Investors have been taken on quite the ride by Wall Street over the past two years. They've seen the major stock indexes claim all-time highs, hurtle into a bear market, and now bounce back at a ferocious pace.

As is standard when stock market volatility picks up, investors have responded by gravitating to the FAANG stocks.

When I refer to "FAANG," I'm talking about:

  • Facebook, which is now a subsidiary of Meta Platforms (META 0.60%)
  • Apple (AAPL 1.00%)
  • Amazon (AMZN 0.80%)
  • Netflix (NFLX 0.43%)
  • Google, which is now a subsidiary of Alphabet (GOOGL 0.34%) (GOOG 0.24%)
Five silver dice that say buy and sell being rolled across a digital screen displaying stock charts and volume data.

Image source: Getty Images.

The FAANGs are industry-leading businesses that have crushed the broader market over the trailing-10-year period. Whereas the benchmark S&P 500 is up by a respectable 170% over the trailing decade, Alphabet (Class A shares, GOOGL), Amazon, Meta Platforms, Apple, and Netflix are respectively higher by 438%, 798%, 1,100%, 1,190%, and 1,260% over the same period.

These are also companies with seemingly sustained catalysts and massive moats.

Despite being industry leaders and outperformers, no two FAANG stocks are the same. As we move into July, one FAANG remains historically inexpensive and offers abundant upside, while another looks entirely avoidable.

The FAANG stock that's a surefire buy in July: Amazon

Among the FAANGs, it's e-commerce behemoth Amazon that stands out as a surefire buy for patient investors in July.

As with all stocks, Amazon does have headwinds it's contending with. For example, numerous economic indicators suggest there's an above-average likelihood of a U.S. recession taking shape in the coming months or quarters. Amazon generates a lot of its revenue from its online marketplace. During recessions, it's normal for consumer and enterprise buying activity to slow, which would undoubtedly be bad news for the company's online retail sales.

The other big challenge for Amazon is that it's not cheap in the traditional sense of the word. Amazon's management team has always been big on reinvesting back into the business, which comes at a cost to the company's bottom line. Investors tend to pay closer attention to valuation during and immediately after a bear market.

While both of these headwinds are tangible and shouldn't be swept under the rug, neither makes a particularly strong case to avoid Amazon. If investors do a bit of digging into what's really spinning the wheels for this company, there's a good chance they'll see the same value I do.

Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of Amazon is that its top revenue segment -- the e-commerce marketplace -- is of relatively low importance to its cash flow generation. What's far more important for Amazon is that its three significantly higher-margin ancillary divisions are firing on all cylinders.

For instance, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world's No. 1 cloud infrastructure service provider, with a 32% share in the March-ended quarter, according to estimates from Canalys.  Enterprise cloud spending is still in its early stages and offers sustained double-digit growth potential. More importantly, cloud service margins can run circles around online retail margins. Despite accounting for roughly a sixth of Amazon's net sales, AWS regularly generates the lion's share of the company's operating income.

The same can be said for subscriptions services, which is another sustainably fast-growing, cash-cow segment for Amazon. More than 200 million people worldwide have signed up for Prime, as of April 2021, and this figure has more than likely increased since Amazon landed the exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football.

Advertising services is the third segment of importance. Amazon is one of the most-trafficked websites on the planet, making it a logical target for advertisers wanting to target users. Over the past six reported quarters (Q4 2021-Q1 2023), advertising services have grown by no less than 21% on a year-over-year, currency-neutral basis. 

The key point here is that cash flow matters far more to Amazon's future any other metric. During the 2010s, Amazon closed out every year trading at 23 to 37 times its cash flow. By comparison, investors can purchase shares of Amazon right now for 17 times consensus cash flow for 2023, 13 times forecast cash flow for 2024, and roughly 9 times projected cash flow for 2026. Amazon's stock is cheaper than it's ever been.

Two jubilant children playing with display iPhones in an Apple store.

Image source: Apple.

The FAANG stock to avoid like the plague in July: Apple

However, not all FAANG stocks are necessarily going to be winners. Although tech stock Apple powered through the $3 trillion market cap mark to close out the first half of the year, it's the FAANG stock that's worth avoiding like the plague in July.

To be clear, a company doesn't reach a $3 trillion valuation by accident. Apple has had plenty of catalysts working in its favor for quite some time. As noted, it's the undisputed leader in smartphone sales in the United States. Since introducing a 5G-capable iPhone, Apple has seen its quarterly share of U.S. smartphone sales jump to as much as 60%.

Apple is also making significant headway with its services segment. CEO Tim Cook is overseeing a natural evolution of Apple's operations that should further increase customer loyalty, improve the company's operating margin over time, and somewhat minimize the sales fluctuations observed during major iPhone replacement cycles.

However, it's pretty much impossible to pitch Apple as a good value at the moment given what we're seeing in the company's quarterly operating results and its guidance.

From the start of 2013 through 2018, investors had the opportunity to buy shares of Apple for between 10 and 15 times forward-year earnings. With Apple averaging a double-digit growth rate and its iPhones flying off store shelves, this proved to be a phenomenal deal.

At the moment, investors would have to pay 31 times Wall Street's consensus earnings for fiscal 2023 (Apple's fiscal year ends in late September) and a multiple of 28 times forward-year earnings to own shares of the United States' largest publicly traded company. The kicker is Apple's sales and profits are both slated to decline by around 2% in fiscal 2023 -- even with the help of above-average inflation.

Apple's issues are twofold. First, personal-computing sales have fallen off a cliff as life returns to some semblance of normal following the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sales of Mac in the first half of fiscal 2023 are down nearly 30%. Secondly, Apple's iPhone 14 didn't ramp as expected, with iPhone sales $5.1 billion below where they were at this time last year. 

To build on the above, Apple's recently introduced virtual reality glasses, known as the Vision Pro, may disappoint. According to a report from The Financial Times, two people familiar with the company, along with Apple's Chinese manufacturer, told FT that it only plans to produce 400,000 units instead of the 1 million units it had hoped to sell. 

It's been a long time since Apple was as fundamentally unattractive as it is now, which is what makes it an easy avoid in July.