The Nasdaq Composite, which is heavily weighted toward growth, is 29% below its high. Many individual equities have tumbled much farther. Some Wall Street analysts, on the other hand, believe that selling has gone too far, with Latch (LTCH 6.80%) being one example.

For example, Colliers’ Barry Oxford has a Latch price target of $8, implying a 250 percent gain in the next year. Even more so, Tom White of DA Davidson forecasts that the stock will hit $11.50 and offer investors over 400 percent return in the following 12 months.

Clearly, these analysts see something they like, but let’s take a closer look at the firm before you add Latch to your own portfolio.

The smart building experience

Latch specializes in smart building technology. Latch OS is a cloud-based subscription software that manages smart locks, delivery assistants, intercoms, and cameras in a growing number of apartment buildings, rental properties, and commercial offices across North America. In fact, more than 10% of new apartments in the United States are constructed using Latch technology, and many older structures are being retrofitted with it.

The smart building sector is still in its early phases, and the market is extremely fragmented. Latch’s wide ecosystem of hardware, software, and services distinguishes it from other competitors. Residents may now use the Latch mobile app to unlock doors, admit guests, and manage smart home gadgets from a single location using the mobile app. In addition, the Latch Manager app allows facility workers to grant access permissions remotely, reducing on-site staff required. As a result, it cuts down on the need for on-site personnel.

Latch is progressing nicely financially. Revenue increased 106% to $13.7 million in the first quarter, but its GAAP loss swelled to $44.2 million. Perhaps more concerning, management now expects full-year revenue of $100 million at the high end of its range, which is a far cry from the over-$200 million projected by analysts in early May.

The company’s forecast for 2020—$173 million—was substantially lower than the one it provided at its investor day in 2020, which was $893 million. As a result, the assumption by management that Latch will be free cash flow positive by 2023 is called into question.

The economic climate, with inflation at a 40-year high and rapidly increasing interest rates, is also considerably different today. Fortunately, Latch’s operating costs grew at a slower pace than revenue in the most recent quarter, allowing the business to approach positive cash flow.

It has $264 million in cash and short-term assets left on its balance sheet to develop the firm. Investors should keep a close eye on this situation. Latch taking on debt would be less than ideal with interest rates increasing.

The potential for a worldwide recession caused the S&P 500 index to enter a bear market on May 20. But not all equities have performed badly.

The diversified pharmaceutical stocks Merck (MRK +23%) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ +5%) have appreciated by 23% and 5%, respectively, this year. The two equities appear to be good long-term buys at the moment, based on their valuations.

1. Merck

Merck’s market capitalization of $233 billion places it among the world’s top five pharmaceutical companies. The firm has a strong drug pipeline and portfolio that should serve it well in the future.

In 2021, Merck had five blockbusters on the market, including the best-selling cancer medicine in the world, Keytruda. And its animal health business grew by double digits for the year. Lagevrio is a blockbuster COVID-19 antiviral medication that generated $3.2 billion in net sales in the first quarter of 2022.

Merck also has a higher dividend yield, at 2.9 percent. In fact, that’s more than double the 1.6% yield of the S&P 500.

The dividend appears secure, and it should be able to expand at a similar rate as earnings. This is why I’m anticipating high single-digit yearly dividend growth, making the stock a good mix of income and growth potential.

2. Johnson & Johnson

Johnson & Johnson’s $458 billion market value makes it the globe’s largest pharmaceutical firm. Its roster of 14 blockbusters in 2021 included Stelara, cancer drug Darzalex, and the COVID-19 vaccine, among others. Aside from a strong product line, J&J has an equally impressive pipeline of pharmaceuticals.

This is emphasized by the fact that as of April, J&J had 84 clinical trials in progress for oncology, immunology, and neuroscience treatment areas. J&J’s strong product line should propel revenue growth in the near term, while the pipeline should fuel long-term expansion. This is why Wall Street analysts are predicting 5% annual earnings growth over the next five years for J&J.

J&J’s dividend payout ratio is expected to be 44% in 2022, implying that dividends can be raised somewhat ahead of earnings. That’s why I’m anticipating a modest rise in the dividend, similar to the 6.6 percent boost announced last month. This is a good combination of starting yield and growth potential, given the market-topping 2.5 percent dividend yield.

Investors frequently turn to dividend stocks’ stability and dependability during periods of high inflation and slowing economic growth — with good cause.

Hartford Funds’ asset managers investigated the performance of the S&P 500 going all the way back to 1930, focusing on the stocks that pay dividends and the ones that don’t, and discovered dividend-paying equities added 41% to the index’s total return over a near-100-year period.

