Nasdaq AMZN Amazon

Gap on Thursday forecast holiday-quarter sales below expectations, signaling weak demand for its Banana Republic and Athleta brands heading into the all-important shopping season.

The stock market has been on an almost unbelievable run over the last three weeks; however, I think it warrants some caution from investors. While I remain a bull into year end, I don’t think now is the time to get aggressive on t

(RTTNews) - Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) on Thursday announced a broad strategic partnership with Hyundai Motor Company to bring innovative new experiences to customers, paving the way for a significant shift in the automotive industry.

Rivian Automotive (NASDAQ: RIVN) reported some good news with its third-quarter earnings report last week, and its stock has been on a roll ever since. Up until Thursday, that is. The electric vehicle (EV) maker's shares are still up by about 6% over the past week, but that inclu

The technology sector is back in the groove and dominating the stock market rally once again since the start of November. The renewed confidence is driven by hopes that the Fed’s aggressive interest rate hiking campaign might be n

Amazon.com said on Thursday its two prototype satellites for its planned Kuiper internet network have been operating successfully in orbit, with the project on track to start launching operational satellites by mid-2024.

Disney DIS recently announced its partnership with Dapper Labs to unveil a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) platform known as Disney Pinnacle. This platform is designed to tokenize DIS' timeless animated characters, along with figures fro

Amazon.com said on Thursday its two prototype satellites for its planned Kuiper internet network have been operating successfully, with the project on track to start mass production in the first half of 2024.

