Why Amazon Is Still Cheap Today

By Austin Smith | More Articles
February 7, 2012 | Comments (1)

The following video is part of our "Motley Fool Conversations" series, in which consumer goods editor and analyst Austin Smith and editor and analyst Isaac Pino discuss topics across the investing world.

Get ready commenters, Austin is about to take a divisive stance. He thinks Amazon still looks affordable, especially after their recent sell off. The thing about a company like this is that you can't look at it with traditional metrics like P/E, which are sky high. Amazon is the definition of a disruptive force, and Jeff Bezos has shown he likes to play the ultra long game in queuing up Amazon for its most profitable time not this year, or next year, but ten years from now and beyond.

Retail is in its largest period of transition ever. The companies left behind will bankrupt investors, while the few exceptional leaders benefiting from this change will see astounding growth in the years ahead. The Motley Fool has created a free report, "The Death of Retail," which highlights two companies hand-picked by Fool analysts that are set to dominate the future. To check out these two companies and learn more about the future of retailing, click here now -- it's free!

The Steve Jobs Betrayal
You may already know that in the final year of his life, Jobs revealed a stunning betrayal — and told his biographer, "I will spend my last dying breath... and every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank to right this wrong." What was it that made Jobs so irate — and why could it make a few in-the-know investors some major profits over the coming months and years?

Enter your email address below to find out what made Jobs so enraged!

Austin Smith has no positions in the stocks mentioned above. Isaac Pino has no positions in the stocks mentioned above. The Motley Fool owns shares of Amazon.com, Best Buy, LinkedIn, and Rackspace Hosting. Motley Fool newsletter services recommend Amazon.com and Rackspace Hosting. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Read/Post Comments (1) | Recommend This Article (2)

Comments from our Foolish Readers

Help us keep this a respectfully Foolish area! This is a place for our readers to discuss, debate, and learn more about the Foolish investing topic you read about above. Help us keep it clean and safe. If you believe a comment is abusive or otherwise violates our Fool's Rules, please report it via the Report this Comment icon found on every comment.

Report this Comment On February 07, 2012, at 12:33 PM, steveat wrote:

First off, I wish I had invested in Amazon when its stock was hovering at the $7.50 mark after the dot bomb. I feel better knowing that there will be many other opportunities like this.
Second, the diversification of Amazon in general by launching it's AWS arm is a fantastic idea and it seems to be very successful. My only concern here is; 1. will Amazon be able to keep up with competitors as there are a lot of IaaS companies out there (I'm a cloud analyst BTW). 2. Will the lack of interoperability be an issue in the future as more companies are pushing for this.
Should Amazon adopt the OVF format (or similar) for example, look for the stock to go up. As it stands now, Amazon utilizes their own in-house AMI (Amazon Machine Image). OVF is a standard of creating templates that can be utilized in any virtualized environment whereas Amazon currently is not capable of doing this outside of their hosted infrastructure.
Keep an eye on Joyent as well which is similar, but very different than Amazon's set up. Cloud computing is web hosting 1996. Look for massive M&A in the next 2-3 years.
Just my 2 cents

Add your comment.

Compare Brokers

Fool Disclosure

DocumentId: 1774990, ~/Articles/ArticleHandler.aspx, 5/27/2012 9:16:08 AM

Report This Comment

Use this area to report a comment that you believe is in violation of the community guidelines. Our team will review the entry and take any appropriate action.

Sending report...

Today's Market

updated 1 day ago Sponsored by:
	DOW	12,454.83	-74.92	-0.60%
	S&P 500	1,317.82	-2.86	-0.22%
	NASD	2,837.53	-1.85	-0.07%

Create My Watchlist

Go to My Watchlist

You don't seem to be following any stocks yet!

Better investing starts with a watchlist. Now you can create a personalized watchlist and get immediate access to the personalized information you need to make successful investing decisions.

Data delayed up to 5 minutes