The Trade Desk (NASDAQ:TTD), a self-service cloud ad-buying platform, closed Thursday at $23.95, down 4.81%. The stock fell as the market reacted to softer-than-expected fiscal Q1 revenue guidance, margin pressure, and a wave of price-target cuts. Investors are watching whether growth and profitability can reaccelerate. Trading volume reached 52.5 million shares, about 264% above its three-month average of 14.4 million shares. The Trade Desk IPO’d in 2016 and has grown 696% since going public.

S&P 500 slipped 0.53% to finish Thursday’s session at 6,909, while the Nasdaq Composite declined 1.18% to close at 22,878. In advertising technology, industry peers PubMatic closed at $7.07, up 7.45%, and Magnite ended at $13.48, gaining 12.61%, underscoring diverging sentiment across the group.

After its stock opened down 16% this morning following yesterday’s earnings, The Trade Desk rallied back to close down 5% today as the market digested its new financials. Trade Desk’s 14% sales growth and flat adjusted net income figures beat analysts’ expectations, but its Q1 guidance of 10% sales growth disappointed the market. Worse yet, management expects adjusted EBITDA to dip by 6%, which might signal weakening pricing power.

While Trade Desk remains a core holding for me — and I may buy a little more in March while shares trade near their lowest-ever valuation — it has a lot to prove with its AI-powered Kokai offering, and needs to show that its days of double-digit sales growth aren’t ending.

Before you buy stock in The Trade Desk, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and The Trade Desk wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $445,995!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,198,823!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 927% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 194% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of February 26, 2026.