1 stock I’d put 100% of my money into

I should start this article by clarifying that I have no plans to balance my stock market portfolio to one stock. That’s because I believe there are great benefits to diversification, and I don’t have the risk appetite to pile up my life savings in just one company.

That said, if I could only invest in a single stock, what would it be?

It’s an interesting question to think about, because it helps me evaluate my current investment allocation and think about which companies I want to invest in.

After much consideration, the stock I’m interested in is Google’s parent company, Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL). This is why.

Market dominance

Everyone has heard of Google. Of course, you can find this article through a Google search. Analysts estimate that Alphabet claims a whopping 93% share of the global search engine market.

This is a very profitable business. The digital advertising market is expected to grow in the coming years and Alphabet is in pole position to benefit from this tailwind.

Admittedly, the current macroeconomic climate has proven challenging for companies. Alphabet’s Q4 search revenue fell 1.6% to $42.6bn as advertisers cut costs. However, if there is one stock that has the resilience to weather the economic storm, in my opinion, it is Alphabet.

The company has a massive $114bn in liquidity and is still expected to generate $60bn in free cash flow through 2022, which is not an easy year.

Challenge

Market dominance comes with risks. The antitrust lawsuits are obvious, and Alphabet should have fought them years ago.

In addition, there is growing speculation MicrosoftMulti-billion dollar investment in AI chatbot ChatGPT could disrupt Alphabet’s search engine market share. A mistake made in a public demonstration by Alphabet’s rival technology, Bard, suggests that Microsoft may be winning the AI ​​arms race.

However, I am skeptical. There is no doubt that intensive work is being done at Alphabet to improve its offering in this growing space and questions about the reliability of ChatGPT as well.

In my opinion, Microsoft is still far from a serious challenge in the search engine market. After all, Bing currently only owns 3% of the stock.

Also, what are the most searched words on Bing? You guessed it – it’s ‘Google’.

Beyond search engines

There are many strings for the Alphabet bow.

The tech titan owns YouTube, which shows particular promise in the music streaming arena. The platform surpassed 80 million paying customers by September 2022, up from 50 million a year earlier.

There’s also Google Cloud, which posted 32% year-over-year revenue growth in Q4 to $7.3bn. The division helped push the company’s consolidated revenue growth into positive territory with a 1% increase to $76bn.

Finally, Alphabet continues to shape the hardware market. Google’s Pixel devices are positive in 2022. The Pixel 6a, 7, and 7 Pro are the company’s best-selling phone generations.

Should I buy Alphabet stock?

There’s a reason Alphabet is the fourth largest company in the world with a market capitalization of $1.18trn. It is a huge innovative, cash-generative behemoth that has become synonymous with the internet.

Although I won’t put 100% of my money into one stock, if it comes to it, I’ll pick Alphabet.