Nobody has to double their money every year to build real wealth. An investor who puts $10,000 into a stock that returns 15% annually and holds it for 40 years ends up with about $2.7 million. That takes patience, not a lucky guess.
Reaching for stocks that promise to multiply overnight makes that outcome less likely, not more, because a single collapse can wipe out years of compounding. That tension is the subject of our look at whether Sandisk can keep climbing after a 1,322% gain in a year.
Hedge funds work from the opposite instinct. On average, they don’t load up on lottery-ticket stocks. They back companies they judge most likely to deliver higher returns for an amount of risk they can live with.
Bubble Warnings Spread as Retail Traders Pull Back
Veteran voices are urging care. Yahoo Finance reported on October 9 that Bridgewater Associates’ Ray Dalio said the market is close to bubble territory. Panmure Liberum head market strategist Joachim Klement expects the AI bubble to burst in either 2027 or 2028, according to Bloomberg. Meanwhile, Bank of America Securities’ Jill Carey Hall wrote in a client note that retail clients were net buyers, the first retail inflows since late July.
Everyday traders have cooled off since then. Goldman Sachs strategist Ben Snider wrote in a note that retail trading volumes have fallen about 20% since mid-summer, and retail made up 9% of US equity volume, near its lowest level since 2020, according to Yahoo Finance on October 26. You might also be interested in reading our piece on whether Palantir can justify a multiple five times its sector’s.
The speculative money has not gone quiet, though. Snider’s note showed retail trading in leveraged index funds running at roughly double the pace of ordinary funds tracking the same indexes, and Robinhood data pointed to retail options trading nearly doubling over the past year.
So, what are the best meme stocks to buy? For an expanded list, check out 10 Best Meme Stocks to Invest In. We provided the top 5 meme stocks below. As you will notice last year’s meme stocks such as AMC, GameStop (GME), and Opendoor (OPEN) didn’t make our list.
The Allstate Corporation (ALL): One of the Best 52-Week High Insurance Stocks to Invest In According to Short Sellers
Our Methodology
To compile this list, we searched Instagram Reels for stocks promoted by financial influencers and tallied how often each one was pitched. We kept the 20 most frequently pitched stocks, excluding any company with a market cap above $500 billion, and ranked the 10 with the most hedge fund holders in ascending order. Hedge fund data is as of Q2 2026, from our database of 1,006 hedge funds.
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. Insider Monkey’s quarterly newsletter strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 599.2% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 372 percentage points (see more details here).
5 Best Meme Stocks to Invest In 5. Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET)
Market Cap: $212.97 billion
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 91
Arista Networks’ second quarter was its first above $3 billion in revenue, at $3.036 billion. Sales grew 37.7% from a year earlier and 12.1% from the first quarter, and the company’s own forecast calls for about $3.3 billion this quarter. Chief executive Jayshree Ullal said customers see networking as the center of how their infrastructure runs.
Arista makes the switches that connect servers inside data centers, and AI clusters need a lot of them. The company has built a line of AI networking products that sit at the heart of its strategy, and its balance sheet shows the demand building. Current deferred revenue stood at $5,100.7 million at the end of June, up from $4,002.6 million at the end of 2025. The long-term portion grew too, from $1,369.8 million to $1,765.2 million. Both balances were higher at the end of June than at the start of the year.
Arista reports its next quarter this week, so fresh numbers are only days away.
Readers can see how that cash cushion plays out in our breakdown of Arista’s deferred revenue and cash flow.
4. Marvell Technology (NASDAQ:MRVL)
Market Cap: $172.22 billion
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 96
Marvell chief executive Matt Murphy said AI-related bookings remain exceptionally strong and that he expects revenue growth to speed up through the rest of the fiscal year. The quarter already shows it in the numbers. Revenue rose 37% from a year earlier to a record $2.739 billion, about $39.0 million above the midpoint of the company’s own guidance, and growth in the data center business accelerated to 46%.
For the current quarter, Marvell guided to $3.150 billion in revenue, plus or minus 5%. Murphy pointed to strong demand for its connectivity products and a significant acceleration in the custom chip business starting in the second half of the fiscal year.
