Although we're only four and a half months into 2022, it's been a trying and challenging year for the investing community. Since hitting their respective all-time highs during the first week of January, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and benchmark S&P 500 are lower by 12.5% and 16.1%. The tech-dependent Nasdaq Composite is even worse off, with a peak decline from its November high reaching approximately 30%.
Although market corrections can be scary, they're a perfectly normal part of the investing cycle. On average, the S&P 500 has corrected by a double-digit percentage once every 1.85 years since the beginning of 1950.
They're also, historically, a great time to put your money to work in the stock market. Even though we don't know when a correction will occur, how long it'll last, or how steep the decline will be, history has shown that every notable decline has eventually been wiped away by a bull market rally.
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Best of all, you don't need to start with a mountain of cash to build wealth on Wall Street. With most online brokerages doing away with minimum deposit requirements and commission fees, any amount of money -- even $300 -- can be the perfect amount to invest.
If you have $300 ready to put to work, which won't be needed to cover bills or emergencies, the following three stocks stand out as absolute bargains and are just begging to be bought.
Starbucks
The first screaming bargain that investors can confidently buy with $300 is coffee giant Starbucks (SBUX 1.09%).
At the moment, Starbucks is facing a mountain of headwinds. It's contending with COVID-19 store closures in select international markets (such as China), rapidly rising input costs, and unionization efforts for select stores throughout the United States. Add to this the prospect of a U.S. recession, and you have quite the wall of worry.
However, Starbucks has navigated its fair share of recessions and economic headwinds before, and the company has always emerged stronger. A number of key metrics and innovations suggest Starbucks will, again, come out stronger once the ongoing correction in the broader market plays out.
One reason for patient investors to be excited about Starbucks' prospects is the company's pricing power. At no point has Starbucks struggled to pass along higher prices to its customers and (pardon the pun) paid the price for it. Starbucks has an exceptionally loyal customer base (myself included), as evidenced by the 26.7 million active Rewards members, as of April 3, 2022.
Something else to note about these Rewards members is that they're playing a critical role in making Starbucks' stores more efficient. Rewards members are more likely to place mobile orders and store their payment info on their smartphones, which makes lines move faster.
The company is also leaning on innovation to drive growth. For instance, drive-thru ordering boards were recently redesigned to suggest high-margin beverage and food pairings. They also feature video chat capability, which should help build customer engagement, even if folks aren't walking into Starbucks' stores.
Despite multiple headwinds, Starbucks generated 15% consolidated net sales growth in its fiscal second quarter and looks to be just as much of a powerhouse now as it's been for decades. It's a smart buy for patient investors.
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Petco Health and Wellness
A second absolute bargain just begging to be bought with $300 as the market corrects lower is Petco Health and Wellness (WOOF 1.85%).
Wall Street's worry with Petco appears to center on global supply chain issues tied to the COVID-19 pandemic. Anyone who's a pet parent is well aware of the supply struggles retail chains are contending with. Tack on those aforementioned worries about a possible recession in the U.S., and you have a stock that's lost 35% of its value since hitting a 52-week high in June 2021.
But this worry looks unfounded in a number of respects. To begin with, the pet industry has proven virtually unstoppable. Spending on companion animals in the U.S. hasn't declined on a year-over-year basis in at least a quarter of a century, according to data from the American Pet Products Association. This means pet owners opened their wallets progressively wider during the dot-com bubble, the Great Recession, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Historically high inflation isn't likely to halt this seemingly unstoppable trend.
Beyond just favorable industry trends, Petco is leaning on high-margin services and digitization as a means to grow its business and create value for shareholders. With the company placing added emphasis on pet wellness, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Petco is building out veterinary clinics that are co-located at its stores. These nearly 200 veterinary hospitals, as of Jan. 29, 2022, are helping Petco deliver record revenue and sustained (for the time being) double-digit sales growth.
In terms of digitization, Petco is aggressively investing in its direct-to-consumer platform, as well as promoting subscription services. Although the bulk of Petco's revenue continues to come from its physical stores, the convenience factor of online sales, especially during the pandemic, makes investing in online retail a no-brainer move for the company.
With its forward-year price-to-earnings ratio of just 17, investors should consider ushering Petco out of Wall Street's doghouse and into their portfolios.
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Etsy
A third and final bargain that's begging to be scooped up with $300 by investors is e-commerce platform Etsy (ETSY -0.22%).
Not to sound like a broken record, but Wall Street continues to be worried about historically high inflation and the growing likelihood of a recession. Of the three stocks on this list, Etsy, which runs an online retail platform, is the likeliest to be hurt by a recession. High inflation is a particular problem for lower-income consumers, who become less likely to make discretionary purchases.
Yet in spite of these headwinds, Etsy continues to offer clear-cut competitive advantages that make it a genius long-term investment.
The single biggest differentiator between Etsy and other online retail platforms is engagement. Whereas most other platforms are focused on volume, Etsy's online marketplace is comprised of small businesses that produce unique and customized products. These are businesses that succeed based on the personalization they can provide. There isn't an online retailer that offers the same level of buyer engagement at scale as Etsy's marketplace.
What's more, Etsy has done a particularly good job of transforming casual shoppers into habitual buyers. A "habitual buyer" makes at least six purchases over the trailing-12-month period, and their aggregate buying totals at least $200. Continuing to grow this habitual buyer count is what allows Etsy to charge merchants more for advertising and other platform services.
Even after Wall Street analysts reduced their forward-year earnings estimates for Etsy to factor in a challenging retail environment, shares remain inexpensive -- 23 times forward-year earnings in spite of consistent double-digit annual sales growth.
