Three Equities Positioned as Best Stocks to Buy Right Now

If you’re ready to put $1,000 to work in your investment portfolio, the current market environment presents some compelling opportunities. While valuations remain elevated across many sectors, there are still solid companies trading at reasonable multiples that offer meaningful growth potential. The key is identifying businesses with strong fundamentals, clear expansion paths, and sustainable competitive advantages. Three names stand out for investors considering where to deploy capital right now: Nu Holdings, Taiwan Semiconductor, and Lemonade.

Nu Holdings: Digital Banking Disruption in Latin America

Nu Holdings has emerged as one of Latin America’s fastest-growing financial institutions, with a particularly compelling investment thesis for 2026. The Brazilian digital bank continues to demonstrate execution excellence, and what’s most exciting is where the company is headed beyond its home market.

Currently, Nu serves 127 million customers, with 110 million concentrated in Brazil. However, the real growth opportunity lies in Mexico and Colombia, markets that remain largely cash-based and ripe for digital transformation. These geographic segments are expanding at an even faster pace than Brazil, suggesting significant runway ahead. In the most recent quarter, Nu added 4.3 million new customers—representing 16% year-over-year growth and demonstrating the velocity of its expansion strategy.

Beyond customer acquisition, the company is unlocking monetization potential across its user base. Average revenue per active user reached $13 in the latest quarter, up from $11 in the prior-year period. For customers who have been with the platform longer, this metric climbs to $27—still below the $43 average for traditional incumbent banks. This gap reveals the substantial opportunity for margin expansion as Nu deepens its relationship with each customer. The company’s strong profitability provides the capital to invest aggressively in new markets while maintaining healthy unit economics.

With a price-to-earnings ratio of 33x, Nu’s valuation reflects its growth trajectory and market opportunity. For investors seeking exposure to digital financial services disruption, this equity deserves consideration as a best stocks to buy right now candidate.

Taiwan Semiconductor: The Chip Provider Behind the AI Revolution

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing stands as the backbone of global semiconductor production, with deep partnerships spanning from AI chip leaders like Nvidia to cloud infrastructure giants like Amazon. While the company is currently benefiting from the artificial intelligence boom, its relevance extends far beyond a single trend—it powers innovation across smartphones, automotive, IoT, and numerous other sectors.

The company’s recent performance underscores its operational strength. In the fourth quarter, revenue jumped 26% year-over-year to $34 billion, while gross margin expanded from 60% to 62% and operating margin widened from 51% to 54%. These margin improvements reflect pricing power and manufacturing efficiency. High-performance computing, which encompasses AI workloads, represented 55% of total revenue and surged 58% annually, while smartphone chips (33% of revenue) grew 11%.

A pivotal strategic move involves Taiwan Semiconductor’s U.S. expansion. The company recently commenced operations at its first American facilities in Arizona and has announced plans to open 12 additional production plants at the same location. This geographic diversification reduces vulnerability to U.S. tariffs and positions the company as a more integrated player in Western supply chains. For investors concerned about geopolitical risk, this development is significant.

The stock trades at 31x trailing-12-month sales, an attractive multiple for a company with Taiwan Semiconductor’s market dominance and growth trajectory. This represents a best stocks to buy opportunity for those seeking exposure to semiconductor manufacturing and the structural tailwinds supporting chip demand.

Lemonade: AI-Powered Insurance with a Clear Path to Profitability

Lemonade has fundamentally reimagined how insurance operates by building the company from the ground up around AI and machine learning. Unlike incumbents burdened by legacy infrastructure, Lemonade’s architecture enables faster customer onboarding, streamlined claims processing, and more intelligent pricing.

The company’s key metric—loss ratio, which measures claims paid relative to premiums collected—continued improving. On a trailing-12-month basis, the loss ratio declined 10 percentage points in the third quarter compared to the year-ago period. In-force premium, insurance’s primary top-line measure, jumped 30% year-over-year. Most importantly, the company is rapidly approaching profitability: adjusted EBITDA losses narrowed from $49 million to $26 million, with management guiding toward breakeven on an adjusted EBITDA basis during 2026.

Lemonade trades at a price-to-sales ratio near 11x. While not trading at a steep discount, the valuation reflects an insurance company genuinely transitioning to profitability with sustained premium growth. For investors with a multi-year investment horizon, this equity qualifies as among the best stocks to buy right now, particularly as the company approaches positive adjusted earnings.

The Bottom Line

Each of these three equities carries distinct characteristics but share common traits: they’re growing faster than the broader market, operate in structurally attractive industries, and are demonstrating improving unit economics or margin profiles. Whether you’re building a portfolio from scratch or adding to existing positions, these companies represent compelling opportunities for capital deployment right now. The combination of growth velocity, competitive positioning, and reasonable valuations—relative to long-term potential—makes them worthy of serious consideration from equity investors.