A tech giant and a fast-food stock are promising growth plays - even as they've had a rough 2025 thus far, according to Eric Clark, chief investment officer at Accuvest Global Advisors. Clark named Amazon and burrito chain Chipotle Mexican Grill as some of his favorite stocks during CNBC's "Three-Stock Lunch" segment on Wednesday. The investor also said that he's steering clear of small-cap stocks.
Amazon
Shares of the e-commerce giant jumped 2% Wednesday after The New York Times reported, citing three people familiar, that the company has put in a bid to acquire video app TikTok. Amazon also has been investing heavily in artificial intelligence. It recently announced a new AI model -- Nova AI -- to compete with offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic. Amazon's diverse segments, which also include Amazon Web Services and advertising revenue, provide promising growth opportunities, according to Clark.
"There's certainly a lot of ways to win," he said. "TikTok would be an interesting, positive jolt on the advertising side."
Amazon shares are off more than 10% year to date.
Chipotle
Chipotle shares have had a difficult start to 2025, with the stock down more than 13%. The recent downturn has provided a "nice correction" in a high quality and "growth-oriented" name, said Clark. Chipotle is facing higher input costs from tariffs, but Clark highlighted the company's efforts to improve operating efficiency in order to not push costs to customers.
"You're getting a stock that's not cheap at 30 times or so, but has good growth, is going to still double the store growth over time, still has wonderful opportunities to expand around the globe," he said.
Small Caps
Meanwhile, small caps still have a long way to go before they see better days, according to Clark. Instead, investors should stay focused on quality, higher market-cap stocks -- "that's where the style factor momentum is," he said.
"If you do dip into small caps, just make sure you're focused on quality," Clark added. "Higher leverage, lower quality, lower market cap just has not worked for many, many years, and until we see some evidence of it working, we'll probably stay away."
The small-cap Russell 2000 index is off more than 8% in 2025.