It can be easy to look at a stock chart like The Trade Desk's (NASDAQ: TTD) and assume something is deeply amiss. Indeed, there's no denying the stock was priced at a high premium, much as it has been for the entirety of its existence. Even the recent post-third-quarter 2023 earnings update plunge hasn't fixed that. The Trade Desk currently trades for well over 50 times trailing 12-month free cash flow.

However, all individual stocks are highly volatile, and a high premium merely ratchets up that volatility. Under the surface of that stock price action and resulting headlines stemming from it, though, remains a high-quality business poised to deliver the goods for shareholders. Is it time to buy?

The Trade Desk has been blowing away the growth rates of its big peers Alphabet and Meta Platforms for years -- on a revenue and free cash flow basis. Customers looking to migrate over their marketing and promotional activity to a digital format have loved The Trade Desk's status as a trusted partner, rather than purely a disruptor of the status quo.

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Source Fool.com