2 Stocks I'm Ready to Buy if the Market Drops Again

2 hours ago 1

Jennifer Saibil, The Motley Fool

Tue, April 21, 2026 astatine 6:25 AM CDT 5 min read

The S&P 500 is backmost to hitting caller highs arsenic it rebounds from an earlier plunge acknowledgment to the Iran war. But valuations person been precocious for a while, and with galore stocks recovering on with the market, it's hard to spot bargains. Consider the S&P 500 cyclically adjusted P/E (CAPE) ratio, which conscionable reached a 10-year high.

S&P 500 Shiller CAPE Ratio Chart

S&P 500 Shiller CAPE Ratio information by YCharts

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Costco Wholesale (NASDAQ: COST) and Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ: PLTR) are 2 astonishing stocks that look excessively costly to bargain today. But if they driblet again, I'm acceptable to bargain them. Here's why.

Costco and Palantir logos implicit    institution  images.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Costco banal has been incredibly reliable arsenic a market-beater implicit its decades connected the market, truthful overmuch truthful that it's go highly successful request and rather expensive. It trades astatine a P/E ratio of 52, which is much costly than stocks similar Nvidia and Amazon, adjacent though it's a humble retail stock. On the 1 hand, that's a affluent valuation for a institution past its high-growth days. On the different hand, it signals however overmuch worth the marketplace places connected its reliability and consistency.

It's 1 of fewer nationalist companies that study monthly updates, and successful the March report, income accrued 11.3% twelvemonth implicit year, with a 9.4% summation successful comparable income (comps). Those are accelerated numbers, and the period included 1 less buying time than past year, which absorption said negatively impacted some numbers.

It's hard to amended connected Costco's well-run strategy of charging a rank interest and delivering rock-bottom prices. The interest generates loyalty and volume, and the debased prices make resilience and higher sales. It onboards caller members consistently, and members renew astatine a precocious rate.

However, the institution hasn't been bogged down by its accepted systems. There are precise precocious barriers to introduction successful its space, adjacent for tech disruptors. Costco itself has been figuring retired however to bring much tech into operations, since the mode it works doesn't lend itself good to classical e-commerce. Some of what it has landed connected are partnerships with same-day transportation companies for market and curbside pickup for ample and bulky items, and that's wherefore it has changed its e-commerce income to what it calls "digitally enabled sales," which accrued 23% twelvemonth implicit twelvemonth successful March.

Costco is an fantabulous everlastingly stock, and with a amended introduction point, I'd privation to bargain in.

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