We recently published a list of 16 Best 52-Week Low Stocks To Buy Now According to Short Sellers. In this article, we are going to take a look at where The Trade Desk Inc. (NASDAQ:TTD) stands against other best 52-week low stocks to buy now according to short sellers.
The US stock market reached new all-time highs in late February 2025, as inflation remained near the 2% target while a potential end in the Ukraine conflict sparked some optimism for the long term. Besides the creation of multi-billion-dollar demand for potential rebuilding efforts of the country, including agriculture, residential, and infrastructure, the return of American business to Ukraine and Russia is a big win for most corporations, many of which could experience up to double-digit uplift in revenue and earnings growth due to up to 200 million customer market. More importantly, this outlook is favorable for energy security, stimulates volumes, and might push energy prices lower, which in turn allows for higher profitability.
Despite the aforementioned tailwinds, the US stock market gains are still largely driven by the Magnificent 8 companies, which trade at record-high valuations and have contributed to an unprecedented rise in the stock market concentration. These companies are anticipated to have tremendous growth opportunities arising from AI and data center megatrends, on top of existing rapidly growing niches like cloud computing, media streaming, SaaS, and others. Only time will tell whether the current valuations are fair; what is certain is that many industries have been struggling since 2022, as inflationary pressures followed by high interest rates and an increasingly tough labor market dominated by layoffs and scarcity of entry-level positions have put tremendous pressure on US consumers. The high financing costs have led to diminishing Capex appetite in many industries, leading to struggle in several market segments – perfectly illustrated by underperforming consumer discretionary and industrial sectors since 2022.
On top of harsh macro conditions in the last 3 years, the new “Trump 2.0” regime and his administration can be a threat for the healthcare sector. Trump is a notorious critic of the health insurance business and might create headwinds for it through attempts of deregulation and efforts to cut the government financing of healthcare programs. As a result, the healthcare sector relative to the overall market is at record lows comparable to the 2008 depression. All in all, despite apparent optimism in the market, there are pockets of underperformance and many companies trading near their 52-week low, which may present compelling opportunities to acquire good companies at attractive prices.
Our Methodology
We screened 30-40 stocks with at least $1 billion in market cap that are near their 52-week lows. Then we sorted them by open short interest as a percentage of outstanding shares and included the top 16 with the lowest open short interest in the article. Our belief is that a low open short interest implies a lack of bearish views on the business from leading hedge funds, which represents a bullish signal from a contrarian perspective.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 363.5% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 208 percentage points (see more details here).
A large array of computer screens and tech equipment representing the technology company’s self-service cloud-based platform.
The Trade Desk Inc. (NASDAQ:TTD)
Short Interest as % of Shares Outstanding: 2.30%
The Trade Desk Inc. (NASDAQ:TTD) is a leading provider of cloud-based programmatic advertising technology, enabling advertisers and agencies to manage digital ad campaigns across multiple channels, including display, video, audio, and connected TV. Its AI-driven platform empowers marketers with real-time data, audience insights, and automated bidding tools to optimize ad performance and maximize return on investment.
Despite a decent calendar 2024, the stock price performance was hit by a disappointing announcement of Q4 results in February 2025 – the company’s results fell short of management guidance for the first time in 33 quarters. The Trade Desk Inc. (NASDAQ:TTD) stumbled due to a series of small execution missteps such as a slower rollout of the Kokai platform, internal execution issues, client-facing teams becoming complicated with overlap between agency and brand teams as well as an overall complex organizational structure which had become too complex. It is reassuring, however, that the management team recognizes its own faults and is already taking precise steps to reinvent itself. Management has implemented significant organizational changes, including the largest reorganization in company history, streamlining client-facing teams, and dividing engineering into nearly 100 scrum teams for more effective shipping and collaboration. The company plans to move 100% of clients to the Kokai platform during this calendar year and is increasing resource allocation on brands, with joint business plans growing 50% faster than the rest of the business. The Trade Desk Inc. (NASDAQ:TTD) is a long-term outperformer of the broader market, which explains the reluctance of short sellers to bet against the company; having a long-term winner trading at a 52-week is a bullish signal from a contrarian perspective.
Overall, TTD ranks 6th on our list of best 52-week low stocks to buy now according to short sellers. While we acknowledge the potential of TTD as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than TTD but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and Complete List of 59 AI Companies Under $2 Billion in Market Cap
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
