Cheap Stocks, Nervous Market, Big Opportunity: Where to Put $10,000 Right Now

While the market is now trading near all-time highs, it's been a volatile year for stocks thus far in 2026. Between a war, tariffs, and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI), there have been a lot of things for investors to be nervous about. However, there are still some great opportunities out there in stocks that are still trading at attractive valuations.

If you have $10,000 to invest right now for the long term, I'd split that between Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META). Both are market leaders that have embraced AI to help fuel growth. Let's dig into why these are two top growth stocks to buy now.

Amazon: The e-commerce and cloud leader

While Amazon's stock has shown some life with a nice rally this spring, the stock has lagged the market over the past five years despite solid growth. This has left the stock trading at an attractive forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 31 times. That's one of its lower multiples historically, and well below that of brick-and-mortar rivals Walmart and Costco Wholesale, which trade at forward P/Es of 40 times or more.

Despite trading at a discount, Amazon still has the better business model. The company is at the forefront of robotics and AI, which are helping it drive efficiency gains and huge operating leverage in its retail operations. This was on full display in the first quarter of 2026, when Amazon's North American segment saw a 43% surge in operating income on a 12% increase in sales.

At the same time, Amazon is also the cloud computing market share leader. This is the company's most profitable and fastest-growing segment, and it's seeing strong, accelerating revenue growth driven by strong demand for compute and AI services. Amazon also has a strong chip business, with its Trainium AI accelerators and Graviton central processing units. This is a $20 billion run-rate business, or $50 billion when including internal use. Having its own chips gives Amazon a cost advantage, and its Graviton CPUs position it well for agentic AI.

As the market leader in two strong businesses, Amazon is a stock to buy and hold for the long term.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Meta Platforms: The AI flywheel

Meta's stock has underperformed this year as investors fret over the company's AI infrastructure spending. However, few companies have demonstrated the ability to use AI to drive growth in their core businesses as Meta has.

Meta's business is the perfect flywheel for AI, as it is just as much an entertainment platform as it is a social media network nowadays. First, the company is using AI to continually improve its recommendation engine, which feeds users more of the content they want to see. This keeps people on its apps longer, which gives it more opportunities to serve them ads.

At the same time, Meta is also providing advertisers with AI tools that help them create better campaigns and improve targeting. Instead of just looking at likes and views, its AI models can now consume content like a human and recommend posts and ads that are much more relevant to a user. It can also look at a user's entire Meta viewing history to help determine when a user might be looking to make a big purchase, and the automated bidding tools it provides advertisers will bid accordingly. Altogether, this has been leading to more ad impressions and higher ad prices, since they have been getting better conversions.

Despite Meta's strong revenue growth, including 33% last quarter, the stock only trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 19 times. That's one of the best bargains in the market for a company with Meta's growth and track record. That makes it a great stock to buy today.

Geoffrey Seiler has positions in Amazon and Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Costco Wholesale, Meta Platforms, and Walmart. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.