The stock market offers few guarantees. However, the market has always been kind to investors who take a long-term approach.

According to data from Crestmont Research, there has never been a 20-year rolling period where the broad spectrum S&P 500 generated a negative return for investors. In other words, it doesn’t matter when you put your money to work on the stock market. As long as you allow your investment thesis to unfold over time, you have a very good chance of building wealth on Wall Street.

Another benefit of using your money for stocks is that you don’t have to be rich to make money. If you have $ 200 on hand, which won’t be needed to cover emergencies or pay bills, that’s more than enough to buy some of the smartest stocks around.

AstraZeneca

First on the shopping list is pharmaceutical stock AstraZeneca (NASDAQ: AZN). Although AstraZeneca has been a major laggard for much of the past two decades due to competition and the patent cliff, it has found new life thanks to a number of blockbuster drugs and inorganic opportunities.

While most of Big Pharma’s stocks are slow growing cash cows, AstraZeneca is actually a fast growing cash cow with what appears to be a sustainable double-digit sales growth rate through the middle of the market. decade. At the head of the load are its trio of oncology drugs (Tagrisso, Imfinzi and Lynparza), as well as the treatment of type 2 diabetes of the new generation Farxiga. The company’s anti-cancer trio helped boost oncology sales by 20% in the first quarter, while Farxiga sales rose 50%. The latter increased sales in the cardiovascular (CV) segment by 19%, even with declines in revenue from other core CV therapies.

Beyond increased demand and improved pricing power for its leading brand name drugs, AstraZeneca is making a huge acquisition to expand its portfolio and increase cash flow over the next decade. His current agreement to buy Alexion Pharmaceutical (NASDAQ: ALXN) will bring a premier ultra-rare disease drug developer to the fold. Although it is risky to develop treatments for very small pools of patients, the reward is a high list price that insurers do not question and non-existent competition.

Perhaps the best part of this deal is that AstraZeneca doesn’t have to worry about losing sales once Alexion’s best-selling drug, Soliris, loses its exclusivity. This is because Alexion has developed a next-generation replacement therapy, known as Ultomiris, which the United States Food and Drug Administration has approved. As Ultomiris is administered less frequently than Soliris, it represents a marked improvement in the quality of life of patients and in the effectiveness of the treatment. This should allow Ultomiris to eventually absorb the more than $ 4 billion in annual sales of Soliris.

After years of underperforming, AstraZeneca is finally the growth company Wall Street has always hoped it will be.

Skillz

Another of the smartest stocks you can buy with $ 200 right now is the esports and gaming company. Skillz (NYSE: SKLZ). While it certainly sports a premium valuation, the potential for growth and partnership here should play out favorably for long-term investors.

While most game companies choose the frequently traveled route and go head to head with major game developers, Skillz has not. Instead, he built a platform that allows players to compete against each other for cash prizes. In return for providing a platform for these competitions to be held, Skillz and the game developer in question retain a share of the prize in cash. It’s a lot cheaper and a lot more efficient to develop a game medium than it is to develop a game and hope that it finds its mark.

Although it is very early, the first results are incredibly promising. Skillz had 467,000 monthly active paying users at the end of March. This corresponds to 17% of the players on its platform. For some background here, Wappier Gaming Apps notes that pay-to-play conversion rates ranged from 1.6% to 2% in 2020. This suggests that Skillz has conversion rates between eight and 10 times higher than the industry average. In addition, the company generates a gross margin of 95% on the revenues it generates.

As I mentioned, there is some serious partnership potential here as a mobile gaming medium as well. In February, Skillz landed a multi-year deal with the National Football League (NFL). Football is the undisputed most popular sport in the United States. With the deal, developers will be able to launch NFL-themed games on the Skillz platform no later than 2022.

For now, Skillz will be increasing its roster and spending aggressively on marketing to grow its brand and engage gamers and mobile developers. This means greater losses in the short term. But with $ 1 billion in annual revenue, a very real goal by 2025, if not sooner, Skillz appears to have all the tools it needs to make investors richer.

Bank of America

One last smart stock that long-term investors can buy with confidence with $ 200 right now is the banking giant Bank of America (NYSE: BAC).

There is no doubt that banks have experienced monstrous growth over the past eight months. But it only looks like at the beginning. Indeed, rising inflation and the rebound in the US economy are opening the door for the Federal Reserve to act by 2023, if not sooner.

The country’s central bank is responsible for setting the federal funds rate, which is the interest rate at which deposit-taking institutions lend reserve balances to other deposit-taking institutions. Without getting too technical, adjustments to the federal funds rate affect interest rates and can affect mortgage rates. When the Fed starts to raise rates, bank stocks will get an immediate boost to their net interest income through floating rate loans. No bank is more interest sensitive than Bank of America.

According to the company’s first quarter operating results, a 100 basis point parallel shift in the interest rate curve would produce approximately $ 8.3 billion in additional net interest income over the next 12 months . While these hikes are over 12 months away, bond yields have already started to rise, which is a good sign for future bank profits.

In addition, Bank of America has cut costs and spent aggressively in the right places. The push towards digitization is paying off, with more than 40 million people digital banking with BofA in the first quarter, up almost 5 million from three years ago. More importantly, the percentage of sales made online or via mobile skyrocketed to 49% in the first quarter of 2021, from 33% in the previous year’s quarter. This move to online banking is considerably less expensive for Bank of America and has allowed the company to close and consolidate some of its branches.

With the Great Recession now just a distant memory, it’s time for investors to believe in Bank of America’s long-term growth potential.