
The Nasdaq Composite is up 30% over the last 12 months, kicking off a strong bull market. This market enthusiasm has significance for new investors, because the average duration of a bull market historically is 4.9 years, according to investment firm Stifel — about three times longer than bear markets.
Much of the growth in the Nasdaq Composite in this bull market is related to enthusiasm for all things connected to artificial intelligence (AI). The potential of this evolving technology has investors and market traders excited. Investors who focus on buying reasonably priced AI growth stocks now could have several years of handsome gains to look forward to. Here are two quality AI growth stocks to buy today.
1. Alphabet (Google)
Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) is using AI technology it’s developing to generate significant improvements across its business, including improving search results for users on multiple platforms it operates and boosting ad performance for advertisers.
Alphabet began investing in generative AI technology in 2016, and its latest iteration is Gemini, a series of AI models it plans to use to lay the groundwork for the company’s future. Gemini can generatively process and produce text, images, audio, and video based on user prompts, and the enthusiasm among users is already driving substantial growth for the company.
It’s yet to be seen how these latest AI efforts will actually affect Alphabet’s financials, but its prior AI investments over the past two decades definitely help it maintain growth. The already huge tech company reported a year-over-year revenue increase of 15% in the first quarter. It’s also keeping tight control of operating costs, which led to robust earnings growth of 61% over the year-ago quarter. The company’s strong fundamentals are generating so much excess free cash flow that management felt comfortable implementing its first-ever quarterly dividend of $0.20 per share (which will result in an annual dividend yield of 0.45%) in addition to a $70 billion share repurchase program.
Google’s ad-based business earns…
..