2 No-Brainer Stocks to Buy in 2023

The new year is here, and with it, another year to invest in wonderful companies and build out your long-term portfolio goals. 2023 has already been filled with its share of up and down market days. But investors who stay in through those highs and lows and continue adding to their portfolio consistently through the years can retain the advantage over investors who try to time the market's movements. 

If you're building out your stock shopping list, here are two no-brainer stocks to consider buying right now. 

1. Chewy 

Chewy (CHWY 2.45%) has taken the tried-and-true pet store model and refreshed it to meet the demands of the digital age. The company operates an online-only model and sells a wide range of its own branded as well as third-party products to service a wide range of animal owner needs. Beyond products targeting household pets like dogs, cats, and rabbits, the company also sells items for livestock and other farm animals. 

But basic supplies like bedding, food, toys, and feed bowls are just a slice of the company's growing business and evolving vision for the future of the platform.

Chewy operates a pet pharmacy and pet telehealth service, and even sells insurance plans thanks to partnerships with well-known names in the industry like Lemonade and Trupanion. The company even launched its own line of pet wellness supplements, marking its entry into the nonprescription pet wellness market, a space that alone is estimated to have a total addressable market of $2.4 billion.  

Chewy is also continuing to upgrade its order-fulfillment capabilities, with a growing network of automated fulfillment centers that trim operating costs and order-wait times, among a range of benefits.

And now, the company is moving into the lucrative ad space with its own sponsored ad programs where certain vendors can pay to promote their products to the more than 20 million customers on Chewy's rapidly growing platform.  

On that note, in the third-quarter earnings call, CEO Sumit Singh said, "We believe sponsored ads will enable us to scale contextual advertisements, which in turn should deliver highly relevant products to customers and high-margin revenue to our business. The full launch is on track for 2023."  

For this business, which is growing revenue steadily and is profitable, the future runway for growth looks tremendous, especially considering the expected rise in pet ownership and spending in the years ahead. Even in a potential recessionary period, people are still going to spend money on pets and related services, which lends a certain level of non-cyclicality to Chewy's business. 

2. Airbnb

Airbnb (ABNB -0.24%) has witnessed a robust business recovery where revenue and net income hit record highs, and there's no doubt that the incidence of "revenge travel" following the worst of the pandemic has been a notable element at play. 

Travel recovery is expected to continue in 2023, although a full rebound in spending in this area is not expected to happen until 2024 due to ongoing macro factors at play.

But short-term leisure travelers are just one piece of Airbnb's business. Long-term stays, which are stays of 28 days or more, continue to be the fastest-growing segment of Airbnb's business. In fact, travelers booking long-term stays comprised about 20% of all Airbnb's reservations in Q3 2022.

The growing adoption of remote work changed the way many people think about travel. Rather than being limited to perhaps just a few weeks a year to go somewhere new, workers around the world are taking advantage of full-time remote, hybrid, or flex arrangements, which is changing the traditional work-life balance.

The rise of remote work means that many people don't have to be limited to the city their job is in to determine their living arrangements. These trends are only expected to grow in the years ahead. Instead of long-term leases, more remote workers may favor the flexibility and easy accessibility of the types of rentals so readily available on Airbnb's platform.

And while Airbnb's sequential and year-over-year growth metrics remained stellar over the past several quarters, it's worth noting that the company's Q3 2022 revenue was up by nearly 70% compared to the same quarter in 2019, while its net income was up more than three times that on a three-year clip. The longer-term momentum, both in and outside of the traditional travel industry, continue to drive Airbnb's business forward and can keep doing so in the years ahead, enriching buy-and-hold investors in the process.