Among the Mag 7, Google has often been seen as the “undervalued one.” Since its April low, the stock has rebounded 49.7% to hit a new high at $215.34. This time, I know many of you didn’t miss out—and some even found creative ways to profit!
Whether holding the stock, buying calls, or selling puts, the gains have been impressive. That raises an interesting question:
What matters more—stock selection or trading strategy?
Let’s see how our community weighed in:
🎉 Shoutout to some standout gains from our community:
🎉 Huge congrats to @Mando88 for banking $13,390 profit on GOOG.
🎉 Huge congrats to @Darrenneoyo who secured $5,174 on GOOG.
🎉 Huge congrats to @Terra_Incognita for earning $3,012 on GOOG calls.
He shared:
Sharing a single leg long call on GOOG to collect weekly coins.
Had been holding few long calls on GOOG and GOOGL and they are profitable.
Also been selling some short calls at higher strike to capitalise a slow rise scenario.
Overall profitable trade with limited downside unless GOOG stock collapses downward.
🎉 Huge congrats to @PKT who locked in $1,589 from selling GOOG puts.
Beyond the Trades: How’s the Business?
With the rise of ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s own Gemini, consumer search behavior is shifting. For the first time in nearly a decade, Google’s search market share slipped below 90%. Even small changes here matter—each 1% of share is worth roughly $20–25B in annual revenue.
Still, Q2 numbers looked strong:
$96.4B total revenue (+14% YoY)
$71.3B from ads
$11.2B from subscriptions, platforms & devices (+20% YoY)
$13.6B from Google Cloud (+32% YoY)
Operating margin is now back above 30%, near all-time highs, rivaling Meta’s profitability. And while ads remain ~73% of revenue, diversification is clear—especially with YouTube and Cloud.
YouTube alone could be worth $500–550B+, and unlike Search, it’s less exposed to AI disruption. In fact, faster AI-driven content creation might actually boost YouTube.
Cloud is another growth engine: annualized revenue run-rate now exceeds $50B, with consistent profitability.
The AI Battle
Google’s $20B annual payment to Apple to remain Safari’s default search engine is under legal fire. Apple is already exploring AI-powered search alternatives with OpenAI, Perplexity, and Anthropic.
Meanwhile, Google is fighting back:
$85B capex in 2025, two-thirds for servers, the rest for data centers and networks.
Heavy investments in AI infrastructure to keep pace with Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta.
A $3B stake in Anthropic (now valued at $60B+), with Google holding 14%.
Valuation Check
Alphabet trades at:
P/E (forward, non-GAAP): 20.8x, still below its 5Y avg of 24.3x and S&P 500’s 26x.
PEG (forward, non-GAAP): 1.40x, cheaper than Apple (2.98x), Microsoft (2.85x), Amazon (1.93x), and Meta (1.55x).
With shares retesting all-time highs, the big question is:
👉 Is GOOG still a buy at $213, or should we wait for the next dip?
Comments