These five are great starting points for nearly surefire bets for 2026.
Finding stocks that are nearly unstoppable is a great way to pick investments. These companies are dominant in their industry with massive competitive advantages that make them very difficult to dethrone. Over the long term, stocks like this have proven to be the best investments time and time again, and filling your portfolio with these winners is a genius move.
If you have $5,000 to deploy (or any amount, for that matter), I think these five are a great starting point.
Image source: Getty Images.
Nvidia
Nvidia (NVDA +0.04%) is the world’s largest company by market cap. It got to this point thanks to its dominant graphics processing units (GPUs), which are the go-to choice for nearly everyone in the artificial intelligence (AI) arms race to power generative AI workloads. While there are other competitors in the realm, Nvidia is the only one that has told investors that it is “sold out” of production capacity, while competitors are still trying to convince clients that their products are viable Nvidia alternatives.
Today’s Change
(0.04%) $0.08
Current Price
$184.94
Key Data Points
Market Cap
$4.5T
Day’s Range
$183.02 – $187.12
52wk Range
$86.62 – $212.19
Volume
138M
Avg Vol
186M
Gross Margin
70.05%
Dividend Yield
0.02%
That’s a great place to be in, and with global data center capital expenditures projected to reach $3 trillion to $4 trillion annually by 2030, according to Nvidia, it’s a nearly unstoppable stock. Nvidia’s reign as the world’s largest company is just getting started, and if this year is as good as analysts think it will be, it’s a no-brainer stock to buy now.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Nvidia is a fabless chip designer, so it doesn’t actually manufacture its GPUs. Instead, it sources components from different suppliers and farms out assembly work to various businesses. The most important component in the GPU is the chips, and those come from Taiwan Semiconductor Manfuacturing (TSM +2.49%). Taiwan Semiconductor is the world’s largest chip manufacturer and has risen to this level due to its excellent execution and cutting-edge technology.
In 2026, its newest chip node, 2 nanometer, is expected to hit the market, and this could drive massive revenue growth for the company due to its energy efficiency improvements. As long as there is increased demand for computing chips, Taiwan Semiconductor will continue to be an unstoppable stock. I think there are plenty of signs of that, making it a great stock to scoop up in 2026.
Amazon
Amazon (AMZN 0.38%) is dominant in multiple areas. It owns a massive chunk of the e-commerce market and has also built a thriving advertising business based on the information it collects. Additionally, Amazon operates the largest cloud computing business, which is seeing a resurgence of growth thanks to more AI workloads coming online.
Today’s Change
(-0.38%) $-0.94
Current Price
$246.44
Key Data Points
Market Cap
$2.6T
Day’s Range
$245.97 – $248.93
52wk Range
$161.38 – $258.60
Volume
1.6M
Avg Vol
45M
Gross Margin
50.05%
Amazon didn’t have the greatest 2025, and lost to the market. But it could bounce back strong in 2026 if its finances carry their momentum from 2025 into 2026. Investors should never count Amazon out, and I think it’s a great stock to scoop up for 2026.
MercadoLibre
MercadoLibre (MELI 1.31%) is known as the Amazon of Latin America, but that’s selling it a bit short. While it duplicated Amazon’s e-commerce presence and delivery footprint in Latin America, it also created a fintech ecosystem that enables consumers in this region to purchase items online. This makes MercadoLibre even more dominant than Amazon, as it has its fingers in multiple parts of an online transaction for goods.
MercadoLibre stock is down around 16% from its all-time high, and sits at an incredibly low valuation for its success.
MELI Price to Free Cash Flow data by YCharts
I think MercadoLibre is an excellent stock to scoop up for 2026, as it’s a bet on Latin America continuing to thrive.
Alphabet
Last is Alphabet (GOOG +1.14%) (GOOGL +1.04%), and it proved in 2025 why it’s unstoppable. Many thought Alphabet had lost the generative AI battle and that its Google Search engine was on the way out. However, Google’s generative AI model, Gemini, emerged as one of the top picks, and the Google Search engine started to regain market share thanks to its integration of AI search overviews, which combine generative AI with traditional search results.
This allowed Alphabet’s stock to rally throughout 2025, positioning it nicely for a strong 2026. While 2026 won’t be as impressive as 2025, I still believe Alphabet is well-positioned to capitalize on the massive AI infrastructure build-out and solidify its model at the top of available options.
