Which stocks are stretched beyond fair value? Quantitative analysis of 15 positions trading at 80-192% premium including LYFT, SoFi, CrowdStrike, and Lam Research. Risk management insights.
The Take Profit List: 15 Stocks The Data Says Are Stretched
7-minute read | 14 January 2026 | BuyTrigger Club Analysis
I wasn't hunting for things to buy this week.
I wanted to know what's stretched. What's priced for perfection in a market that rarely delivers it.
VIX sitting near historic lows. Everyone comfortable. Meanwhile geopolitical tensions quietly building, rates staying elevated, and some valuations that made me double-check my spreadsheet. Then triple-check.
So I pulled our entire coverage universe and asked one question: what's trading significantly above its ValueTrigger?
Here's what I found.
The Full List
Let me walk you through what you're seeing.
Premium % shows how far above fair value each stock currently trades. A stock at 100% premium is trading at 2x its intrinsic value. LYFT at 192%? That's nearly 3x.
Year Priced is where it gets interesting. This tells you when today's price would finally represent fair value — assuming current growth rates continue indefinitely.
LYFT is priced for the year 2182.
That's 156 years from now. I genuinely ran the formula twice because I thought something was broken. It wasn't. The valuation is just that disconnected from reality.
But LYFT isn't alone. Nine of these fifteen stocks are priced for dates beyond 2027. The market is betting on a lot of things going right for a very long time.
Understanding the Risk Matrix
This is how I think about the data.
The vertical axis shows Premium to ValueTrigger — how expensive each stock is relative to fair value. The horizontal axis shows Growth Score — how fast each company is actually growing.
The dashed lines create four quadrants. The one that matters most sits in the upper left.
DANGER ZONE: Low Growth + High Premium
This is the worst combination. You're paying a massive premium for companies that aren't growing fast enough to justify it. LYFT, Nike, Apple, Lam Research, Intuitive Surgical — they're all here. Expensive AND slow. The maths simply don't work.
WATCH ZONE: High Growth + High Premium
Upper right. Cloudflare, Reddit, CrowdStrike, SoFi. These are legitimately fast-growing businesses. The market hasn't lost its mind entirely — there's real growth here. But it's already priced in. Years of it. Maybe decades.
Less dangerous than the Danger Zone, but still stretched. The margin of safety has evaporated.
Danger Zone Deep Dive
Let's talk about the three stocks I find most concerning.
LYFT: The Turnaround That Keeps Reversing
Year Priced: 2182 | Premium: 192% | Growth Score: 2%
I've seen optimistic valuations before. This one's in a different category.
Yes, LYFT hit GAAP profitability in 2024. That sounds good until you look closer. Net income as a percentage of gross bookings? 0.1%. That's not a profit margin — that's a rounding error.
Meanwhile, Uber commands 76% of the US ride-share market. LYFT has 24% and shrinking pricing power. The $200 million FREENOW acquisition to expand into Europe? That's Uber's backyard. With 10x the resources.
The turnaround thesis requires LYFT to compete against a company that's bigger, more diversified, and more profitable — for 156 years straight just to justify today's price.
I don't see it.
Intuitive Surgical (ISRG): When Monopolies Face Competition
Year Priced: 2031 | Premium: 165% | Growth Score: 17%
Intuitive has been the undisputed king of surgical robotics for two decades. 80-85% global market share. Da Vinci systems in over 9,200 hospitals. A genuine monopoly.
So why am I concerned?
Because the competition is finally arriving. Medtronic's Hugo RAS system is targeting the "strong No. 2" position with modular pricing that undercuts Intuitive's premium model. Johnson & Johnson's Ottava system launches late 2025 with 130-country distribution infrastructure.
For the first time, hospitals will have credible alternatives.
The numbers tell the story. ISRG trades at 78x forward earnings. Medtronic? 26x. J&J? 21x. The market is pricing Intuitive as if competition doesn't exist.
Here's the thing that really caught my attention: management admitted that bariatric procedures declined due to GLP-1 medications like Ozempic. When weight-loss drugs reduce the need for weight-loss surgery, that's a structural headwind nobody saw coming.
At 165% premium, I'd want a wider moat, not a narrowing one.
Lam Research (LRCX): Peak Cycle Warning Signs
Year Priced: 2031 | Premium: 165% | Growth Score: 15%
This one's technical as much as fundamental.
LRCX has rallied 145% in 2025. RSI hit 82.4 — deep into overbought territory. The stock is trading 32% above its 50-day moving average and 89% above its 200-day. That's not a trend. That's parabolic.
Parabolic moves end. They always end.
The fundamental concern? China accounts for 35% of Lam's revenue. The US House Select Committee on China has explicitly named Lam as selling equipment to "Chinese state-owned and military-linked companies." Any expansion of export controls could devastate that revenue overnight.
Applied Materials is already warning that Q4 results will be "sequentially lower, primarily due to uncertainties in China." ASML says China sales will be "significantly lower" in 2025.
Lam's relative outperformance in China looks increasingly unsustainable. And when semiconductor equipment stocks correct, they don't correct gently — 40-50% peak-to-trough drawdowns are historical norms.
At RSI 82.4 with 35% China exposure, the risk/reward has flipped.
Watch Zone: Quality at a Price
Not everything on this list is broken. Some of these are genuinely good companies that have simply gotten ahead of themselves.
