I bought The Trade Desk ($TTD) on December 23, 2025, which was just the other day. I have an average price of $37.16, so the name really hasn’t gotten away from me, as I’m writing this with the current price at $38.01. As a result, I feel like this is still timely and okay to write about.

So, why the heck am I long $TTD all of a sudden, considering the stock is down 45% over the last 6 months, 67% year to date, and over 69% over the last 52 weeks?

Well, one thing I focus on is higher time frame mean reversion setups.

This essentially means a stock has been trading down for a number of weeks and/or months, begins to really speed up to the downside, and I look for a reversal setup.

One permutation of that is trying to buy good companies at great prices.

Because at the end of the day, that’s how you get rich.

Now, it’s important to understand what The Trade Desk’s business model even is, or else you’re just throwing darts in the dark (all of my technicians out there, ha).

The Trade Desk helps companies buy and manage digital ads across the internet from one central platform. In simple terms, it lets advertisers decide where their ads show up, who sees them, and how well those ads perform across websites, apps, and streaming TV.

Companies like Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Walmart, Coca-Cola, and bareMinerals use them.

In fact, over 90% of the Ad Age Top 200 advertisers have run campaigns on The Trade Desk platform in the past year, indicating very broad adoption among major advertisers.

But the stock is still down 69% over the last year…

Why?

Well, its growth rate has decelerated compared with prior years, even though revenue is still growing. This has made traders reassess how fast the business can grow, which is very common among huge growth stories like The Trade Desk has been over the last few years.

Big growth stocks tend to overshoot to the upside when times are good, and then far overshoot to the downside when growth slows, even if revenue is still climbing.

“Expectations” aren’t met, and people move on, which creates a waterfall.

But at some point, the pendulum swings too far in one direction, and that’s often where a good buying opportunity shows up, which is what I believe we’re seeing right now in The Trade Desk.

You see, The Trade Desk has a market cap of $18.50B according to Stock Analysis and an enterprise value of $17.46B. Another way to say this is that The Trade Desk has a ton of cash ($1.45B) and very little debt ($375.98M).

When good companies that get hit hard are still growing revenue and have a lot of cash on hand, it provides a bit of a safety blanket. These companies can reinvest into research and development, spend more on advertising, buy back stock, issue a special dividend, and generally have a lot of levers they can pull.

So being long The Trade Desk, which is down 69% over the last year, still growing its revenue, has a bunch of enterprise customers, and holds a lot of cash on the balance sheet, seems like a good bet to me.

I am long The Trade Desk from $38.01 and would love to hold this stock for the next year +.

I think The Trade Desk can work its way back up toward its prior highs above $141.50 and potentially trade well above that over the next 5+ years.

If the story doesn’t change and the stock continues to get hit, I’d be inclined to add even more on further weakness.

As always, these are just my personal opinions. I’m wrong from time to time, and this is in no way investment advice.

Cheers,
Kyle