Stocks are coming off a volatile week on Wall Street.
The S&P 500 closed Friday with a weekly loss of more than 1%, its second down week in a row, as inflation worries, a weaker-than-expected jobs report, fears of a Federal Reserve tapering sooner than expected and the arrival of the omicron variant in the U.S. keeping investors on their toes.
But one’s loss is another’s gain to some market watchers. CNBC’s “Trading Nation” asked two traders which buy-the-dip stocks they would consider in this uncertain backdrop.
Eva Ados, chief investment strategist at ERShares, highlighted two growth stocks that had come under pressure during the sell-off — cloud and software-as-a-service company Datadog and B2B database manager ZoomInfo.
“We like Datadog because it’s the leading [artificial intelligence for IT operations] platform. And since we’re shifting away from traditional IT infrastructure towards cloud, it becomes very relevant. It’s the fastest-growing company in its sector, growing twice as fast as its competitors,” Ados said on Friday.
Datadog fell 9% last week, adding to an 18% pullback from its November peak. The company is expected to nearly double full-year profit and increase total sales by 64%, according to FactSet estimates.
“ZoomInfo is a hidden gem. It’s a company that, again, is growing the fastest in its industry, competing directly with well-known HubSpot. But it grows by 60% whereas HubSpot has grown by 44%,” said Ados. “Those are our two stock picks once the selling subsides.”
ZoomInfo has also suffered a sharp sell-off in the past week, losing roughly one-fifth of its value since last Monday. As with Datadog, analysts anticipate healthy profit and sales growth this year — up 53% and 54%, respectively.
Craig Johnson, chief market technician at Piper Sandler, is looking to the charts to find stocks that are at inflection points, beginning to break out and show relative strength.
“Take a look at the chart of Microchip. This is a stock that has been in a sideways consolidation range for upwards of 10 months. It’s just starting to break out, and the size of the base that it’s breaking out from suggests we could see the stock move up to $100,” Johnson said during the same interview.
Microchip shares traded Friday at $85.27. A move to $100 implies 27% upside and would mark a record high.
“The second one to take a look at is one that’s been out of favor for a while: Vertex. This is a stock that’s making a very nice downtrend reversal … and to us it looks like … this is a stock that’s got another leg higher here,” Johnson said.
Vertex Pharmaceuticals shares have dropped 14% this year. The stock was a surprise winner in the past week, though, gaining 11%.
Disclosure: ERShares holds shares in Datadog and ZoomInfo.