We're in the homestretch of 2023. The end of the year is in sight, a new year is coming up, and it's a perfect time for investors to start reviewing their portfolio composition. In other words, it's time for some stock picking. Stock picking has long been thought of as an art, but the savvy investor knows that there is also plenty of science to it. And for those willing to embrace the science, TipRanks has the Smart Score, an AI-driven data sorting tool, based on sophisticated natural language algorithms. The tool gathers the reams of data thrown up by the stock markets – the transactions, the stock movements, the traders' moves, all of it. This data is sorted and rated according to a set of factors known to match with future share outperformance – and distills the results into a single-digit 'Smart Score' that points toward each stock's likely way forward. Recently, two blue-chip stock stalwarts have turned up on the Smart Score's 'Perfect 10' list, the shares that ticked all the right marks. These are major names in Big Tech, and they have certainly earned the attention they've gotten. Both are among the handful of trillion-dollar-plus companies, and both have made a huge impact on the ways we live and work. Here they are, in focus, for a closer look, based on data from the TipRanks platform and the analyst commentaries. Microsoft Corporation ( MSFT) We'll start with Microsoft, the iconic computer and technology company. Microsoft is the leader in the world of PC operating systems, an instantly recognizable iconic brand, and, with its $2.75 trillion market cap, the world's second-largest publicly traded company. The firm has been involved in personal computing for nearly 50 years and has its hands in everything from word processing software to web browsers to AI. On that last note, the company is a major investor in OpenAI, the creator of the popular ChatGPT bot; Microsoft's investment in OpenAI over the past several years has totaled more than $13 billion. The company can afford investments on that scale. Microsoft's successes, its dominance of the markets in OS and office software, have pushed it to the top tier of the business world. It brought in $211.9 billion in total revenue for its last fiscal year, 2023, which ended on June 30; that total was up 7% year-over-year. Looking forward, Microsoft is investing heavily in AI technology. The company is improving its Bing search engine, in a direct challenge to Google, using the ChatGPT bot as a generative AI brain to give Bing natural language capability. In addition, Microsoft is incorporating AI technology into both its Edge web browser and its Azure business cloud platform. The company's Intelligent Cloud business is already a $24 billion segment. Late last month, we saw financial results for Microsoft's fiscal 1Q24. The release showed that the company had top-line revenues of $56.5 billion, a year-over-year gain of 13%, and beat the forecast by almost $2 billion. At the bottom line, Microsoft posted $2.99 in diluted EPS, beating the estimates by 34 cents per share and growing 27% year-over-year. Cloud computing services helped to drive these positive results; as noted, the Intelligent Cloud brought in over $24 billion of the total revenue, gaining 19% year-over-year. Among the bulls is 5-star analyst Kirk Materne, of Evercore ISI. Materne writes, looking at Microsoft’s recent quarterly results, “While the focus now shifts to the drivers behind these results, including whether or not we are past the Azure ‘bottom’ or whether there were one-time items that resulted in the beat, we believe that the narrative gets even stronger into the rest of FY24 as some optical headwinds reverse and comps soften, and Microsoft’s position in the enterprise market continues to get stronger as customers look to consolidate spending. As we look out into CY24, we believe that AI will be a tailwind as Microsoft starts implementing its M365 Copilot monetization strategy, as will continued traction in Azure and the integration of ATVI into Microsoft’s gaming business.” Extrapolating from the current position, Materne gives MSFT shares an Outperform (i.e. Buy) rating, with a $400 price target to point toward a one-year upside of 8%. (To watch Materne’s track record, click here) Big tech stocks always pick up plenty of analyst attention, and Microsoft has 31 recent reviews on file. These feature a decidedly lopsided 30 to 1 Buy/Hold split, for a Strong Buy consensus rating. The stock is selling for $369.67, and its $408.76 average price target implies a 10.5% gain in the next 12 months. (See Microsoft’s stock forecast ) Amazon ( AMZN) The second stock we’ll look at is Amazon, another instantly recognizable tech name with an equally iconic brand. Not as old as Microsoft, Amazon got its start in the ‘90s as an online bookstore. The firm is a survivor of the dot-com bubble, and in the early 2000s began expanding its services from books to include essentially the whole of the online retail world. Shoppers can find almost anything they want via Amazon, which has become the world’s largest online retailer. Across all of its domains, Amazon moved a total gross merchandise value of $693 billion last year. That’s not just big business; it’s huge – and it’s pushed Amazon into the number-four spot among Wall Street’s largest companies. The firm has a market cap of just over $1.5 trillion and had an operating cash flow of $71.7 billion for the 12 months ending this past September 30. Amazon’s scale and success have given it a firm foundation for expanding its operations away from pure retail. The company offers its customers a vast array of online services, including online TV streaming and cloud computing, as well as audiobooks, home automation, and even groceries. The company has made use of AI tech to streamline and improve its services. The Amazon.com website is one of the internet’s most trafficked sites, with more than 2 billion visits per month. That scope is reflected in Amazon’s public financial results. The company’s most recent quarterly release, for 3Q23, showed revenues of $143.1 billion, a total that was up 13% from the prior year and was more than $1.5 billion better than had been expected. The revenue result reflected a set of solid retail gains growth, including 11% in North America and 16% internationally. The company’s cloud services, AWS, showed a 12% retail gains growth in the quarter. Amazon’s quarterly bottom line, a 94-cent diluted EPS, was 35 cents ahead of the estimates – and compared favorably to the prior-year quarter’s 28-cent result. Covering Amazon for Tigress Financial, Ivan Feinseth sees the company standing to gain from its brand recognition, its scale, and its ability to leverage AI technology. The 5-star analyst writes, “Our target price, multiples, and growth rates are supported by AMZN’s strong brand equity and dominant industry position combined with its massive cash position and cash flow, enabling ongoing investments in its growth initiatives to support the integration of generative AI as a major growth driver and business optimizer combined with ongoing innovation in AWS and opportunities for massive AI integration across all business lines along with its increasing fulfillment capabilities.” Feinseth’s target price of $210 suggests a 47% upside on the one-year horizon, and supports his Buy  rating on the stock. (To watch Feinseth’s track record, click here) Amazon is that rare beast - a stock with plenty of coverage where everyone is in agreement. It has garnered 40 analyst reviews over the past 3 months – all Buys – naturally making the consensus view here a Strong Buy. The shares have a $143.20 trading price, and a $175.51 average price target implying potential for a 22% one-year gain. (See Amazon stock forecast ) To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks’  Best Stocks to Buy, a tool that unites all of TipRanks’ equity insights. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.

The retail sector is trying to stage a solid recovery amid existing inflationary pressures. However, retail sales declined marginally in October, the first time in seven months. Even then, the retail sector has immense potential,

As we approach the final months of 2023, consumer strength has been somewhat mixed but has overall been running out of steam due to stubbornly high grocery prices and higher housing costs. Interestingly, consumers continue to spend on experiences like concerts, movies, and restaurants. But to do this, they are cutting back on prices by [...] Read more at ETFTrends.com.

