The stock market sold off rapidly over the past few weeks, leading many to label this a stock market crash brought on by President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements. Stocks moved down sharply this week as reciprocal tariffs went into effect; they recovered quickly as Trump announced tariff relief on every country except China, but continued to mark additional losses on Thursday.
We are a long way from seeing how this all shakes out, but the prevailing notion in the markets is that tariffs will still have a negative effect.
However, I don’t think widespread selling is necessarily the right move here, especially for individual investors. They do their best when they have a three- to five-year time frame for deciding whether to buy a stock or not. The tariffs might have some effect in the short term, but it’s unlikely that they will still be the primary topic of discussion five years from now.
As a result, I’m shifting my mindset from today’s fears to tomorrow’s optimism, which allows me to take advantage of cheaper stock prices today. I have 10 companies that are high on my list, and each should be better off five years from now, making them no-brainer buys. Here’s a breakdown by category:
Prior to tariffs becoming the primary market focus, artificial intelligence (AI) was the biggest trend. That’s taken a back seat to tariff talk, but the AI competition is still going on in the background. We’re nowhere near the computing capacity necessary for a widescale generative-AI rollout, which means we’re going to need a lot more chips to power these devices.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE: TSM) is the world’s top contract chip producer, making chips for many of the devices used to train and run AI models. Its management has said that AI-related chips are expected to grow revenue at a 45% compound annual rate over the next five years, and I doubt anything has changed since then, especially because semiconductors are exempt from tariffs.
Making these chips requires specialized machinery, which is where ASML Holding (NASDAQ: ASML) comes in. It’s the only company in the world with the technology to make extreme ultraviolet lithography machines.
These machines lay the microscopic electrical traces on chips and aren’t optional in the chipmaking process. As chip demand rises, so will the demand for ASML’s machines, which bodes well for the stock.
As mentioned above, the AI race is far from over. Hyperscalers are planning record capital expenditures this year, mostly in data centers for these AI computing devices.
