The wisdom of crowds is at work on the popular free trading platform Robinhood Markets. Among its most widely owned stocks, there is a diversified mixture of blue chips and rising stars that would be at home in any portfolio.
Since January 2020, the top 100 most owned investments on Robinhood have slightly underperformed the Nasdaq Composite, but the advantage has swung back and forth.
Through July 2021, the most owned Robinhood stocks were outperforming the market by a fair margin, which is not surprising. Growth stocks typically perform better in a rising market than vice versa. With the major indexes down over the last few years, this could be a great time to find future winners among Robinhood customers' favorite holdings.
Here are two popular stocks I would consider buying right now.
Advanced Micro Devices
Top chipmakers have tremendous growth opportunities as the world shifts to advanced computing technologies like artificial intelligence (AI). Shares of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD 2.37%) are up big this year, but the stock is still trading 31% off its previous peak and could hit new highs over the next few years.
AMD saw revenue growth slow last year amid macroeconomic headwinds, but it's starting to ramp up again. Its most recent business update showed revenue accelerating. The company is still seeing mixed performance in its data center business, but investments in AI will drive more growth from enterprise customers over the long term.
On the consumer side, AMD's Ryzen 7000 chips, which feature an AI on-chip accelerator, have been a huge hit. The client segment posted a 42% year-over-year growth rate last quarter and should position AMD for more demand as Windows PCs implement new AI features.
The growing demand for Ryzen is a great sign for AMD's market share gains against Intel, where it has delivered a better price-to-performance ratio for PC users in recent years. As the chipmaker prepares to ship its new data center GPU accelerators for AI workloads, it should grab at least a small share of the AI chip market away from Nvidia and further accelerate revenue growth to deliver market-beating returns to investors.
Coinbase Global
Coinbase Global (COIN 5.68%) is one of the most widely used exchanges for buying cryptocurrencies, but the decline in the crypto market over the last few years has caused lower trading activity on the platform, and therefore sent the stock down 79% off its 2021 highs.
The good news is that investors now get much more value out of the shares, because the long-term demand for digital currencies should only grow over time. Coinbase stock was trading at an expensive price-to-sales ratio of around 20 in 2021. It now trades at a more reasonable valuation of 7.9 times revenue.
It's normal for brokerages to experience weak results in bear markets and strong growth in bull markets. Long-term investors can take advantage of these swings to buy shares on the cheap when trading activity is down, knowing it will pick up again in the next bull market. The stock has already rebounded 168% this year as investors anticipate a turnaround on the horizon, and indeed, there is a big catalyst in the near term that could drive more investor interest in cryptocurrencies.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to approve spot Bitcoin ETFs very soon. There are already plenty of cryptocurrency ETFs available, but a spot Bitcoin ETF directly tracks the changes in the asset's price through direct ownership of the digital currency.
Top cryptocurrencies have been climbing in recent weeks as investors anticipate more institutional demand coming into the market once spot ETFs are approved. This could be the start of a new bull market for digital currencies and benefit Coinbase stock.
