Should you cash out of Amazon right now or hang on a little longer? It is the question a lot of investors are wrestling with at the moment. AMZN closed at $238.34 on June 30 and edged up to $239.30 in after-hours trading, leaving it near the lower end of its 52-week range of $196.00 to $278.56. What is telling is that the urge to sell is not coming from analyst gloom. Of the 41 analysts covering the stock, roughly 95% rate it a Buy or a Strong Buy, with an average price target close to $312.99. For most people, the decision really hinges on their own goals rather than any hidden flaw in the company, and heading into earnings the outlook for AMZN still leans distinctly bullish.
Why Wall Street Has Not Soured on the Stock
Amazon carries a market cap of around $2.56 trillion at the time of writing, and AWS has done much of the heavy lifting to keep that scale intact. Last quarter AWS posted close to 28% revenue growth, while the advertising business has kept expanding at more than 20% a year. Evercore ISI analyst Mark Mahaney, who actually sees close to 50% upside in the shares, framed it like this:
At the end of the day, Amazon remains a high quality compounder (25% EPS compound annual growth rate), with solid double-digit revenue growth, expanding operating margins, and free cash flow likely to inflect up materially in a 24-month timeframe.
That is a big reason the idea of dumping Amazon has not gained much traction on the Street, even with the shares sitting well off their 52-week high.
When Trimming a Few Shares Makes Sense
Choosing to sell Amazon now does not have to mean unloading the entire position. Investors who piled too heavily into big tech after the long run-up have often heard the same advice, including in places such as Reddit's ValueInvesting forum: trim a slice rather than sell out completely. Doing that lets you lock in some gains while keeping long-term exposure to a stock that roughly 95% of its analysts rate a Buy.
AWS also recently raised prices on its reserved GPU capacity for a third straight quarter. Wells Fargo's Ken Gawrelski, who has held a $312 price target on the name, reads that move as a sign that compute demand is currently outpacing supply, which offers a fairly bullish read on where AWS, and the stock alongside it, is headed next.
How to Actually Sell if You Go Ahead
If you do decide to sell, a market order fills your shares immediately at whatever price is on offer at that moment, while a limit order only executes once AMZN reaches a price you set yourself. A limit order shields you from a sudden drop, but it may never go through if that price is never hit. To place either type, you log into a brokerage such as E*TRADE, Fidelity, Robinhood, or Trading212, locate your AMZN holding, hit Sell, enter the number of shares, and confirm.
So, Sell Now or Not?
None of the 41 analysts being tracked has slapped a Sell or Strong Sell rating on the stock, and that is not something a long-term holder should brush aside. Whether you actually sell comes down to your own portfolio and how heavily you are already exposed to tech, not to any obvious crack in the business. For now at least, the outlook for AMZN still points toward growth through AWS and advertising, even with the stock trading well below its highs.
