been watching the market pretty closely and there's something interesting happening right now with how capital is flowing. The S&P 500 has been on a solid run for over three years now, up 94% since late 2022, and analysts are still fairly bullish on further upside in 2026. If you've got some cash sitting around after handling expenses and debt, honestly seems like a decent time to look at where to put it.

What's really caught my attention lately is how two major themes are shaping up as good investments right now. First, there's quantum computing which is still early stage but the growth potential is wild. McKinsey's projecting the market could explode from $4 billion now to $72 billion by 2035. That's the kind of runway that can create serious wealth if you pick the right player early.

IonQ is probably the most direct way to play this. They're building actual quantum computers and already showing impressive technical progress. Their revenue more than doubled in the first nine months of 2025, with Q3 alone jumping 222%. What's notable is they hit 99.99% accuracy on their quantum gates recently, which basically means their systems are nearly error-free. The cost per system is also supposedly 30x lower than competitors. Yeah, the stock is expensive right now at 158 times sales and will be volatile, but if quantum computing actually takes off like expected, early positions could pay off significantly.

Now the second theme that's driving solid investment opportunities is AI infrastructure. Gartner's calling for a 41% spike in AI infrastructure spending this year to $1.4 trillion, which is just massive capital flow. That's where Celestica and Micron come in as more attractive entry points right now.

Celestika is basically the backbone supplier for this AI buildout. They're designing and manufacturing the networking components that go into accelerator chips from Broadcom, AMD, and Intel. They're also building the rack-scale solutions for hyperscalers deploying AI data centers. Revenue jumped 27% in 2025 to $12.2 billion and the forecasts suggest acceleration ahead. Trading at just 3.2 times sales, it's genuinely undervalued for what they're executing.

Micron is another one worth looking at. Memory chips are the real bottleneck right now for AI expansion, and demand is crushing supply. They're trading under 10 times sales despite stunning growth, and their earnings could quadruple this year as sales double. The shortage of high-bandwidth memory isn't getting solved overnight either, so memory prices should stay elevated through 2028 at minimum. Micron's already up 243% over the past year but the valuation is still reasonable for what's coming.

So if you're thinking about good investments right now with $1,000 or more, these three offer different risk-reward profiles. Quantum is the long-shot lottery ticket with massive upside if the tech matures. The infrastructure plays are more grounded in near-term spending trends and supply constraints. Mix depends on your risk tolerance, but honestly all three have legitimate growth drivers that could compound nicely over the next few years.