It's somewhat of a historical rarity to find any period of time where shares of online juggernaut Amazon.com (AMZN -1.64%) have been down about 17%, but that's exactly what has happened to Amazon.com shares thus far in 2014.
Source: Amazon.com.
Amazon's minuscule profits and poor competitive prospects against the like of powerful device makers such as Apple (AAPL 1.27%) have weighed significantly on Amazon shares. Amazon probably didn't help its case as a budding device dynamo when it launched its seemingly impotent Fire Phone earlier this week. However, despite all the recent doom and gloom, now could prove an attractive point for long-term investors to snap up Amazon shares at suppressed prices.
The case for owning Amazon.com
Unlike shares of Apple, which have proved to be a perennial bargain in recent years, Amazon stock is rarely discussed as "cheap." However, there's a case to be made that Amazon, like Apple, still could have its best days ahead of it.
In keeping with its Apple parallels, part of what makes Amazon so exceptional is its ruthlessly long-term-oriented corporate mindset, a line of thinking that gave birth to the likes of the then-unpopular Prime shipping service and Amazon Web Services. Both initiatives have become smash hits for Amazon and its investors, and it's this same kind of savvy, big-picture thinking that remains alive and well at Amazon. In the following video, tech and telecom specialist Andrew Tonner breaks down why he thinks, even despite its recent share-price struggles, Amazon.com remains an attractive long-term holding for investors today.