In 2022, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) posted its first quarterly loss in years due to rising costs and a hefty loss on its investment in electric vehicle maker Rivian Automotive. It was a wake-up call that the company likely overestimated how much growth was on the horizon, and that it

Below is Validea's guru fundamental report for AMAZON.COM INC (AMZN). Of the 22 guru strategies we follow, AMZN rates highest using our P/B Growth Investor model based on the published strategy of Partha Mohanram. This growth model looks for low book-to-market stocks that exhibi

Do you have an extra $3,000 you know you won't be needing anytime soon? Would you like a shot at growing that money into a much, much bigger sum?

A short iron condor is an income strategy that aims to profit when a stock stays within a specified range over the course of the trade. The trade is composed of four options with the same expiration:

Affirm Holdings' (NASDAQ: AFRM) share price has shot higher by about 170% since the start of the year. The buy now, pay later (BNPL) company's business is crushing it right now, thanks largely to key partnerships with some of the biggest e-commerce platforms in the world.

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) has captivated Wall Street this year, rallying investors with a return to profitability in its e-commerce business and a promising expansion into artificial intelligence (AI). The company's shares are up about 70% year to date, a significant improvement from

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will announce an initiative on Thursday to help women advance in important sectors such as clean energy, fisheries and environmental conservation in countries around the world, the White House said.

Wall Street expects strong earnings to drive the stock market higher. The S&P 500 carries a consensus price target of 5,038, implying a 14% upside over the next year. That bottom-up forecast combines the median price target on every stock in the index, blending more than 11,0

The holiday season is a crucial sales period for both brick-and-mortar retailers and e-commerce players like Amazon ( NASDAQ:AMZN ). Despite macro pressures, the National Retail Federation (NRF) estimates holiday spending in the November to December period to increase between 3% and 4% to $957.3 billion and $966.6 billion. In particular, the NRF expects online and other non-store sales to grow between 7% and 9% to $273.7 billion and $278.8 billion. Wall Street analysts are bullish about Amazon’s holiday quarter and expect the solid momentum in the company’s recent performance to continue. Solid Performance Amazon impressed investors with its robust third-quarter results, with sales rising 13% year-over-year to $143.1 billion. The company’s retail business experienced robust momentum, as witnessed in the 13% rise in North America segment sales and 16% growth in International segment sales. The 12% rise in the company’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing business also boosted the top-line growth. The company guided for Q4 2023 sales in the range of $160 billion to $167 billion, reflecting year-over-year growth between 7% and 12%. This guidance slightly lagged the Street’s expectation of $167.2 billion. Regardless, Wall Street remains bullish on AMZN stock and sees further upside. Analysts Optimistic about Amazon On November 6, Jefferies analyst Brent Thill reiterated a Buy rating on Amazon stock with a price target of $175, given his optimism about Amazon’s holiday sales. Thill said that third-party estimates indicate that U.S. holiday sales growth could decelerate to 4% from 6% last year. However, e-commerce sales growth is expected to accelerate to 9% from 7% in 2022. In fact, a survey of nearly 1,000 customers by the analyst’s firm also revealed slower overall holiday retail sales growth but accelerating e-commerce sales. The survey results support Thill’s view that Amazon will be “a key holiday beneficiary” and “appears to be a clear winner in holiday ecommerce sales.” Last week, Tigress Financial analyst Ivan Feinseth increased his price target for AMZN stock to $210 from $204 and reaffirmed a Buy rating. The analyst’s bullish view is based on Amazon's artificial intelligence (AI)-driven capabilities, the ongoing expansion of Prime Membership services, growth in online sales, and the growing advertising revenue. Is Amazon a Buy, Sell, or Hold? Overall, Wall Street is highly bullish on Amazon stock, with a Strong Buy consensus rating based on 40 unanimous Buys. The average price target of $175.51 implies 22.6% upside potential. Shares have risen 70.5% year-to-date. Conclusion Despite macroeconomic challenges, Amazon is expected to deliver strong sales in the holiday season. NRF estimates and other third-party surveys also indicate faster growth in e-commerce sales than overall retail sales in the holiday period, which bodes well for Amazon. Beyond the holiday quarter, analysts are also bullish on the company’s long-term prospects, thanks to its dominant position in e-commerce, solid prospects of AWS, the rapidly growing advertising business, and continued focus on cost cuts to improve profitability.   Disclosure