Does time matter in investing? This is not the case Just on time, of course, but time can be very essential. The same stock can be a great performer or a total failure for an investor, depending on when he buys it and when he sells it. Therefore, when looking for shares to buy, I take into account the attractiveness of this business – but also the moment when I would be willing to invest.

Here are two stocks on my watchlist that I think are great businesses. I will be ecstatic to buy the stock next year if its price drops to what I think is an attractive level.

Dunelm

At facial level Dunelm (LSE:DNLM) may not even seem costly. After all, its price-to-earnings ratio of 14 is lower than some of the stocks I bought this year, such as: Diageo.

However, I’ve gotten burned before owning retail stocks (like my share of… boohoo).

Retail is typically a fairly low profit margin business, so profits can drop significantly for relatively compact, seemingly compact reasons. Last year, for example, Diageo’s after-tax profit margin was 19%. Dunelm accounted for less than half of this amount at 9%.

Dunelm’s operations are run efficiently, with a huge store base, a growing digital footprint, and a range of unique product lines to differentiate itself from the competition. Sales have increased significantly in recent years.

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Dunelm is also a solid dividend payer. The yield on regular dividends is approximately 4.1%.

However, the company often paid special dividends, meaning that the total rate of return was often higher than the regular dividend rate itself.

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Despite this, Dunelm’s share price is up 57% since September 2022.

That seems like a lot to me, considering sales growth in the last quarter was 3.5% – totally decent, but not spectacular, in my opinion.

I believe that a faint economy and increasingly tight household budgets could negatively impact sales and profits in 2025. If this happens and the share price drops sufficiently, my current plan will be to purchase some Dunelm shares for my portfolio.

Nvidia

I think it’s straightforward to look at Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and immediately think “bubble!“

In fact, a P/E ratio of 53 provides little or no margin of safety against risks such as a reduction in AI spending after the initial round of huge installations currently underway. This helps explain why I haven’t bought shares this year.

Still, this P/E ratio holds despite Nvidia’s stock escalate 2.175% only in the last five years. The price has increased, but so have earnings.

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Nvidia is not a collection of memes with no long-term future. It is an extremely profitable, successful company with a proven business model.

In my opinion, the competitive moat is also huge – rivals simply can’t produce many of the chips that Nvidia makes, even if they wanted to.

The valuation alone is why I haven’t bought Nvidia stock this year. This is a stock I’d be willing to buy (in spades) in 2025 if the price seems more reasonable to me.