The S&P 500 (^GSPC 0.84%) is back to growth after declining for most of the year, and it's hitting new highs, recently up 5% year to date.
When the market is down, investors tend to run to safe stocks, which can protect your investments under challenging conditions. As the market rallies, it might be a good time to reconsider growth stocks, which can drive high gains in good times.
Here are some excellent candidates that look like great ideas to me right now.
Image source: Getty Images.
Nvidia
Nvidia (NVDA +0.73%) is the top artificial intelligence (AI) chip producer, and despite the hype, its stock is reasonably priced. It's up 1,500% over the past five years, and while there's no guarantee of future results, it looks to be headed higher.
It reported outstanding results, again, for the 2026 fiscal fourth quarter, and the opportunity is still massive. Data centers are exploding, and agentic artificial intelligence (AI) is on the rise.
"Countries around the world are recognizing AI as essential infrastructure, just like electricity and the internet, and Nvidia stands at the center of this profound transformation," CEO Jensen Huang said.
Although there are other AI chip competitors, Nvidia has the most premium products, and it partners with the world's top AI platforms. If you didn't benefit from Nvidia's early rise, you can still benefit from its further growth.
NASDAQ: NVDA
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MercadoLibre
MercadoLibre (MELI 2.00%) is an e-commerce and fintech giant in Latin America, and it has huge opportunities, as its target market embraces technology. The regions in which it operates lag behind other global markets like the U.S. and China, giving MercadoLibre ample space to keep growing.
Although it's a powerhouse, with a 64% (currency neutral) increase in revenue from last year, it only has $22 billion in trailing-12-month sales. That's fairly small for an industry giant, and investors should expect it to be able to keep that up.
It continues to launch improvements to its marketplace and new products and services throughout its enterprise, and it applied for a bank charter in Mexico. These upgrades should drive engagement and growth as the company meets its customers' needs.
Amazon
Amazon (AMZN 1.32%) is the largest U.S. e-commerce company by far, with nearly 40% of the market. But it's not relying on that to stay ahead; it's constantly adding products, improving its speed, and launching new services and segments to generate growth.
Its most compelling opportunities today are in AI through Amazon Web Services (AWS), its cloud business. AWS is the leading global cloud services provider, with 30% of the market. It's loading the platform with every shape and size of features and tools to give its clients the broadest exposure to AI development. Management says it's already a $100 billion business, but it's just in its infancy.
Echoing Nvidia's Huang, CEO Andy Jassy said, "From our perspective, we think virtually every application that we know of today is going to be reinvented with AI inside of it and with inference being a core building block, just like compute and storage and database."
Amazon should benefit from the same AI tailwinds as Nvidia, and it has years of growth up ahead.
NASDAQ: AMZN
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Shopify
Shopify (SHOP +0.74%) is the other U.S. e-commerce giant, but it doesn't sell products directly to customers. It has a huge assortment of e-commerce services that power millions of online merchants, and increasingly, physical stores as well. It's become more of a commerce company than an e-commerce company, integrating the digital and physical for a seamless experience. In fact, offline revenue is growing faster than the company total, up 33% year over year in the first quarter versus 27% for the total.
Shopify is benefiting organically as e-commerce increases as a percentage of retail sales, and it's also bringing out new, improved features and targeting more types of clients. It has successfully moved from its target market of small businesses to capture greater market share in medium-sized and enterprise businesses, and the larger businesses are where the biggest opportunities are. It's also launching more features internationally to grab more global market share, where it's still behind other service providers.
NASDAQ: SHOP
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Taiwan Semiconductor
Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM 0.71%), or TSMC, is a foundry, and it produces the physical chips for the world's leading chip designers, like Apple and Nvidia. It's growing at a healthy rate, with sales up 35% year over year in the 2025 first quarter, and it's another company benefiting from the rise of AI.
However, since it makes all kinds of chips and has all kinds of customers, it's shielded from negative impact to any particular client or business. In fact, while AI is its biggest segment right now, accounting for 59% of the total, smartphones make up a significant 28%.
TSMC is the kind of leading, reliable giant that offers value for investors, but it's still in high-growth mode, making it a super stock for almost any kind of investor.
