US e-commerce giant Amazon has become the first publicly listed company to lose $1 trillion in market value within months.
Why did Amazon lose a trillion dollars?
Amazon’s stock has been subjected to a strong selling wave over the past few months, losing about 50% of its value since the beginning of this year.
Financial market experts attributed this to concerns about the future of the company’s business amid an unprecedented acceleration of inflation that the United States has not witnessed in 40 years, which recorded 8.2% last September, offset by record increases in the federal funds’ interest rates, which led to a recession in markets.
Amazon’s stock fell at the close of trading on Wednesday 4.3% to $86.14, bringing the company’s market value to $878.5 billion, compared to a record level of $1.88 trillion in July 2021.
Bezos’ fortune evaporates
Co-founder Jeff Bezos lost his net worth of about $83 billion to $109 billion.
“Amazon” had achieved net sales below expectations of $ 127 billion in the third quarter of 2022, expecting to record the lowest pace of revenue growth in the company’s history during the holiday season, with economic uncertainty.
Earlier, Amazon decided to temporarily stop hiring operations in some of its sectors.
The technology sector in general on Wall Street is suffering heavy losses this year, as the five largest technology companies in terms of revenue have lost about $4 trillion of their market value, with fears of stagnation of the economy and raising interest rates, according to Bloomberg data.