by Ian Cooper

Some of the most explosive opportunities can still be found in tech stocks this year.

In fact, here are three – with powerful catalysts – that could still double by year end.

Apple (AAPL)

Apple just announced its Apple Vision Pro will be available beginning Friday, February 2, at all U.S. Apple Store locations and the U.S. Apple Store online.

“Vision Pro is a revolutionary spatial computer that transforms how people work, collaborate, connect, relive memories, and enjoy entertainment,” says the company.

Even better, Morgan Stanley also believes Apple’s weakness is an opportunity.

The firm noted, “While near-term Product demand remains uneven (vs. Services outperforming), we believe this is captured in recent underperformance,” analysts at Morgan Stanley, reiterated an Overweight rating and $220 price target on the stock. Morgan Stanley believes that after 9 points of underperformance vs the S&P 500 in the last month, Apple shares are oversold, and they’d be buyers of weakness,” as noted by Investing.com.

JP Morgan also maintained its overweight rating on the stock, with a $225 price target.

Apple is also a top tech pick for Wedbush, which has a $250 price target. “In a nutshell, 2024 is the year for [Apple CEO Tim] Cook & Co. to show iPhone growth again and further monetize its golden installed base that Cupertino has built,” noted the firm.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) could test $200 this year, especially with the artificial intelligence (AI) boom.

For one, AMD just brought the AI PC race to “the world of desktop computers at CES 2024 with the debut of what it says is the world’s first desktop processor with a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU). Coming to AMD’s upcoming Ryzen 8000G series chips, which hit the market on Jan. 31, the NPU is designed to handle AI-based tasks on your desktop computer without having to send data to the cloud,” as noted by Yahoo Finance.

Two, AMD was also upgraded to a buy rating at Melius Research, which has a $188 price target on AMD. “AMD could have huge ramps for AI equipment later in 2024 and especially in 2025 – and we see meaningful upside to consensus,” Melius analysts wrote.

Also, as quoted by Investing.com, the firm added, “Generative AI is poised to deliver its ‘Halo Effect’ on IT spending, starting in 2024. If 2023 was the year of getting ready or ‘training’ large language models, then 2024 should be the year where production or ‘inferencing’ starts to kick in (more assistants and voice prompts help).”

Nvidia (NVDA)

Nvidia just made several big announcements at CES 2024, including new chips for generative AI, PCs, gaming, and newer partnerships. NVDA also announced its newest GeForce RTX graphics cards, which offer 4K resolution and even ray tracing.

Better, NVDA just announced it expanded its partnership with Amgen and Recursion Pharmaceuticals – all of which will use NVDA generative AI tools to help with drug discovery.

And all as “Momentum behind AI-powered drug discovery has been building as the pharmaceutical industry seeks to rein in the costly failure rate involved in traditional development of medicines. Roughly 90% of drug candidates that reach the clinical-trial stage fail, and for successful drugs, the path to the U.S. market typically takes 10 to 15 years and costs about $2.5 billion,” as noted by Morningstar.com.

Helping, Bank of America says that by the end of the year, NVDA could see $700. For us, from its current price of $522.53, we’d like to see it test $600 short-term. By year-end, with the progress it’s making, it could see $1,000.