The Best Stocks to Invest $500 in Right Now
You don’t need a lot of money to get invested in the market. I’m probably not the first person to tell you that. I won’t be the last. Widespread access to commission-free trading platforms, decades of moving away from round-lot purchases, and the growing reach of brokers that allow buying fractional shares make it easy to put even $500 to work in a meaningful way.
Where should you go with the next $500 you have to invest? I have a couple of ideas. Amazon (AMZN -4.88%) and Celsius Holdings (CELH -2.99%) could be the best stocks to buy right now. Let’s take a closer look at these two very different market opportunities.
Image source: Getty Images.
1. Amazon
Amazon stock reports fresh financials a week from today. Circle your calendar, but this gives you five trading days to decide if you want to get into the country’s largest company — by trailing revenue — ahead of its second-quarter numbers.
Amazon doesn’t need much of an introduction. There are just four companies with larger market caps. There’s a good chance that you’re a current customer of the e-commerce and digital services provider. Growth has slowed at Amazon as its business matures, but it has started to pick up the pace lately. Its 17% top-line increase for its previous quarter was its strongest increase in net sales in four years.
You would think that Amazon would be rocking with momentum on its side, but the stock is up less than 8% over the past year. That is less than half of the market’s return in that time. Amazon? A laggard? That’s not likely to last long.
Today’s Change
(-4.88%) $-11.96
Current Price
$232.89
Key Data Points
Market Cap
Day’s Range
$232.35 – $238.29
52wk Range
$196.00 – $278.56
Volume
725.7K
Avg Vol
48.9M
Gross Margin
50.60%
A big reason for Amazon’s acceleration is that Amazon Web Services (AWS) — a top dog among cloud hosting services — is consistently becoming a larger slice of the overall pie. The segment’s net sales rose 28% in the first quarter, now accounting for 21% of Amazon’s top line. More importantly, AWS delivered 59% of Amazon’s operating profit for the quarter.
Great things happen when your biggest-growing business also happens to be pushing margins higher, current stock chart notwithstanding. Analysts see another quarter of 17% top-line growth when it reports after the market close next Thursday. They see earnings per share rising at half that clip — up a mere 8% — as Amazon ramps up its capital expenditures like the rest of the consumer tech giants.
A nine-figure budget this year to boost its AI profile may seem daunting, but Amazon’s AWS is also a major beneficiary of the revolution. Even the online store that started it all is getting better and more productive as a result of its AI-first mindset. With double-digit percentage earnings beats in three of its last four quarters, another positive surprise next week could be the start of turning this recent laggard into a leader again.
2. Celsius Holdings
Growth investors have a love-hate relationship with Celsius Holdings. They loved the sparkling beverage maker when sales more than doubled for three consecutive years through the end of 2023, as its namesake functional energy drink became a workout, retail, and social staple. They hated Celsius when growth slowed dramatically in the first half of 2024, going on to post year-over-year declines for three consecutive quarters until it acquired Alani Nu in early 2025.
Alani Nu gave Celsius a non-organic boost, but investors initially bid the shares higher because organic growth also started to turn positive. The combined company was gaining market share in the energy drink space on a pro forma basis, but that initial attraction faded quickly. Celsius has lost more than a third of its value over the past year, even as the introduction of Alani Nu has delivered triple-digit revenue growth in the last three quarters (and an 84% jump in the period before that).
How great was that game-changing acquisition? Celsius paid a net price of $1.65 billion in cash and stock for Alani Nu last year, compared to the acquirer’s market cap of roughly $6 billion at the time. In the first quarter of this year, the Alani Nu brand contributed $368 million of the $783 million in revenue it posted. All of Celsius a year earlier — before Alani Nu — generated just $329 million in revenue. Can you believe Celsius scored this deal for a little more than a quarter of its market cap at the time?
Today’s Change
(-2.99%) $-0.85
Current Price
$27.62
Key Data Points
Market Cap
Day’s Range
$27.62 – $28.87
52wk Range
$27.47 – $66.74
Volume
78.1K
Avg Vol
9.3M
Gross Margin
48.39%
This is where the value investors have a chance to tap in. With the Alani Nu deal closing on April 1 of last year, Celsius has now lapped the transaction. Celsius did acquire the much smaller Rockstar Energy from its distributor last summer, but it’s not really moving the needle. When the beverage stock reports second-quarter results in early August, it will be the first period since the first quarter of last year to be driven largely by organic growth. The market might like what it sees.
Growth will naturally slow now that we’re on an apples-to-apples — or carbonated orange water-to-carbonated orange water — basis. Analysts see revenue growing 18% on a dip in earnings when it reports, but the bottom-line retreat should prove temporary. Those same Wall Street pros see revenue slowing to 9% next year, but on a 17% jump in net income.
Here is why I really like Celsius heading into its next financial update in two weeks: Celsius has routinely trounced market earnings expectations over the past year. In the last four quarters, the energy drink powerhouse has landed 93%, 52%, 37%, and 40% above Wall Street’s profit targets. If it can land another beat, even just below the lowest of its past four performances, it would surprise the market with earnings growth as it works through the recovery in its operations. With Celsius now trading for just 14 times next year’s earnings forecast, it could be too cheap to ignore. Put another way, this sparkling beverage company might be anything but flat in August.
