I have owned Amazon stock on-and-off over the years, and it has really treated me right. The problem I always have is that it tends to be a very expensive stock and I have talked myself into selling a couple times.
Never again. Even with a P/E around 50, this stock is a bargain.
If it was just an online retailer - yeah, it would suck. But, this company is sooo much more. First off, if you have not used the market place - it's awesome. I did last year to sell text books, and it was smooth. They take away all the crappiness of eBay, Craigslist, etc. And... they skim like 15%.
That right there is one reason the stock is only going to go up. The more business they lose to competitors (me, you, etc), the more money they make. After all, pulling in a 10% margin or more when you have no inventory costs is better than actually shipping inventory. Plus, Amazon basically holds its sellers accountable so that if you buy off me through Amazon - you're pretty much guaranteed a solid transaction. The result is people trusting 3rd party marketers (which is something eBay failed at for the longest time). And, that's why eBay has stunk up the joint for the last several years and Amazon is chewing up its marketshare.
Ok... a lot of that is old news and the reason I bought a big chunk last year.
Today though, I realized just how far ahead of the game Amazon is in cloud competing and integrated sales. Long story short, I am developing a Music Organizing Wizard (well, I did like 3 years ago, but I'm enhancing it now). As I'm skimming the net for ways to automate album art, I slowly stumble on Amazon's Web Services. Holy shit. They're stocked. I knew Amazon was moving into cloud computing, but I really had no idea how robust their solutions are.
Anyhoo... Amazon owns. Of all the big 'net companies, it is the one that has continued to impress and develop. Well, it and Netflix