Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of Amazon.Com Inc., during the GeekWire Summit in Seattle, Washington, U.S., on Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021.
David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Shares of Amazon have now given up nearly all of their gains from the pandemic.
If the stock dips to $2,170 apiece, slightly below where it closed Monday evening, it will have given up all the massive stock market gains it enjoyed since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The last time Amazon traded around that level was on Feb. 20, 2020, when the stock reached an intraday high of $2,176.79.
Shares recovered a bit after markets opened on Tuesday, up more than 2% to roughly $2,230 each, which is roughly where it was trading just as the stock began to rocket in April 2020 as people began to shop more online during Covid lockdowns. It’s more than 40% off from the company’s 52-week intraday high of $3,773.08, which it hit July 13, 2021.
Amazon’s stock skyrocketed in 2020 and 2021 as e-commerce boomed, with consumers flocking to online retailers for everything from face masks and Lysol wipes to patio furniture and dumbbells. Amazon and other digital retailers now face growing pressure to prove they can sustain the high-flying growth they enjoyed during the pandemic, as the economy reopens and consumers head back to physical stores.
Amazon’s latest earnings report did little to ease those concerns. The company posted its slowest revenue growth since the dot-com bust and provided outlook for the current quarter that fell short of Wall Street’s estimates.
Shifting market conditions have added another challenge. Investors began to rotate out of tech stocks at the end of last year, spurred by rising inflation and the specter of higher interest rates. That trend accelerated this year, after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, causing oil prices to spike further. Stocks have sold off further in recent days after the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate on Wednesday.
The sell-off has hit the technology sector particularly hard, with tech giants losing more than $1 trillion in value between Thursday and Monday.
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