Buying dividend-paying equities is a time-tested, successful way to deliver better long-term results, and these two S&P 500 stocks are among the finest.

Altria Group (Yield: 6.8%)

In good times and bad, the investor’s portfolio may be lit up by Altria Group (MO 1.81%), the world’s leading major brand of cigarettes, Marlboro. When the economy is expanding, tobacco stocks have unique pricing power that few other businesses enjoy.

Despite the fact that smoking rates are still declining, there are still tens of millions of smokers on the planet, and they are willing to pay for nicotine. Altria’s Marlboro cigarettes has a near-43% market share in the United States and a top 16.2% market share worldwide due to Altria’s agreements with Philip Morris International, which markets the brand outside of the United States.

For decades, the fund has paid out a dividend and has boosted it every year for more than 50 years. Because of its practice of paying out approximately 80% of adjusted earnings as dividends, it is a leading participant in the S&P 500.

Chevron (Yield: 3.4%)

Rising oil and gas prices are helping Chevron’s (CVX 1.60%) bottom line, as it produces record cash flows that it is using to improve its balance sheet and reward investors with stock repurchases. It has pledged to buy back between $5 billion and $10 billion worth of stock each year through 2026, while also restricting the amount it devotes to new projects to $17 billion each year, or roughly half of what it spent previously.

Chevron is one of the least susceptible oil companies, so it won’t be severely impacted by the war in Ukraine. ExxonMobil, on the other hand, had to write down nearly $4 billion worth of investments in Russia owing to the invasion.

Although it does have a 15% stake in a European oil pipeline to the Caspian Sea, which Russian President Vladimir Putin is restricting supplies on in the name of “repairs,” it accounts for only 4% of Chevron’s upstream earnings and under 3% of total profits.

Exxon Mobil boosted its dividend 6% earlier this year, above what Wall Street expected, as it continues to share the profits it makes with investors. It has increased its payout for 35 years in a row, and cash paid to shareholders is anticipated to rise by more than 50% from last year owing to stock buybacks.

Cryptocurrencies have had a difficult start to the year, thanks in large part to several macroeconomic issues, such as inflation and the Ukraine conflict, which caused a sell-off in assets deemed risky by investors.

The crypto market has lost over $1 trillion in value since Jan., with Bitcoin and Ether declining 38% and 48%, respectively. And this month’s failure of the stablecoin TerraUSD has done nothing to improve the bearish mood around the space, prompting many to ask whether we’re in the midst of a “cryptocurrency winter.”

This week, however, crypto investors have received some much-needed assistance from an unexpected company: JPMorgan Chase.

The investment bank’s strategists, headed by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, stated in a Wednesday note that they think Bitcoin has “huge upside potential.”

The strategists kept their $38,000 value target for BTC, which implies a potential 29 percent increase from the crypto’s Wednesday trading level of $29,430.

“Going forward, we expect Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency markets to appreciate,” the experts added.

JPMorgan now considers digital assets and hedge funds to be its “preferred” asset classes, with real estate having been relegated to the sidelines as mortgage rates climb. Alternative investments, on the other hand, have been downgraded by the investment bank’s experts to “underweight” from “overweight,” owing in part to persistent macroeconomic issues.

The crypto shift at JPMorgan

JPMorgan has made significant progress in the crypto industry since 2021, when it granted its wealth management customers access to six cryptocurrency funds, including the Grayscale BTC Trust. In February, the bank announced that it would be making a “strategic investment” in TRM Labs.

Despite Jamie Dimon’s history as a crypto antagonist, the CEO has said that the firm will invest in blockchain technology. In October 2017, he labeled Bitcoin a “fraud” and claimed that the leading cryptocurrency was “worthless.”

Despite his reservations, Dimon said that his clients are “adults” who are free to make their own decisions. “So if they want to acquire Bitcoin, we cannot custody it, but we can provide them with real, as clean as possible access.”

Since then, Jamie Dimon’s position on crypto has remained negative, but he praised blockchain technology at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Summit in May, stating that it has shown to be a useful innovation.

On Wednesday, JPMorgan’s traders suggested that despite the newest crypto sell-off, there is zero evidence that venture capital funding in the industry is decreasing. To their argument, Andreessen Horowitz, a VC firm, announced on Wednesday that it had raised $4.5 billion for its fourth cryptocurrency fund in order to take advantage of falling prices.

Professional investment managers who oversee $100 million or more in assets are required to submit Form 13F with the SEC every three months. These filings offer a gold mine of possibilities that have already been subject to some high-level scrutiny.

