By James Brumley
Publication Date: 2026-10-25 17:30:00
As the old adage goes, you get what you pay for. In other words, if you want quality, you can expect to pay a premium for it. The idea applies within the world of investing as well.
Still, knowing that stocks’ prices and valuations constantly ebb and flow — sometimes to extremes — it’s not wrong to think about the price you’re paying to plug into a particular company’s performance.
This premise presents a potential opportunity to investors interested in the market’s biggest and highest-profile names. Although they’re all so-called “Magnificent Seven” stocks, one of these names is measurably cheaper than all the others right now. While not a reason in and of itself to step in, this valuation bolsters the existing bullish case.
This Mag-7 bargain? Alphabet (GOOG -1.08%) (GOOGL -1.24%), priced at just over 16 times this year’s analyst-projected per-share earnings of $20.59.
The numbers
If you’ve been keeping tabs on Google’s parent company and its recent quarter, you already know something important. Its earnings projection includes a $6.26-per-share second-quarter accounting benefit linked to the growth of the company’s investments in SpaceX and Anthropic. Without that one-time bump, Alphabet’s only on track to earn $14.33 per share this year, translating into a price-to-earnings ratio of a little more than 23.
That’s not exactly cheap, but it’s not outrageous either. It’s less than Nvidia‘s 2026 comparison of 24, as well as Microsoft‘s P/E ratio of 27 based on this…
