5 Popular Stocks to Buy Right Now

2. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL)  

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 185

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) ranks 2nd on the list of the 10 popular stocks to buy right now. The California-based multinational tech firm is Google’s parent company. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) operates all value-added services of Google such as YouTube, Google Maps, Google Play, and Android. In addition, the company also caters to advertisements through its Google Ads with over 2 million active accounts.

In January 2021, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) acquired fitness tracking company Fitbit in a $2.1 billion deal. The acquisition placed the company in a good position in the wearables market. The shares of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) rose 14% in the last three months.

On August 2, Argus Research analyst Joseph Bonner raised Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) price target to $3,100 per share from $2,800 previously and kept a buy rating. The analyst mentioned that the company’s advertising revenue grew at a healthy rate.

The company has a market cap of $1.80 trillion. The company’s second-quarter EPS was $27.26, beating consensus EPS of $19.21. Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) revenue was $61.88 billion, beating consensus estimates of $56.02 billion driven by online activity. 

By the end of the first quarter of 2021, 185 hedge funds out of the 866 tracked by Insider Monkey held stakes in Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL), worth roughly $24.5 billion. 

Ensemble Capital mentioned Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) in its Q2 2021 investor letter. Here is what the fund said:

“Google: While Google’s stock was up 31% in 2020, handily beating the S&P 500, it was one of the weaker performing Big Five tech giants. With the company posting blow-out reports in the most recent quarters, the stock has soared 40% this year, making it the best performing of the Big Five this year. In the most recent quarter, the stock rallied 18% in the wake of the company reporting its largest beat of estimated earnings before interest and taxes in over a decade. Amazingly, the company is now reporting revenue more than 50% above the level it was generating two years ago, even though travel related advertising, which is one of Google’s largest advertising categories, has not yet rebounded.”