovesac already had a robust e-commerce presence prior to the pandemic, along with a physical retail footprint, it was easily able to make the transition while others struggled.
And business is booming. Third-quarter sales jumped 56% to almost $117 million compared to a year ago while the company's gross margin is an impressive 50%. Wall Street sees Lovesac turning into a billion-dollar business by the middle of the decade.
Analysts are maintaining a $106 consensus price target for the shares over the next year. That's an 84% upside over the current $58 per share price. So modular furniture could be the perfect stock for investing couch potatoes with only a few dollars available.
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Plug Power
Investors have been waiting a long time for hydrogen fuel-cell technology to reach critical mass, particularly as Plug Power (PLUG -0.73%) has long promised it's just around the next corner. While that corner never seems to materialize, we may finally be on the brink of it occurring.
Recently KeyBanc Capital Markets released its forecast for the industry and -- gadzooks! -- it expects the technology to rocket from $1.1 billion last year to $300 billion by 2030. That's an 86% compound annual growth rate.
Analyst Leo Mariani told investors in a research note that fuel-cell companies will see their business get a turbo-boost from a "rapidly growing market for their services as fuel-cell adoption is poised to accelerate this decade." He initiated coverage of Plug Power with an overweight rating, putting a price target of $40 per share on the fuel-cell pioneer (that's 60% upside from its $25 per share level today).
Plug Power shipped 4,559 GenDrive material fuel-cell products in the third quarter along with 16 hydrogen infrastructure systems, some 23% more for each compared to last year. Still, it continues to post losses, and the global supply-chain issues that are impacting all industries, as well as inflation, continue to pressure Plug's margins.
Plug Power, though, sees a future for hydrogen fuel cells that goes well beyond its primary forklift market. And if Wall Street is even only partly correct about its growth potential, Plug could have a bright future ahead of it that would potentially turn $100 into far more.