With many equities having far surpassed their peaks, there is no better time than now to see what the greatest investors have been purchasing. Two firms have been identified as possible values right now by some of the world’s most renowned supervisors. Here is why they like Wayfair and Amazon.

Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb bought more Wayfair stock in the first quarter

After rising to a record high of $369 last year, shares of the top online home items retailer have plummeted 86%. Wayfair’s diversified selection, logistics infrastructure investments, and growing supplier pool have helped it achieve tremendous success. Revenue has risen from $2.3 billion in 2015 to $13.7 billion today.

The firm’s sales momentum, however, hasn’t been aided by the economy’s reopening. In the first three months of this year, revenue fell 13.9% compared to the same period last year, which has caused many experts on Wall Street to doubt Wayfair’s prospects for growth. One of the most prestigious investment firms, on the other hand, believes in Wayfair’s stock price.

Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb has managed the Sequoia Fund to a yearly return of 13.6 percent since 1970, compared with 11.3 percent for the S&P 500 over that period. The company originally invested in Wayfair in Q3 of this year. During 2020, when the stock surged, Ruane, Cunniff sold some shares but began buying again as the stock plummeted over the last year.

The development of e-commerce is gradually spreading to the home products industry, which management expects to reach $1.2 trillion by 2030.

What gets overlooked often is that Wayfair is, in fact, a software firm. It has over 3,000 software engineers,  product managers, designers, and data scientists developing the next stage of online shopping. In the future when people can render their home virtually while shopping for new furnishings on Wayfair, management’s investments in 3D modeling might pay off.

This company’s track record of addressable market potential, growth, and technological development strongly suggest that it is worth far more than 0.41 times sales.

David Tepper raises his stake in Amazon 

Appaloosa Management’s David Tepper, on the other hand, just added a significant amount of Amazon stock to his portfolio. For its incredible potential and great value, the e-commerce firm-turned-everything store may be sure to pique Tepper’s interest. Amazon’s stock has dropped 42 percent from its peak due to concerns about the impact of declining online sales on its business from other investors. Not Tepper, who boosted his stake by 21% to $277 million in total value.

Online sales in Amazon’s most recent quarter decreased by 3% from the same period a year ago, according to the company. When people were trying to avoid in person shopping at the epidemic’s start, this part was doing well. The trend is reversing now that vaccines are more widespread, although Amazon’s e-commerce business is not what Tepper is looking for. It’s more likely that Amazon’s robust web services sector, which grew sales by 37 percent in its most recent quarter and produced $6.5 billion in operating income, that attracts him.

Amazon’s strong advertising arm, which grew earnings by 25% from the same quarter the year before and is currently more profitable than e-commerce, could be another incentive. Overall, Amazon’s healthier divisions are expanding at a faster rate than the company as a whole. E-commerce may recover and add to AWS’ good profits and advertising income in the long run, but it isn’t necessary for investors to get a decent return.

The bargain is that Amazon is currently trading at its lowest P/E and P/S ratios in years. It’s no surprise that billionaire investor David Tepper has added to his position by 21%.

“Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are afraid,” as Buffett once famously stated. He’s been living his words lately. While many investors are frightened with the stock market falling, Buffett has been greedily buying shares in firms he likes.

In the first quarter of 2022, Buffett and the firm’s investment managers acquired eight new equities based on recent Berkshire Hathaway regulatory filings that revealed their equity positions. The following are his finest purchases.

Best of the bunch

Which of these new stocks is the top of the bunch, and which should you avoid? If we judged solely on year-to-date results, Oxy would emerge as the winner. The oil and gas firm’s stock has increased by close to 120% thus far in 2022.

However, Buffett and his stock picking team didn’t base their selections on short-term stock performance. Indeed, half of the new Berkshire investments have underperformed so far in the year.

It’s more likely that Buffett would recommend analyzing the long-term business prospects and pricing of each firm. Based on these criteria, I believe two of Berkshire’s newest shares stand out.

McKesson has a long-term corporate strategy. The firm delivers prescription medications and surgical procedures to hospitals across the country. It is also in the business of delivering prescription technology support. For years, there will be an increasing need for McKesson as a result of growing demographic patterns among the elderly.

With a P/E of less than 14, the shares are attractively priced. Buffett’s best-performing stocks for 2022 so far have included McKesson’s stock, which has increased by more than 30% this year, making it one of his top performers of the year.

Markel is a “baby Berkshire” in every sense of the word. However, the firm has its own niche. It specializes in providing unusual insurance to individuals with risks that conventional insurers refuse to cover.

