NEW YORK, March 24, 2026, 5:47 PM EDT
Amazon.com slipped 1.4% to close at $207.24 on Tuesday, putting the shares roughly 20% off their 52-week peak of $258.60.
The underlying pressure is where the focus lands now. Amazon wants investors to take on $200 billion in capital spending for 2026, most of which targets artificial-intelligence infrastructure. Its cloud unit, Amazon Web Services, pulled in $45.6 billion in operating income on $128.7 billion in 2025 sales, a hefty slice of Amazon’s $80.0 billion group operating income. Reuters
The wider market offered little relief. The Nasdaq slipped 0.84%, weighed down as oil surged more than 4% and Treasury yields moved higher. Worries that the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran might push energy prices up and blur the outlook for interest rates hung over the session. “Very short-term oriented,” is how Carol Schleif, chief market strategist at BMO Private Wealth, put it. Kevin Gordon at the Schwab Center described the punch from pricier oil and rising rates as a “double whammy” for equities. Reuters
Amazon faced its own setback too. Late Monday, the company reported its Bahrain AWS data center region was “disrupted” by drone activity—marking the second Middle East conflict-related hit in a month. Customers were told to “continue to migrate to other locations” as recovery efforts go on, but no timeframe was offered. Reuters
The overhang from the cloud business is weighing on the stock, even as upbeat research notes struggle to make a dent. Jefferies’s Brent Thill, for example, called Amazon “mispriced, not broken” in a note this week, sticking with his $300 price target. He argues that AWS growth topping 20% and a retail division he sees as undervalued versus Walmart aren’t being fully reflected in the share price. MarketWatch
Amazon found itself straddling the line between tech and retail during Tuesday’s session. Microsoft lost 2.7%, Alphabet slid 3.8%. Walmart, though, gained 1.1%. The move underscores how investors seem to be grouping Amazon with the tech names, not the retail safe haven.
That long-range bullish outlook is still on the table. Just last week, Chief Executive Andy Jassy told investors AWS could reach “at least double” its earlier $300 billion annual revenue estimate in the coming decade—Amazon is betting heavily on artificial intelligence demand to justify its current ramp in spending. Reuters
The bear case isn’t theoretical anymore. Reuters said earlier this month that AWS sites in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were hit by drone attacks, with Amazon flagging the potential for “prolonged” recovery due to the extent of the damage. A repeat of this kind of incident would put the core AWS business—what investors count on—directly at risk. Reuters
