The Best Stocks to Buy With $2,000 Right Now

Most investors have limited funds to put to work in the stock market. How limited those funds are will depend on each person's circumstances, but almost everyone has some limit. The result is that we all have to make decisions about what to buy because we can't buy everything. The advent of fractional shares, now available at many brokerages, has made this easier, but it doesn't solve the problem entirely.

Fortunately, there are plenty of great stocks to buy that fit almost any budget. Here are three companies leading in important industries with bright futures ahead. Best of all, buying one share of each costs no more than $2,000. Let's dig in.

Coupang

Coupang (CPNG -0.52%) is a South Korea e-commerce company that has been taking a page out of Amazon's playbook. While its main business is an e-commerce marketplace, it also has food delivery, streaming content, and a fintech business. This has combined to help Coupang become the leading e-commerce platform in South Korea.

Coupang has only been a public company for approximately two years, but the results over that time have been impressive. Revenue growth, after slowing during 2022, has rebounded and accelerated in each of the last three reported quarters. Gross margin has steadily climbed from 15.9% in the fourth quarter of 2021 to 25.3% in the third quarter of 2023 (ended Sept. 30, 2023), the company's most recently reported quarter.

Over the past year, Coupang has also reached profitability. Through the first nine months of 2023, the company posted net income of $327 million, up from a net loss of $194 million through the first nine months of 2022.

The combination of accelerating revenue growth and improving profitability demonstrates Coupang's ability to continue to grow and also run efficiently. This is a positive sign for shareholders and makes the stock a compelling buy.

MercadoLibre

Sticking with the e-commerce theme, let's move to another part of the world, where MercadoLibre (MELI 3.09%) is offering an e-commerce marketplace and a fintech platform to users in 18 Latin American countries.

Unlike Coupang, MercadoLibre has been on the public market since 2007. Over that time, its stock is up more than 6,000%.

Looking back over just the last three years, it's clear how this business has been able to accelerate its results as it has gained scale.

Data source: MercadoLibre.

Of particular interest is how the company has improved its efficiency over time. Gross margin improved by 970 basis points and net income grew by 278% over this time frame, while revenue only increased by 95%.

This is a positive sign for investors. As the company scales, it's able to improve its margins and profits even as top-line growth slows.

Shopify

Sticking with the e-commerce theme, let's now turn to Shopify (SHOP 1.11%), which provides businesses of all sizes with the tools they need to run the customer-facing and back-end aspects of an online business. Many businesses from well-known brands to mom-and-pop shops use Shopify to run their websites, help manage inventory, and process payments.

Market sentiment as well as a pull-forward of growth during the pandemic has sent Shopify on a wild ride over the past few years and while the stock was up about 124% in 2023, it's still trading 52% off its late 2021 high.

Looking back at the last three reported quarters, it's clear why the stock recovered in 2023. Consider the year-over-year growth in these key metrics.

Data source: Shopify.

Shopify still has to achieve sustainable profitability. However, management believes it is on its way. The net income of $718 million reported in Q3 2023 was a massive improvement over the net loss of $158 million in Q3 2022.

Free cash flow also improved dramatically over this time frame. In the third quarter of 2022, Shopify had negative free cash flow of $148 million but by the third quarter of 2023 that had improved to positive free cash flow of $276 million.