SoFi (SOFI): Love the Company, Hate the Price
Year Priced: 2027 | Premium: 143% | Growth Score: 35%
Here's my dilemma with SoFi.
The transformation is real. First GAAP profitability in 2024. Members up 34% to 10.1 million. The bank charter creates a genuine structural advantage that most fintech competitors lack. Revenue mix shifting toward capital-light, higher-ROE businesses. Cross-selling working — revenue per product up 37%.
I'm bullish on the business.
But the valuation? SoFi trades at 49-53x forward earnings. PayPal trades at 11-13x. That's a 4x premium for a company that's smaller, younger, and less proven.
Here's what really crystallised it for me: NU Holdings.
I've been banging on about NU for months. Similar fintech growth story. Similar trajectory. But NU trades at a fraction of SoFi's valuation with arguably better execution in emerging markets.
The market proved me right on that one. NU has outperformed.
SoFi will probably be fine long-term. But at 143% premium, you're paying for years of flawless execution upfront. I'd rather wait for ValueTrigger and get paid to be patient.
CrowdStrike (CRWD): The Quality Premium Question
Year Priced: 2027 | Premium: 119% | Growth Score: 45%
CRWD is the hardest one on this list.
The July 2024 outage should have been catastrophic. Largest global IT outage in history. $10 billion in economic losses. Delta suing. Headlines everywhere.
And yet... customer retention stayed above 97%. The platform's stickiness proved real.
That's impressive. But here's my concern.
CRWD trades at 125x forward earnings. The cybersecurity peer average is 42x. You're paying a 3x premium for quality — and that quality just suffered its biggest reputational hit ever.
Growth is slowing. ARR growth dropped to 23% from 35% a year ago. That's still good, but at 125x earnings, "good" isn't enough. You need exceptional.
The Microsoft threat is under-appreciated too. As enterprises consolidate vendors, Microsoft's "good enough" bundled security becomes increasingly attractive. It's not that Microsoft is better — it's that it's already in the stack.
I'm not saying CRWD is a sell. I'm saying the margin of safety at 119% premium is razor thin. One more outage, one growth miss, one competitive setback — and the multiple compression would be brutal.
If you own it, size matters. Is your position sized for a 40% drawdown? Because at this valuation, that's not a tail risk. It's a realistic scenario.
Sector Concentration Risk
One pattern jumped out immediately.
Tech dominates. Five of fifteen stocks (33%) come from one sector. Add Cyber Security (13%) and Enterprise (13%) — which are essentially tech-adjacent — and you're at nearly 60%.
This matters because sector rotations are real. When tech falls out of favour (and it does, cyclically), the stocks trading at the highest premiums get hit hardest.
If your portfolio is overweight tech AND overweight expensive tech, you're doubling down on a single bet.
The Full Rankings
Visual context helps. That dotted line at 100% represents 2x fair value. Everything above it is trading at more than double intrinsic value.
LYFT, ISRG, LRCX, NET, SOFI — all meaningfully above the line. These are the positions I'd examine first.
The stocks near the bottom — TOST, GRAB, ZETA, AAPL, DDOG — are expensive but less extreme. Still trading at 80-90% premiums, which isn't cheap, but there's at least some relationship between price and value.
The Action Framework
So what do you actually do with this?
Danger Zone stocks (LYFT, ISRG, LRCX, NKE): These warrant serious scrutiny. Low growth plus high premium is a losing combination. If you own them, ask yourself: has the thesis changed? Would you buy at this price today? If the answer is no, why are you still holding?
Watch Zone stocks (NET, RDDT, CRWD, SOFI): Growth can justify premium — but not infinite premium. Review position sizes. Consider whether trimming and redeploying at actual ValueTrigger levels serves you better long-term.
Near Fair Value (TOST, GRAB, DDOG, AAPL, ZETA): Less urgent, but still expensive. These aren't screaming problems, but they're not bargains either. Hold if thesis intact, but don't add until valuation improves.
The universal principle: Cash raised from stretched positions is optionality. ValueTriggers always hit eventually. Being patient gets rewarded.
Bottom Line
This analysis isn't emotional. It's arithmetic.
Fifteen stocks in our coverage universe are trading well above intrinsic value. Some are broken stories that may never recover. Some are quality companies that ran too far too fast. Some are pure momentum with no fundamental anchor.
What unites them: the data says they're expensive.
We can't just keep buying every dip. BTFD works in a raging bull market with low rates and no stress. That's not where we are. VIX is low, but complacency precedes volatility — it doesn't prevent it.
Systematic investing means taking profits when valuations stretch. Not just buying dips when prices fall.
The BuyTrigger system works both ways.
Questions on specific positions? BuyTrigger members can use Ask Alex Anything for personalised review.
Disclaimer:
This blog post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. The views and opinions expressed in this post are solely my own and are based on my personal analysis and experience. All information is provided on an as-is basis, and while I strive to ensure accuracy, I make no guarantees regarding the completeness, reliability, or accuracy of the information provided.
Investing in stocks and financial instruments involves risk, including the potential loss of principal. Always conduct your own research and consult with a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions. This blog is intended as a personal journal to document my thoughts and strategies, and should not be taken as a recommendation to buy or sell any securities.
By reading this blog, you acknowledge that I am not responsible for any investment decisions you make based on the information provided here. Please exercise due diligence and consider your own financial situation and goals before making any investments.
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