Dirt Cheap Stocks to Buy With $1,000 Right Now

Source The Motley Fool

Key Points

  • E.l.f. Beauty's stock is cheap and the company has a big opportunity with Rhode.

  • Jakks Pacific is undervalued and has a potential catalyst with this year's strong kids' movie lineup.

  • 10 stocks we like better than e.l.f. Beauty ›

With the market still hovering near all-time highs, there are still dirt cheap stocks to buy, especially in the consumer sector. Let's look at two stocks to buy while they are on sale.

Chart of stocks going up in 2026.

Image source: Getty Images.

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1. E.l.f. Beauty

E.l.f. Beauty (NYSE: ELF) is a growth stock trading at a cheap valuation. It has a reasonable forward price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 24 times based on next fiscal year's earnings estimates but a minuscule price/earnings-to-growth (PEG) ratio of below 0.4. Positive PEGs below 1 are typically considered undervalued, so a PEG well below 0.5 clearly puts e.l.f. on the clearance rack.

The company has done a great job over the years of connecting with younger consumers, taking significant market share in the mass cosmetics space, and gaining shelf space. Now the company has a big opportunity to apply that same playbook to Rhode, the fast-growing skincare brand it recently acquired from celebrity Hailey Bieber. Bieber was able to grow the brand to more than $200 million in sales in less than three years with a small product assortment sold through her website and little marketing outside her own social media influence.

Rhode just recently started selling its products at LVMH's Sephora stores, and e.l.f. will have a long runway in increasing its distribution. With only about a dozen products when it acquired the company, it will also be able to gradually increase the product assortment and put it into its marketing engine. This should help drive strong growth in the coming year, making the stock a solid buy at current levels.

2. Jakks Pacific

For investors willing to dig deep into the bargain bin and find an under-the-radar value name, I'd point them in the direction of Jakks Pacific (NASDAQ: JAKK), which trades at a forward P/E of under 6.5 times. Don't let its valuation fool you, though, as the toymaker has made a lot of strides over the past few years and has a nice potential catalyst on the horizon.

Under CFO John Kimble, who previously had stints at Mattel and Walt Disney, Jakks has become much more disciplined. This could be seen last year, when, despite a tough consumer environment and tariffs, the company was able to achieve its highest gross margins in more than 15 years. That's impressive and something you rarely see when a company's sales decline.

Meanwhile, Jakks has a big potential catalyst this year with one of the biggest children's movie slates in quite some time. Toy and costume sales (a big part of the company's business) are often driven by hit kids' movies, and this year is filled with potential blockbusters.

Given this background and the benefit of Halloween falling on a weekend this year (which helps costume sales), the revenue forecast for Jakks looks conservative. Between its cheap valuation and the upcoming children's movie line-up, the stock is a buy.

Should you buy stock in e.l.f. Beauty right now?

Before you buy stock in e.l.f. Beauty, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and e.l.f. Beauty wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $514,000!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,105,029!*

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*Stock Advisor returns as of March 16, 2026.

Geoffrey Seiler has positions in JAKKS Pacific, LVMH Moët Hennessy-Louis Vuitton, and e.l.f. Beauty. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Walt Disney and e.l.f. Beauty. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Disclaimer: For information purposes only. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
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