Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN)

Amazon.com operates an online marketplace, sells merchandise directly, and provides fulfillment and advertising services to merchants and brands. Prime combines delivery benefits with digital content to encourage repeat purchases. Amazon Web Services supplies computing, storage, databases, and artificial intelligence services. The company reports North America, international, and AWS segments; advertising and subscriptions are included within the geographic segments. AWS accounts for roughly one-fifth of revenue and the majority of operating income.

Amazon.com is the leading U.S. e-commerce retailer and among the top e-commerce sites globally. It includes Amazon Web Services (AWS), the global leader in cloud-based Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platforms. The company's Prime membership platform is a key online retail differentiator, providing customers with free shipping (after an annual fee) along with exclusive media content (music, video, audible books, etc.). The company's Kindle reader and Alexa-based Echo and Dot digital voice assistants are category leaders.

The major indices were under pressure on Thursday, with all but the small-cap-oriented Russell 2000 lower. The Nasdaq led the way down, off 1.38% as high-profile names in Techland more often than not reported earnings or offered outlooks (or both) that raised concerns. Meanwhile, crude oil remains at about $103 per barrel and the midterm elections are right around the corner. All in all, uncertainty is the order of the day at the moment.

The United States economy is full of innovation. It has to be. Manufacturing industries that dominated the economy decades ago - textiles, televisions, even automobiles to a large degree - have moved overseas, where labor and materials costs are lower. Yet the U.S. economy, even during the pandemic and the recent period of high inflation, has expanded to record levels. If U.S. corporations weren't innovating, creating new products (such as AI and vaccines) and services (such as Zoom calls and Netflix), as well as moving into new markets (clean energy, rare drugs), the domestic economy would not be growing, and capital would not be flooding into the country. Consider that U.S. GDP was approximately $1 trillion in 1930 but was almost $31.5 trillion at the end of 2025. That's growth of 30-times. Meanwhile, the U.S. population has grown less than 3-times during that time span, to 340 million from 120 million. The delta between GDP growth and population growth has been driven, in large part, by innovation.