Markel is a reinsurance company, like Berkshire. These businesses produce a lot of cash flow, which the firm seeks to invest in additional publicly traded firms. Markel’s portfolio, on the other hand, has a greater focus on growth than does Berkshire’s.

According to forward earnings multiples, the stock is a touch more costly than the S&P 500. But when growth prospects are factored in, Markel appears to be a bargain with a price-to-earnings-to-growth (PEG) ratio of just 0.91.

Think like Buffett

Among Buffett’s most recent acquisitions, my favorites are McKesson and Markel, but you may choose one or more of his other new stocks instead. Alternatively, you may like all of his selections.

Every investor, however, should have the same attitude as Buffett. Don’t be deterred by others’ fear and panic from looking for possibilities. Whether or not you invest in the same companies that Buffett does, you’ll probably do well over time by thinking like him.

Given recent happenings in the cryptocurrency world, I believe it is reasonable for investors to be concerned about whether anything will ever compare to Bitcoin (BTC 2.44%).

Bitcoin may be down more than 50% from its peak. Its market capitalization, on the other hand, is still north of $500 billion. As a result, many investors are understandably thinking that buying Bitcoin now would be a waste of time and money because it’s too late to realize life-changing profits. If that describes you, one cryptocurrency to look into is Theta (THETA).

Why Theta has potential

The Theta project was formed to address an increasing problem. Our internet infrastructure is being taxed by the metaverse, synchronous live streaming gaming, and higher-resolution videos. And it will continue to get worse. This is why content delivery networks (CDNs) are so popular — they speed up the internet by bringing it closer to the end consumer by distributing it farther away from their servers.

Because nodes are closer to end users than traditional CDN infrastructure, Theta may operate faster. And while traditional CDNs can be pricey, Theta is aiming to be a more cost-effective alternative.

Here’s how it works: Individuals may join the network by offering their bandwidth and staking Theta tokens. They get Theta Fuel (TFUEL -1.17%) as a reward for this service. Video platforms purchase Theta Fuel from nodes in order to host and distribute videos. In the transaction, a portion of Theta Fuel is lost. End users are rewarded with some of the crypto so that they are encouraged  to view video content.

There are six levels of nodes, the most exclusive node is the Enterprise Validator Node. Sony, Google, and Samsung are among Theta’s large players at this level. These companies have big ideas. However, because these concepts will use a lot of bandwidth, it’s easy to see why they are interested in Theta.

These companies may be tempted to create their own solution to the faster-internet problem, but Theta’s concept is patented, which may be why they’re going with partnership instead.

The Theta project’s main focus is currently video streaming. However, before the year is out, the project will release its fourth major net iteration. This new version of Theta will enable new applications to take advantage of it, such as web hosting. Different apps have varying requirements when it comes to blockchain technology, which is why we have so many layer-1 blockchains to begin with. Different chains address different issues.

With subchains, Theta plans to provide greater developer freedom. Developers will be able to construct whatever they need. However, all subchains will speak Theta’s lingo and utilize Theta Fuel as a standardized gas token. This eliminates the potential for problems with bridges.

The stock market has been on a sour slide for many months, and cryptocurrency has suffered particularly badly. Over the previous six months, the worldwide crypto market has declined more than $1 trillion, with individual cryptocurrencies’ prices tumbling even further.

However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invest immediately. Because no one knows for sure whether it will survive a major market collapse, crypto is a more dangerous investment. However, right now is also one of the most inexpensive times to invest since prices have been at their lowest in months.

It’s difficult to choose the appropriate investment since all cryptocurrencies are speculative right now. However, Solana (SOL 2.48%) is one crypto that could have a bright future ahead of it.

How does Solana compare to Ethereum?

Ethereum (ETH 1.38%) is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies in recent years, and it has several benefits. Its network is used by the most decentralized apps (dApps), including decentralized finance (DeFi) initiatives and non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces.

The greatest issue facing Ethereum is its speed (or lack thereof). The network can only handle about 13 transactions every second right now. Slower speeds also mean greater transaction costs, which has caused developers and users alike to flock to rival networks as a result.

Another is Solana, which excels in areas where Ethereum falls short. Solana is a smart contract platform that can support dApps, much like Ethereum. It has a capacity of 65,000 transactions per second, making it one of the world’s fastest networks.

Solana has also recently debuted its latest project, Solana Pay, a decentralized payment system. Merchants may now take crypto as a form of payment using Solana Pay, which is a decentralized payment network. There are no intermediaries because it is decentralized; it’s extremely energy-efficient, transactions happen quickly, and fees are infinitesimal.

