I still remember John C. Dvorak saying how awful amazon is and that it will never make money just ~10 years ago.
https://512pixels.net/2009/01/early-macintosh-reviews-show-d...
Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need. It, unfortunately, leaves the “why” out of the equation — as in “why would I want this?” The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a ‘mouse’. There is no evidence that people want to use these things. I dont want one of these new fangled devices.
Another way of looking at this is, no one is going to be able to redeem all the Amazon stock there is for cash at this price, that only mark-to-market is wrong.
Another way of looking at this is, Jeff Bezos was happy doing what he was doing for peanuts throughout Amazon's early lifetime, so would wealth taxes or CEO compensation caps or whatever boogeyman really have dissuaded him from taking other people's money?
Maybe, maybe not. Amazon’s daily trading volume is about 3 million shares, and there are around 500 million shares outstanding. In 150 days the entire market value of the company trades.
It would be weird if the whole thing was sold at once, but there would be people interested in buying. The company has real value.
This seems like a real stretch. Amazon IPOed in 1997 for $0.5B, and grew to $30B by 1999. It crashed to $3B in the dot com bust, but that was the case for the entire tech industry. Between 2001 and 2007, it grew 10x from $3B to $30B.
Even including the dot-com crash, Amazon had grown ~60x in its first decade as a public company. I don't think anyone would be laughing at those growth rates.
One of Amazon's important achievements was to attract and retain investors willing to go along for the "their margin is our opportunity" inexorable slow-boat ride to dominance.