Murphy described the strength as broad-based across the data center portfolio. Marvell also raised its revenue outlook again, for both this fiscal year and the next, compared with the guidance it gave last quarter. With connectivity and custom chips both gaining at once, the company has two growth drivers feeding the same data center buildout.
Our analysis of whether Marvell’s growth can justify its premium covers that story in more depth.
3. GE Vernova (NYSE:GEV)
Market Cap: $227.06 billion
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 106
GE Vernova’s orders nearly doubled in the third quarter. They reached $29 billion, up 96% on an organic basis, led by equipment orders at its Power business while services stayed strong. The backlog grew by $20 billion from the previous quarter to $197 billion. Chief executive Scott Strazik said he now expects the backlog to pass $200 billion in the fourth quarter, with better margins on the work.
Gas turbines are a big part of that pile, and the Power business is leading the way. Gas Power equipment backlog and slot reservation agreements rose from 116 gigawatts to 122 gigawatts, and the company expects to reach at least 130 gigawatts by the end of 2026. Strazik also pointed to rising demand for electricity infrastructure around the world.
Management raised its 2026 guidance for revenue, adjusted EBITDA margin and free cash flow, and the board doubled the share repurchase authorization from $10 billion to $20 billion. Chief financial officer Ken Parks said the higher guidance reflects that momentum.
The stock’s price measured against that demand gets a full look in our analysis of GE Vernova’s backlog and valuation.
2. Vistra (NYSE:VST)
Market Cap: $46.44 billion
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 111
Vistra will be the preferred power supplier to a new data center venture backed by KKR, Kuwait Investment Authority and Nvidia, and the company has committed up to $1.0 billion to it. The venture, called Helix Digital Infrastructure, gives Vistra a direct line to large technology buyers that need dependable electricity.
The core business is earning more. Second-quarter adjusted EBITDA from ongoing operations reached $1,767 million, up from $1,349 million a year earlier, a gain of more than 30%. Management reaffirmed 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance of $6.8 billion to $7.6 billion, and about 100% of expected 2026 generation was already hedged. That guidance leaves out both the pending Cogentrix acquisition and the agreements with Meta.
Vistra has signed power purchase agreements with Meta, and part of them is expected to add to 2027 earnings. Chief executive Jim Burke said the fleet was available more than 97% of the time during recent extreme heat in Texas and the PJM grid. Vistra has also bought back about $6.5 billion of its stock since late 2021.
Management’s own buying drew attention in our piece on how Vistra’s CEO bought stock after the selloff, which asked whether AI power demand is mispriced.
1. Sandisk (NASDAQ:SNDK)
Market Cap: $166.34 billion
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 128
Sandisk’s revenue for the fiscal first quarter jumped 378% from a year earlier to $11,031 million, and management guided to $12,200 million to $12,600 million for the next quarter. Gross margin was 85.0%, which means most of each sales dollar stayed with the company.
Data center was the standout. Revenue there reached $4,802 million, up 61% from the previous quarter. Chief executive David Goeckeler said the company is executing on the strategy it laid out at its investor day, and he credited its technology leadership, customer partnerships and disciplined financial management. The aim, he said, is growing and durable free cash flow.
Sandisk also announced an 8-for-1 stock split, which it said is meant to make the shares more accessible, including to employees. Holders of record on the set date will receive seven additional shares for each share they own, and split-adjusted trading is expected to begin later this month. The company noted that the split does not change its market capitalization or anyone’s ownership percentage.
Investors who want to test the bullish case against the stock’s forward earnings multiple can read our analysis of whether Sandisk’s forward multiple already prices in a peak.
While we acknowledge the risk and potential of SNDK as an investment, we believe certain AI infrastructure stocks offer far stronger long-term potential at a much more attractive entry point. If you are looking for an AI stock more promising than SNDK that operates as a critical AI tollbooth and stands as the most important company in the world, check out our report about this must-own AI stock.
Click to continue reading and see the expanded list of the 10 Best Meme Stocks To Buy Now.
This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.