The cryptocurrency is not only competing in the dApp sector with Solana Pay, but it’s also becoming a more viable payment currency. This kind of variety may help Solana succeed in a variety of areas, including potentially challenging firms like Visa and Mastercard.

Should you invest in Solana right now?

If you’ve been on the fence about Solana, now may be a good time to buy. Since November, its price has plummeted by nearly 80%, and if it rebounds from this slump, you could make a significant profit.

There are drawbacks to consider, as well. Solana employs a proof of history consensus algorithm, which is unusual in the cryptocurrency world. While this improves Solana’s speed and efficiency, it may also make it more vulnerable to attacks and less secure, according on a 2021 Grayscale report.

This does not imply you should refrain from investing in Solana. Every cryptocurrency has its own set of advantages and drawbacks, which are all speculative at this time. Whether or not Solana is suitable for you will be determined by how much faith you have in its potential as well as your tolerance for risk.

Despite the fact that the crypto market is down, it has proved to be resilient in the past. While no one knows what the future holds for crypto, Solana may be one to look out for this year.

The stock market is on a severe losing streak, having lost 19% of its value from its all-time high. The broader S&P 500 index has decreased 19% from its all-time highs, putting it within a whisker of being in a bear market. But the Nasdaq-100 index, which is skewed towards technology stocks, has already reached that level with a loss of 28.3% since November 2021.

Despite the fact that many investors are sweating bullets over the current market situation, history suggests that down markets always rebound, so this could be a wonderful time to invest. Here’s one fast-growing stock utilizing cutting-edge technology that is well worth considering because it is selling at an 88.9 percent discount to its all-time high despite being quite profitable.

Upstart is starting to transform the lending business

For decades, Fair Isaac’s FICO credit scoring system (FICO 4.41%) has been the industry standard for assessing consumer credit risk. It considers five factors, including a borrower’s payment history, the types of loans held, and current debt levels.

Those metrics, according to Upstart Holdings (UPST -13.34%), don’t give the whole picture of a person’s ability to pay back a loan. To produce a more precise credit score, the firm has developed an artificial intelligence algorithm that assesses 1,600 data points, which include where a borrower is currently working and his or her education level. The algorithm also reaches a conclusion quickly 74% of the time, which could save days or weeks in comparison to manually creating a credit assessment.

That’s a big victory for banks, one of which has completely ditched FICO scores in favor of this new-age technology. That brings up an interesting question: Upstart’s objective isn’t to create loans but rather to originate them on behalf of its bank partners in return for a fee. Typically, this implies that Upstart bears no credit risk at all, with the exception of recently, when it temporarily departed from this strategy.

The firm has been researching and developing a new automobile financing sector, and it had made loans to borrowers worth $252 million with its own cash by the end of 2021. That figure increased to $597 million at the end of Q1 of 2022, as the business struggled to sell many loans to its partners during the challenging credit conditions.

The Upstart team is confident that its problem will be overcome and that this issue will be temporary, as the company’s management anticipates $4.5 billion in new financing activity by 2021. The additional credit risk it took on in Q1 amounts to only 7% of all loans produced by its algorithm.

Upstart’s growth is soaring

From its modest origins as an unsecured personal loans business, Upstart has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry. The firm’s entry into the significantly larger auto loan market in 2021 opens up an addressable market that is almost six times larger.

The ideal approach to get the maximum number of automobile loans is to locate potential borrowers where they already spend their money — inside automobile dealerships. To promote its development, Upstart bought Prodigy, a car dealer sales software company. It has incorporated its algorithm into that platform to develop Upstart Auto Retail, which is a two-in-one lending and sales software that 525 dealerships have started using. That is a huge 224 percent increase over last year.

According to Upstart’s financials, which were recently updated, the firm has expanded its client base and achieved impressive growth in revenue. In Q1 2022, the company had a $310 million revenue figure, up 156% year over year.

But it gets even better for Upstart

Upstart has hinted that its gaze may extend even further into the lending market. In its most recent quarter’s news release, Upstart highlighted the $644 billion small company loan sector and the $4.5 trillion mortgage sector. The firm has not announced any intentions to enter these sectors, but by mentioning them, it provides a little insight into where Upstart is heading in its next phase of development.

Unfortunately, Upstart’s revenue forecast for 2022 was reduced after the firm’s growth projections for 2021 were revised down. Management had anticipated to produce $1.4 billion in sales, but that was lowered to $1.25 billion; nevertheless, it represents a 47% increase over last year’s figure of $849 million.

The stock price of Upstart has tumbled 88.9 percent from its peak, but it has soared 77% in the last two weeks, following its earnings release. Some investors still see potential in the firm, and it’s certainly still very cheap.