Over 25% of the Stocks in the S&P 500 Are Down 40% or More. 4 Bargain Tech Stocks to Buy Now
Key Points
Netflix and AppLovin both continue to see solid growth and look undervalued.
Oracle is a leveraged way to play the cloud computing boom.
ServiceNow has a huge opportunity as an agentic AI orchestration platform.
- Motley Fool Issues Rare "Total Conviction" Buy Alert ›
With the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) near all-time highs, it may be surprising to learn that more than 25% of the index's stocks are down 40% or more from their highs, as of Oct. 8, 2026. That's a shocking number, but it also gives investors the opportunity to go bargain hunting.
Let's look at four stocks to scoop up today.
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1. Netflix
Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) shares have tumbled as the streaming giant's growth has slowed. However, there is still a lot to like about the stock.
The company tends to be recession-resistant as a cheap form of entertainment, and it is making a big push with advertising, which should become its biggest growth driver in the coming years. It also has the potential to continue adding subscribers, and it has shown pricing power with its ad-free tier.
Trading at a forward P/E of around 18.5 times 2027 analyst estimates, it's a solid stock to scoop up at current levels.
2. Oracle
Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) has become one of the biggest battlegrounds among artificial intelligence (AI) stocks. The company is seeing major growth in its cloud computing infrastructure business, and it has one of the largest backlogs in the space, at $664 billion as of the end of Q2.
However, this is a company already carrying considerable debt and burning cash. Meanwhile, Oracle has been trying to get creative with its financing, including setting up a separate entity to buy chips and then lease them out. This adds risk, but cloud computing economics are strong and tend to have relatively quick paybacks of two to three years, or even sooner.
Ultimately, Oracle's leverage and beaten-down stock price could give it more upside in the space if the cloud model proves to work, and many great companies are betting it will.
3. ServiceNow
ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW) is a stock that has gotten caught up in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) sell-off in 2026 despite being one of the best-positioned software companies for the age of agentic AI. Its platform is one of the most deeply embedded of any software company, with its solution used to run organizations' entire software stacks and its configuration management database (CMDB) linking the underlying relationships between hardware, software, cloud services, and business processes.
The company has leaned into AI and cybersecurity to drive growth, and it's looking to become an important agentic AI orchestration platform with its AI Control Tower solution. With the proliferation of AI agents from a plethora of vendors, monitoring, managing, and securing them within an organization will become vital, and ServiceNow appears to be the most likely leader in this space. With a forward price-to-sales (P/S) multiple of 7.5 times based on 2027 analyst estimates, the stock is attractively valued given its opportunity.
4. AppLovin
Increased competition from rival Unity Software in the gaming ad space and a slight miss on Q2 earnings have weighed on AppLovin (NASDAQ: APP) shares, but the company is still growing quickly. It now trades at a rock-bottom valuation of just 13 times 2027 analyst earnings estimates. The company grew its revenue by 53% last quarter to $1.9 billion, while its adjusted EPS surged 66% to $3.76. Meanwhile, it drove Q3 revenue up 46%-48%, helped by continued model improvement and moving into the consumer vertical.
The consumer vertical is another huge potential opportunity for the company, and it looks as if AppLovin is starting to make some inroads. Last month, Citigroup analysts said its data showed the fastest growth for AppLovin in this vertical over the past five months, while a recent Jefferies Financial Group survey indicated that advertisers plan to boost their e-commerce advertising with the company in both Q4 and in 2027.
With low expectations and a cheap stock price, AppLovin looks poised for a big rally.
Should you buy stock in Netflix right now?
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*Stock Advisor returns as of October 14, 2026.
Citigroup is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Geoffrey Seiler has positions in AppLovin and ServiceNow. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Jefferies Financial Group, Netflix, Oracle, ServiceNow, and Unity Software. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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