The U.S. stock market has seen significant volatility in the past few years, swinging sharply between bull and bear phases. In an uncertain market environment, it becomes essential for retail investors to find stocks that can grow in bull markets and demonstrate stability in bear markets.
Online trading platforms also play a key role in making investing more accessible to a larger audience. By doing away with deposit requirements and high fees, these brokerages have made it possible for people with limited budgets to invest meaningfully in the stock market.
Even if you have just $300 in extra cash set aside for investing, you can make smart buys, including these two stocks.
Palantir
The first stock you should consider adding to your portfolio is data mining and artificial intelligence (AI) specialist Palantir Technologies (NYSE: PLTR). Known for helping clients derive insights from huge and complex datasets, the company’s data mining capabilities have been further strengthened by its recently launched Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP).
Management has noted that while some of its competitors may claim “only 10% of my customers have data that’s even AI-ready to begin with,” AIP is able to analyze unstructured data from various sources such as emails, Slack messages, PDFs, text messages, and images.
Palantir’s U.S. commercial business is seeing rapid growth, driven mainly by the increasing adoption of AIP by existing and new customers. The company’s U.S. commercial revenues grew 40% year over year to $149.7 million in the first quarter as its U.S. commercial customer count rose 69% to 262.
Growth for the company’s core U.S. government business has also started reaccelerating with revenue up 8% year over year (versus 3% in the previous quarter). The company secured a $178.4 million direct contract from the U.S. Army, under the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) program. Being a “software prime” — or the first software company to have a direct contract with the U.S. army for a hardware project — Palantir is poised to capture multiple new…
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