The Best Stocks to Invest $1,000 in Right Now
Key Points
Meta Platforms is using artificial intelligence to power the next stage of growth.
Pinterest's underlying numbers show a company making strong progress.
PayPal is a free cash flow machine that is buying back a ton of stock.
- 10 stocks we like better than Meta Platforms ›
With the market beginning to retreat from all-time highs, now can be a good time to invest in some long-term potential winners. Let's look at three beaten-down stocks you can add today, starting with $1,000 investments. This is a nice starting amount to dip your toe into these stocks, and if they feel any more pressure, you can add to your positions later.
Meta Platforms
One of the big megacap artificial intelligence (AI) stocks most hit by this recent downturn is Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META), the owner of Facebook and Instagram. However, the company's core ad business has been hitting on all cylinders, driven by AI enhancements.
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The social media company is using AI to both keep users more engaged on its platform, which creates more ad inventory, as well as to help advertisers improve their ad campaigns and targeting. This helped propel the company's Q3 revenue growth by 26%, with ad impressions climbing by 14% and average price per ad up 10%.
Meanwhile, Meta is just starting to serve ads on its popular WhatsApp messaging platform and newest social media site, Threads. While it will take time, these platforms should become bigger growth contributors over time.
The big knock on Meta at this time is that the company is wasting too much money on projects like the metaverse and its new goal of "personal superintelligence." That's a fair point, but the company is still generating solid free cash flow, and investors are getting an option that these ventures still may eventually payoff.
With the stock well off its highs and trading at a forward price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of less than 20 times 2026 estimates, this looks like a good spot to buy the stock.
Another social media company whose shares have come under pressure recently is Pinterest (NYSE: PINS). Like Meta, the company has embraced AI to help improve its platform and make it more attractive to both users and advertisers.
It's created its own multimodal large language model (LLM) to power visual search, while it's currently testing a voice-activated AI assistant to help people discover new products. This is helping transform its platform from an online vision board into more of an AI-powered shopping assistant. Meanwhile, on the back end, AI is powering its Performance+ suite, which is helping advertisers improve their campaigns and conversions.
The stock came under pressure after management issued cautious guidance, although that is more about the company's exposure to U.S. retailers and the home furnishings category, which are feeling pressure from tariffs. However, peeling back the onion, Pinterest is seeing solid revenue growth (17% last quarter) and impressive growth in average revenue per user (ARPU) and monthly users in international markets.
With a forward P/E of about 13 times based on 2026 analyst estimates, the stock is too cheap at current levels and a solid buy.
Image source: Getty Images.
PayPal
PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) is another cheap stock that is not getting much love from the market at the moment, trading at a forward P/E of just 11 times 2026 analyst estimates. The company is also generating about $6 billion to $7 billion in adjusted free cash flow a year and buying back a lot of stock. With a market cap of around $60 billion and already having net cash and investments of around $3 billion, it can reduce its share count significantly over the next few years.
At the same time, the payments company is making some smart monetization efforts around its popular Venmo brand, such as offering Venmo-branded physical credit and debit cards, while it's also introduced several innovative AI features, including its Fastlane solution, which lets customers check out with a single tap without having to create individual accounts at different merchants.
It's also recently partnered with both OpenAI and Alphabet on agentic commerce, and it will be the main payment processor for retailers that use OpenAI's Instant Checkout. Between its valuation and the potential growth opportunities ahead, this looks like a stock to buy.
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Geoffrey Seiler has positions in Alphabet, PayPal, and Pinterest. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Meta Platforms, PayPal, and Pinterest. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2027 $42.50 calls on PayPal and short December 2025 $75 calls on PayPal. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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