AMZN worst in 2008?
Rich Smith at Motley Fool seems to think Amazon is the worst stock in 2008. I’m no stock analyst and I’m certainly no financial expert but his analysis misses what to me are two critical things Amazon is doing right.
#1 – the new MP3 download service from Amazon is great. The music previews are great, selection is great, non-DRM music is great, download app is really nice. My only quibble is with the prices, which are too high but on the upper end of tolerable. I’ve been buying a ton of music from them. I don’t buy from iTunes anymore due to DRM. Amazon nailed this and I can’t see how it won’t help the bottom line in the short-term.
#2 – Amazon is doing amazing things with all their cloud computing infrastructure. This may not be something driving short-term revenue but they continue to innovate and supply exactly the features users want (like static IPs and the upcoming storage access for EC2). I don’t think most people outside the tech world get exactly how huge this is to be able to requisition machines, storage, etc at will. It’s certainly not perfect, but Amazon continues to be a leader in understanding how to make this work and it will only pay dividends down the line.
So, I think Rich is crazy and it’s a great time to buy AMZN. If I had some spare cash lying around I’d buy some more while it’s cheap.
Hi! My name is Alex Miller and I live in St. Louis. I write code for a living and currently work for 
I continue to love Amazon…they are among a very tiny list of companies that haven’t “done bad things to me”. I think these stock analysts probably just don’t have the technical know-how to understand how well they do things behind the scenes.
I LOVE Amazon and have made a nice chunk of cash on the stock over the years for sure. I also think they are doing amazing stuff and think they have a very bright future. But as far as the next 12 months go I agree with the analysts. Amazon is valued mostly as a retailer. It is currently trading at 71.33 p/e which is historically very high for them. IMHO despite the technical greatness both as a retailer and as a web services company (in most ways much better than google’s web services) until they a) monetize that stuff in a big way, and b) Figure out how to explain to the rest of the world that they aren’t just the best retailer on the web. This stock will continue to be volatile and hover around where it is (maybe 80) and lower. Might want to pick some up on the cheap when it dips back to the 50s and 60s.