It's time to buy tech stocks: 4 ways to find winners while the market is down

Yahoo

27-04-2025

The stock market trends upward over time — that's a tale as old as the market itself. If you zoom out enough on any major index, you'll see that.
So despite how volatile or steep the market's recent plunges seem, they're not that bad in the grand scheme of things, as long as you have time to wait them out. In fact, these moments create great buying opportunities, especially for high-quality tech stocks that were previously too rich. So far this year, the S&P 500 SPX is down by about 5.9%, while the Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF MAGS is down by about 15.9% — and tech investors can now take advantage.
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But buying tech stocks now comes with a disclaimer, which is that investors must consider two macroeconomic risks. In the near term, trade wars could directly impact companies reliant on hardware sales. Meanwhile, if economic growth slows, that could affect a wider swath of companies.
Yet investors comfortable with those risks can use the recent selloff to build out their tech portfolios with stocks they like that may now be undervalued.
Despite the uncertainty, there are select opportunities if you look for companies that will continue to innovate and execute on their product cycles, said Daniel Flax, a tech senior research analyst at Neuberger Berman. Those companies are expected to emerge from this period stronger.
This is especially the case for companies building out artificial-intelligence and cloud infrastructure, he noted — pointing to Nvidia Corp. NVDA, Google parent Alphabet Inc. GOOGL GOOG and Microsoft Corp. MSFT as examples of stocks he likes.
'They're not immune from cyclical headwinds,' Flax said, but the companies he listed are among those still innovating and investing in technology. 'They're creating a lot of value for their customers, which can contribute to creating additional shareholder value over time.'
When Flax thinks about this year relative to last, 'there are potential changes in U.S. trade policy, but those technology trends remain healthy and very much intact,' he said.
Ken Mahoney, chief executive of Mahoney Asset Management, said that regardless of market conditions, you don't want to be a bull or bear, but rather remain neutral enough to be flexible. What he means is that the current volatility can be your friend or your foe — it just depends on how you react to it. For example, an investor can take a cue from a trader's toolbox by using some of the same guides to determine where to set buy orders.
One is identifying a stock price's support and resistance lines. That simply means looking at a stock's chart to get an idea of where prices have tended to bounce off of or pull back from. Regardless of which way a stock's price is trending — whether that's up or down — there are high and low ranges along the way.
One example Mahoney gave is Microsoft, which has bounced off of $350 a few times in April. While the stock was trading Friday at around $392, investors can set buy orders near about $370 to buy shares when the price pulls back from current levels. If they want to take that a step further, then can also set some sell orders if the stock nears its resistance point or goes above $400. This is one way of creating 'your own alpha,' he said.
'Investors this year are going to have to do a lot of this 'tactical buy on pullbacks, sell into rallies' because we may end the year on a negative note,' Mahoney added. 'And the only way to have returns is — not to make people day traders — but to be more active and make that volatility your friend.'
Despite the volatility, you still want to confirm that a stock is trending higher, Mahoney noted. Simple moving averages are indicators that show whether a stock's overall direction is going up or down. For longer-term investors, he advised using the 200-day SMA, which is the average closing price of a security over the last 200 days. If a stock's price falls below it, you have to be very careful because it's signaling a shift to a downward trend, Mahoney said.
Diversification is traditionally done across different asset classes, but it can also be done within tech stocks. Mark Malek, chief investment officer at Siebert, says tech investors tend to be overly excited about a single stock like Nvidia — which can work out really well in a bull market, but not so well in a volatile one. Adding less volatile tech stocks can smooth out an overall portfolio's risk. Malek pointed to Microsoft as a great example of a stock that has seen less volatility than many of its 'Magnificent Seven' peers.
There's a simple metric investors can use to find additional stocks with lower volatility, and that's called beta. It measures how volatile a stock is relative to the overall equities market: A measure of 1 means it matches market volatility, above 1 means it's more volatile, and below 1 means it's less volatile. For example, according to FactSet data, Nvidia currently has a beta of 1.97 based on the last 90 days, which is a sign of high volatility. Meanwhile, Microsoft has a beta of 0.92, which means it's been less volatile than the broader market.
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