Amazon strides past $2,000 a share in trillion-dollar race

E-commerce behemoth Amazon has broken past the $2,000 (£1,538) per share mark, putting the online retailer well on its way to hitting a $1 trillion market valuation.

Shares in Amazon reached an all-time high of $2,010 just an hour after markets opened in the US, powering the firm past the $980bn market capitalisation milestone. 

Amazon made its way past the $900bn cap marker in July, indicating the firm remains on a meteoric growth track to become the second US publicly-traded company ever to reach a $1 trillion valuation after Apple.

Read more: Amazon doubles down on profits, but misses estimates on revenue

Amazon's share price in the past year has more than doubled, and almost tripled since 2015.

In its most recent quarterly results, Amazon doubled consensus estimates on profits to reveal a staggering 1,157.5 per cent increase year-on-year in earnings per share.

To enter the trillion dollar club, Amazon shares will need to reach $2,050.

Today's spike was largely led by a 3.2 per cent share rise yesterday, after analysts at Morgan Stanley issued a bullish note on the stock and raised their 12-month target price to $2,500.

AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould told City PM that recent troubles at fellow tech stock favourites Tesla and Netflix may be persuading investors to "defect" to Amazon in a bid to reap in the sector's success.

However he warned that "any earnings disappointment could still leave the monster valuation exposed on the downside, and investors may still have to ponder whether it really makes sense to afford the firm a market cap that is the equivalent of 4.5 per cent of US GDP all on its own".