MENLO PARK, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 28: Facebook debuts its new company brand, Meta, at their ... [ ] headquarters on October 28, 2021 in Menlo Park, California. Meta will focus on ushering in a future of the metaverse and beyond. (Photo by Kelly Sullivan/Getty Images for Facebook)

There is something special about CEOs who start and run publicly traded companies. They have the creative spark, drive, and determination to keep placing bets on new growth opportunities.

They also have a special mindset — dubbed Cognitive Hunger in my book, Brain Rush — that can produce the kind of expectations-beating growth that propels a company’s stock price to new highs. Sadly, investors can pay a short-term price when those bets do not pay off.

This comes to mind in considering the mixed third-quarter report of Meta Platforms — whose founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg made such a huge bet on what he called the metaverse — that he changed the company’s name from Facebook.

His willingness to place such bets sent Meta’s stock down more than 1% in October 31 pre-market trading.

While Meta exceeded third-quarter earnings expectations, investors were not persuaded by the company’s contention that “really big” opportunities justify a “significant acceleration” in spending on AI capital expenditures in 2025, as Zuckerberg told investors in an October 30 earnings call. What’s more, Meta’s user growth in the quarter fell short of expectations.

Despite these concerns, here are two reasons this dip could present a buying........

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