It’s been hard to ignore what’s happened in the stock market over the past two weeks. Growth investing has taken on a whole new meaning. Investors witnessed a handful of stocks soar to unbelievable all-time highs in a matter of hours.
BlackBerry (TSX: BB)(NYSE: BB) is one growth stock that experienced a sudden surge in share price over the past couple of weeks.
The tech company started the year trading at about $8.5 a share. At one point last week, shares were trading above $30 but have since dropped back down below $20.
Bullish in the long term; in the short term, I’m not touching it
The unfortunate part of what’s happened to BlackBerry stock is that I still believe there’s a strong bull case to make for its long-term growth potential. But the manipulated movements in share price last week puts this growth stock far down my watch list.
If you’re planning on holding for the long term, BlackBerry still does have multi-bagger potential. But in the short term, there’s no way I’m touching BlackBerry shares.
For growth investors like me who are not willing to take a chance on BlackBerry, here are two other growth stocks that can provide market-beating growth potential over the long term.
Growth stock #1: Lightspeed
There aren’t many hotter growth stocks on the TSX than Lightspeed POS (TSX: LSPD)(NYSE: LSPD).
Shares of the Montreal-headquartered company are up close to 400% since joining the public market in March 2019.
In 2020, the COVID-19 market crash caused Lightspeed shares to lose more than 70% of their value in less than two months. After bottoming out at the end of March, though, investors have been rewarded with gains of more than 600%.
It’s not a surprise to see that Lightspeed had a strong year in 2020, as the e-commerce industry saw massive growth. The COVID-19 market crash led many consumers to shop online more than they ever had in their lives.
Lightspeed used to be known primarily as a point-of-sale hardware provider, but today, it’s a one-stop-shop platform for all types of retailers. The growth stock has built out a very impressive cloud-based platform that can help both brick-and-mortar and online retailers will all aspects of their business.
If you’re bullish on the e-commerce industry, this is one growth stock you’ll want to have in your portfolio.
Growth stock #2: Docebo
Docebo (TSX: DCBO)(NASDAQ: DCBO) is another growth stock that has benefited from tailwinds created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shares of the tech company were up more than 300% in 2020 alone. Growth investors might not be able to bank on that type of growth again in 2021, but the growth potential for Docebo over the long term is clear.
The tech company saw demand for its cloud-based learning platform skyrocket last year, as remote work became the norm for many employees across the globe. Docebo’s platform manages the entire learning experience for employees. It centralizes all learning materials and tracks the performance of each individual user.
We’ll likely see many employees return to shared office spaces in 2021, but that doesn’t mean demand for Docebo’s platforms will necessarily slow. Companies will always have a need to train their employees, whether remote or in-house.
Foolish bottom line
The stock price movements that we’ve seen over the past two weeks have definitely been exciting, but that’s not enough of a reason for me to add BlackBerry to my portfolio. The growth potential for BlackBerry hasn’t changed, but I’m not comfortable investing in a stock with that kind of manipulated volatility.
Lightspeed and Docebo both have many more years of market-beating growth ahead of them. If you can stomach the likely volatility over the short term due to high valuations, these are two companies you’ll want to have in your portfolio over the long term.
