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Amazon Should Be Broken Up

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This article is more than 5 years old.

Today, Amazon became the second company (following Apple) to cross the one trillion-dollar valuation threshold.

This stock is up 72% year-to-date.  It has doubled in the past year and has nearly tripled since Trump's election. That's what happens when you pour gasoline (economic growth) on a fire (a monopoly).  No one should love Trump more than Jeff Bezos.

But at 161 times earnings, the market seems to be betting on the Amazon monopoly being left to corner all of the world's industries.  That's a bad bet.

Much like China undercut the competition on price and cornered the world's export market, Amazon has undercut the retail industry on price, and cornered the world's retail business.  That tipping point (on retail) has well passed.  And as sales growth accelerates for Amazon, so does the speed at which competition is being destroyed.  But Amazon is now moving aggressively into almost every industry.  This company has to be/will be broken up.

The question is, how will the market value an ecommerce business that would no longer be subsidized by the high margin Amazon cloud business (AWS)?  A separation of the businesses would put Amazon's ecommerce margins under the Wall Street microscope (as every other retailer is subjected to) and materially impact a key sales growth driver for Amazon, which is investment in innovation (R&D).

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