The World’s 5 Most Popular Stocks: Should You Buy Them?

Our Trackstar database measures investor search interest in stocks and ETFs across the platforms of our 100+ financial media partners. It’s a powerful tool that helps us — and our sister newsletter, The Spill — uncover new ideas and keep our finger on the pulse of what’s hot and trending. 

In July, Nvidia (NVDA) surpassed 1,000,000 views in Trackstar, an unprecedented achievement. As of mid-September, that number had decreased to 858,815. A week ago, Nvidia sat at 624,450 views. At last check, it’s down to 613,471. The four most popular stocks after NVDA (see today’s Trackstar top five at the bottom of the page) haven’t experienced such drastic variation. 

The stock that leapfrogged other huge tech names to become the world’s most popular stock, according to Trackstar, has taken a bit of a haircut, at least in terms of search interest.

We don’t think it has to do with interest around earnings. NVDA hit a million way in advance of that big, late August earnings report. All stocks in Trackstar tend to see a pop around earnings, especially big reports. We think interest in NVDA getting slashed almost in half has more to do with:

• Profit taking
• Unfounded concerns that we have seen the top
• General flavor of the day fickleness among some investors, retail and professional

We think this environment around a stock with a solid long-term narrative and lots of room to run can be a good thing for long-term investors. 

With this in mind, let’s roll through each of the five most popular stocks in the world and assign The Juice’s rating to each. 

Starting with NVDA. 

As we said in August after the Nvidia earnings report that made the stock tank, use any weakness to buy NVDA:

… with tech stocks such as NVDA, history shows that buying on the way up is a solid strategy. 

Therefore, in our view, you set automatic weekly, bi-weekly or monthly investments into NVDA no matter the price. You set a limit order to buy on weakness. And, if you have extra cash and don’t have anything else pressing on your watchlist, buy more.

• In the days after earnings, NVDA dropped to as low as $100.95. Now it trades for about $124.00. That’s roughly 23% worth of upside. Enough said. 
• The Juice says: BUY NVDA with both fists. 

Then there’s the second most popular stock in Trackstar right now — Tesla (TSLA).

A few weeks ago, The Juice called TSLA the classic, buy the dip story stock:

As for Tesla, we look at it more like Nvidia. Both companies are at the forefront of what are — for all intents and purposes — huge, early inning consumer technology/lifestyle/everyday life trends. Of course, for Nvidia, it’s artificial intelligence. And, for Tesla, it’s electric vehicles (EVs).

… Tesla still dominates. If it’s losing any ground, this is merely a testament to its dominance. Without Tesla, there would not be a handful of viable contenders taking away little bits and pieces of EV market share.

• In the last six months, TSLA is up approximately 46%. YTD, it’s basically flat. So, um yeah, buy the dip. Since we wrote the above, TSLA is up about 9.5%. Here again, enough said. And, oh, we rock. 
• The Juice says buy TSLA even regularly and when it drops even if you have to drown out Elon Musk’s antics when you do it. 

Good old Apple (AAPL). 

As we said in that TSLA article:

We like Apple because it’s the perfect example of a company maturing into a dividend aristocrat right before our eyes. Keep buying Apple now and you’ll thank us later as dividend reinvestment in the stock starts to pay exponential rewards.

Tomorrow we’re going to write about growth stocks that decided to start paying dividends. Think Meta Platforms (META) and Alphabet (GOOG). When Apple became a dividend payer (again), people freaked out. 

We’ll have more to say on the matter tomorrow. But, for now, just know that Apple is a future dividend aristocrat. When you look in the rearview mirror on stocks that have increased their payments for 50 years or more, you’re looking at a lot of income and dividend reinvestment. With Apple, you can see the future now as a dividend growth investor. 

• And, oh, don’t look now, but AAPL is actually up about 33% over the last six months and 21% YTD. There’s almost always pessimism centered around growth concerns with Apple. Yet, the stock keeps moving in a straight line. 
• The Juice says make automatic buys on AAPL as regularly and frequently as you can. Make sure you check the dividend reinvestment box!

Amazon (AMZN) is too old school. 

We love a good consumer ecosystem play with other solid revenue streams. But we honestly think Amazon’s story has largely played out. We reserve our cash in this regard for the next generation of Amazon-like companies, such as Uber (UBER) and DoorDash (DASH). 

• Solid performance (though basically flat over the last six months), Amazon is largely uninspiring. 
• The Juice says talk to us when Amazon announces a dividend. We would sell and put our money to work elsewhere in the other four most popular stocks as well as UBER and DASH. 

Microsoft (MSFT) is good old school. 

As we recently noted in a story about AI in investing:

The big names in tech, such as the stocks that populate today’s Trackstar top five, tend to be at the forefront of AI. In that, it was on their mind and part of their research and development spending long before AI became a mainstream thing we see mentioned every hour, every single day.

Microsoft is an AI leader. 

• MSFT stock has lagged a bit recently. We see that as an opportunity to scoop up shares at a relatively low price and collect a high proportion of shares via dividend reinvestment. 
• The Juice says set it and forget it on another future dividend aristocrat that remains an (AI) growth stock.  

The Bottom Line: The Juice would continue to buy four of the five most popular stocks in the world. We say buy them all regularly and on weakness. Each one has a compelling growth story that’s super intact or pays an attractive and growing dividend. Some even have both. 

These are the types of companies investors look back on 20 years from now, wish they owned 20 years ago and wish they had been buying for the last 20 years.

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