Yahoo! Finance. https://finance.yahoo.com/
Amazon has become the Prince of Darkness for retail, occupying a
unique position—inversely correlated to the rest of the sector.
Traditionally, stocks in the same sector trade sympathetically—in
lockstep with one another. No more. The equity markets now believe
that what’s good for Amazon is bad for retail, and vice versa. It’s a
situation almost unique in business history. And it has become a self-
fulfilling prophecy, as Amazon’s cost of capital declines while every
other retailer’s increases. It doesn’t matter what the reality is—
Amazon will win, as it’s playing poker with ten times the chips.
Amazon can muscle everyone else out of the game.
The real hand-wringing is going to begin when people start asking
if what’s good for Amazon is bad for society. It’s interesting to note
that even while some scientists and tech tycoons (Stephen Hawking,
Elon Musk) publicly worry about the dangers of artificial intelligence,
and others (Pierre Omidyar, Reid Hoffman) have funded research on
the subject, Jeff Bezos is implementing robotics as fast as he can at
Amazon. The company increased the number of robots in its
warehouses 50 percent in 2016.^37