Fearing high inflation, many investors tried to protect their portfolios against the recession by abandoning risky assets like growth stocks. Even so, the S&P 500 Growth Index is still up 82% over the past five years, easily beating the overall 59% return S&P500.

Even better, the current bear market means that many high-quality growth stocks are trading below their historical valuations. This creates a buying opportunity for patient investors.

Here are two growth stocks with monster potential.

1. MercadoLibre

MercadoLibre (MELI 5.23%) revolutionized commerce and payments in Latin America. The company operates the region’s largest online marketplace in terms of unique visitors and page views, and has reinforced its leadership position with an ecosystem of value-added services.

Most notably, a large portion of the Latin American population does not have access to a bank account or debit card, but MercadoLibre has helped democratize digital payments in the region with its fintech platform Mercado Pago.

The company also provides financing, advertising and logistics solutions, and each of these services makes its marketplace a more attractive option for merchants. In turn, MercadoLibre exercises some pricing power. Its trade levy rate (revenue from trade as a percentage of gross merchandise volume) reached 16.7% last quarter, from 15% a year earlier. Similarly, its fintech participation rate hit 3.8% last quarter, up from 3.2% a year earlier.

Financially, MercadoLibre is growing rapidly despite high inflation in Latin America. Revenue soared 69% to $7.9 billion last year, and the company posted GAAP earnings of $3.67 per diluted share, compared with a loss of $0.31 per diluted share last year. last year.

MercadoLibre is well placed to maintain this momentum. Forecasts from Statista suggest that e-commerce sales in the markets in which MercadoLibre operates will total $260 billion by 2025. Likewise, digital payment volume in these markets will total $470 billion by 2026. This gives the company a huge market opportunity, and with the stock trading at 4.1 times sell – near its cheapest valuation in the past decade – this monster growth stock is a crying buy now.

2. CrowdStrike Holdings

Cybercriminals are getting more and more creative. A recent survey suggests that 45% of organizations experienced at least one software supply chain attack in the past year, up from 32% in 2018. A software supply chain attack is a type of cyberattack that targets upstream software providers as a way to infect downstream customers.

The SolarWinds breach is a perfect example. By injecting malicious code into SolarWinds’ Orion Platform software, hackers were able to infect 18,000 different customers. As a result of this event (and many others), effective cybersecurity has become a priority for many organizations.

On that note, CrowdStrike (CRWD 2.98%) is the benchmark for endpoint security. The company led the industry with 14.2% market share last year, up from 7.9% in 2019. Those market share gains translated into strong financial results, but leadership status of the company is also a key benefit for two other reasons.

First, it means that CrowdStrike processes a lot of data – about 1 trillion security signals every day – which theoretically makes its artificial intelligence models particularly effective at identifying and preventing threats. Second, it means that CrowdStrike is well positioned to attract new customers and expand its relationship with existing customers, thanks to its significant brand authority. Even better, the company is exploiting this opportunity.

CrowdStrike offers 22 different software modules that span multiple cybersecurity industry verticals, and momentum is building in areas such as cloud workload protection, identity protection, and managed services. . To that end, its number of customers has jumped 57% over the past year, and 71% of those customers now use four or more software modules, up from 64% the previous year. In turn, revenue soared 64% to $1.6 billion and free cash flow soared 49% to $481 million.

Shareholders have good reason to be optimistic. Management estimates its opportunity at $71 billion by 2024, which means CrowdStrike has only realized a small fraction of its addressable market. And the company believes its product roadmap and future initiatives could push that figure to $126 billion by 2025. That gives this growth stock monster potential.

Currently, the shares are trading at 24.5 times the sell – not cheap, but a lot cheaper than the three-year average of 37.9. For this reason, investors should consider buying some stocks now.

Trevor Jennewin has positions in CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. and MercadoLibre. The Motley Fool holds positions and recommends CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. and MercadoLibre. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.