The ultimate goal for growth investors is to outperform the S&P 500. Otherwise, you're just wasting your time and should look for an index fund. Although I consider myself a growth investor, the reality is that it's all just different varieties of value investing. If you're a growth investor, you're buying a stock because you believe its business will rapidly grow and allow the stock to outperform your chosen index. At its core, that is value investing because you're buying something for a discount now in hopes that it will rise to a higher price later.
While most definitions of value investing point toward buying a currently cheap asset, sometimes growth and value investing intersect. That's exactly what I see happening for The Trade Desk (TTD 2.82%). The Trade Desk has historically been a growth stock, but after its 80% decline from its highs, it's easily in value investing territory as well.
I think this stock has an incredible chance of outperforming the S&P 500 during 2026, and investors should load up on this fallen growth stock while it's still cheap.
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The Trade Desk is still an incredible company
The Trade Desk operates a buy-side ad platform that helps place its clients' advertisements in the best spot on the internet. The Trade Desk has connections with websites, podcasts, connected TV, and pretty much anywhere else you'd place an ad. Programmatic advertising is the next big thing in the ad market, and it continues to take market share from linear TV and traditional ads all the time. However, this isn't a secret, so this space is attracting many competitors.
NASDAQ: TTD
Key Data Points
One of the biggest that has disrupted The Trade Desk is Amazon. Amazon has a massive and growing advertising wing, and it's a smart partner to advertise with. Amazon ads have the unique capability of advertising their products that a consumer is looking for, at a trusted and well-known commerce site. This gives Amazon ads a high return on investment, making them a better partner than The Trade Desk. While the advertising market is more than just stuff you can buy on Amazon, it has taken some of The Trade Desk's primary market.
Still, The Trade Desk is doing just fine. Last quarter, its revenue rose 18%. While that's slower than previous growth rates, it's still faster than the market's 10% average annual return. For 2026, Wall Street analysts project 16% revenue growth, so it should also deliver market-beating growth this year.
Despite that, The Trade Desk's stock trades for a dirt cheap 13 times forward earnings.
TTD PE Ratio (Forward) data by YCharts
For reference, the S&P 500 trades for 22.2 times forward earnings.
There's rarely an opportunity to scoop up a stock growing at a double-digit pace for this much of a discount to the market that's not in a cyclical industry, but that's the great investment opportunity The Trade Desk presents. I think it's primed to beat the market moving forward, and investors should load up on shares while it's cheap.
