Amazon poised for trillion-dollar valuation despite stock shorts

Amazon is set to become the second US publicly-listed company to reach a $1 trillion (£771.2bn) market capitalisation this week, despite it overtaking Tesla as the most shorted stock on Wall Street.

The e-commerce giant broke past the $2,000 per share milestone on Thursday evening, holding investors in suspense. Fellow tech giant Apple became the first US publicly-listed company to reach a trillion-dollar valuation last month, after a bumper second quarter pushed its share price skyhigh.

Amazon’s share price must reach $2,050 to hit an overall $1 trillion in value, an increase of less than two per cent. Amazon’s share price closed at $2,012.71 on Friday, at a valuation of $981.68bn.

Read more: Amazon strides past $2,000 a share 

Data from analytics firm S3 Partners revealed Tesla's total short interest stood at $9.93bn on Thursday, just below Amazon's $9.95bn.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has frequently lambasted short-sellers of Tesla stock, and previously cited them as one of his main reasons for briefly considering taking Tesla private.

Musk later abandoned that idea after it was revealed he had not secured sufficient funding for the transaction, as well as pleas from shareholders to keep the electric carmaker public.

Read more: Shareholder pleads with Musk to keep Tesla public

CMC Market’s chief analyst Michael Hewson told City PM that there is “no reason to suppose [Amazon's] share price won’t continue to advance”, as markets stand behind the firm’s ability to improve on its already strong profit margins for its cloud and retail businesses.

He added that it would be “hard to bet against” Amazon reaching $1 trillion in the coming days or weeks.