2 Top Stocks to Buy With $500 Right Now

• Amazon's cost-cutting could supercharge its profitability.

• Hims & Hers has explosive semipermanent maturation potential.

• 10 stocks we similar amended than Amazon ›

We're coming to the adjacent of 2025, and it has been an fantabulous twelvemonth for stocks. The S&P 500 is up by a steadfast 14%, portion the tech-dominated Nasdaq Composite has jumped 18%, propelled by the maturation of caller industries similar generative AI.

Looking up to 2026, investors volition privation to person vulnerability to continuing AI momentum arsenic good arsenic diversification into different aspects of the economy. In my view, for those looking to adhd caller stocks to their portfolios now, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Hims & Hers Health (NYSE: HIMS) could marque large options for a $500 investment.

The generative AI roar is opening to mature, and it mightiness beryllium clip for investors to pivot distant from pure-play hardware stocks similar Nvidia and commencement choosing companies that tin payment from the technology, but that don't person each their eggs successful 1 basket. Amazon is antithetic due to the fact that it has important vulnerability to the lucrative AI infrastructure marketplace portion besides having the quality to incorporated the exertion into its regular operations.

For starters, Amazon is simply a important spouse with (and number proprietor in) starring AI institution Anthropic, which specializes successful creating large connection models (LLMs) akin to OpenAI's ChatGPT. Anthropic has rapidly overtaken its rival successful the U.S. endeavor LLM market, attracting a marketplace stock of 32% compared to OpenAI's 25%, chiefly due to the fact that of its reliability and security.

As an equity partner, Amazon volition spot the worth of its involvement successful Anthropic turn arsenic the institution gets larger, providing it with a root of noncash income. Furthermore, Anthropic relies connected Amazon's cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), to build, train, and deploy its models, truthful it's besides providing dependable income to the tech giant.

And Amazon is making strides to incorporated generative AI into its ain business. In June, CEO Andy Jassy released a memo saying that the caller exertion could let the institution to trim its firm workforce done ratio gains. Then successful October, Amazon slashed 14,000 jobs, perchance redeeming it billions of dollars.

That said, Amazon's representation arsenic the poster kid of AI layoffs (even if not each of its occupation cuts are AI-related) could present reputational risks. Investors should ticker the concern cautiously implicit the coming months.

With each the speech astir AI, it whitethorn look similar determination are nary different maturation opportunities successful the market. But that isn't true. Telehealth is shaping up to beryllium a generational megatrend.