Newmont Stock Is Interesting, but Here’s What I’d Buy Instead

• Newmont crushed the S&P 500 in 2025 thanks to rising gold prices, but it has still underperformed the benchmark over the past five years.

• Investors may do better by putting their cash in Micron, perhaps the most undervalued AI stock in the entire stock market.

• A bargain-basement valuation combined with substantial revenue acceleration for its Cloud Memory Business Unit make Micron a strong buy at current levels.

• 10 stocks we like better than Micron Technology ›

Newmont (NYSE: NEM) is the largest gold miner in the world with sites in the Americas, Australia, Africa, and Asia. The company’s financial results lean heavily on gold prices, and since gold had its best year in over four decades, Newmont stock followed suit.

The gold miner’s shares surged by more than 160% in 2025. However, gold miners don’t always enjoy those types of rallies and can underperform the precious metals that they accumulate. For instance, Newmont only delivered a 69% return over the past five years, which lags gold and the S&P 500 during that time.

While last year was a strong year for the miner, there is no guarantee that 2026 will hold the same success. It is possible for Newmont to underperform even if gold prices continue to go up.

Investors may want to shift their attention to AI stocks instead, and Micron (NASDAQ: MU) looks like a strong case for investors who want to triple their money within the next five years. Here’s what makes the AI play compelling.

Micron didn’t get as much love as other AI stocks like Nvidia and Broadcom, but the tide is changing quickly. The company produces high-bandwidth memory and storage solutions that are critical for AI chips to retain data.

More investors have been connecting the dots, and that resulted in Micron stock more than tripling in 2025. Despite those impressive gains, Micron still remains significantly undervalued due to its 9 forward P/E ratio. The stock also has a 0.50 PEG ratio, further demonstrating how undervalued it is. A stock is typically considered undervalued if it has a PEG ratio below 1, and this ratio considers a company’s financial growth rates, not just its price and recent earnings.

Many tech companies have committed to higher AI spending in 2026. That means more AI chips, and each of those chips needs Micron’s technology to store memory and function under intense workloads. Micron isn’t the only competitor in this industry, but it is one of the leaders in the industry.

Being a critical company in the AI industry doesn’t guarantee soaring revenue. However, Micron has been silently delivering results without as much fanfare as the trillion-dollar tech giants.