On May 30th, Amazon.com scripted yet another chapter in its already illustrious history — the company hit the $1,000 mark for its share price, becoming only the second of current S&P 500 stocks to do so. It went ahead of Alphabet, Google’s parent which was also aiming for the same and made a huge hit in large-cap technology-related stocks.
2017 has seen Amazon’s shares rise by about 33 percent, resulting in its current market value going up by approximately $120 billion. Analysts observing this development now expect the online shopping platform to increase by another 10% in accordance with the median price target of $1,100. In September 2013, Priceline became the first S&P stock to hit $1,000.
According to Tim Ghriskey, the chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management, New York,
The world is becoming more and more aware of how unstoppable the business plan is. The $1,000 is a bit of a psychological barrier for any stock, but it is just another number and we’re still big believers in it
Amazon currently holds about 3.5-5% of Solaris’ portfolios. Amazon’s stocks have risen primarily as a result of its core retail business.
The combined market cap of the top five S&P stocks is about $3 trillion which is more than 13% of S&P stocks’ capitalisation. The four top companies apart from Amazon include Facebook and Apple which have both seen an almost 33% rise in share price, Alphabet which has seen a 26% increase, and Microsoft which has increased by only 13%.
Amazon, which happens to be the only non-technology stock in the top five, currently accounts for 17% of the S&P 500 market cap in the consumer discretionary sector.
Amazon trails Priceline when it comes to stock prices, showing a high of $1,001.20 compared to the latter’s $1,850.50. But, when it comes to the market cap, Amazon leads $476 billion to Priceline’s $92 billion.
Neither are a match for Apple’s market cap of $800 billion. In 2014, Apple split its stock into seven. If it hadn’t done so, its current stock value could have surpassed Amazon to be about $1,080.11.
The two other companies that are racing to the $1,000 mark are Alphabet which is currently at $994.32, and Intuitive Surgical which is trading at $912.80.
Amazon is currently on its way to join Apple, Alphabet, and Microsoft to be the fourth US company to have a market cap of more than half a trillion dollars. The race to become the fourth such company to be worth so much is currently between the online shopping platform and social media giant, Facebook.
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