It’s hard to believe but less than two months ago, Amazon.com (AMZN) was trading over $2,000 a share and briefly enjoyed a market cap of over $1,000,000,000,000.00.That’s right a trillion dollars! Those days seem long gone now, though, as today AMZN is trading under $1,500 and down more than 25% from its recent highs. He may still be the richest person in the world, but Jeff Bezos now also owns the record for losing more wealth in the course of two days ($19.2 billion) than any other person.
While pretty uncommon in recent years, 25% drawdowns in the stock of AMZN have been relatively common. The last drawdown from a record closing high was back in February 2016 when AMZN was briefly down 30% from its previous high, and going back to the lows of the Financial Crisis in 2009, there have been a total of five prior drawdowns of more than 25% (red line). Also, while it is a little bit of a misleading statistic, AMZN has actually spent nearly half of its existence as a public company down at least 25% from its prior all-time closing high. The seven-year stretch from 2000 to 2007 accounts for a big chunk of that percentage, but it does serve as a reminder that stocks don’t always trade right near all-time highs.
