Amazon shares hit $1,000 mark for the first time

Congratulations to Amazon and all its share holders for hitting the $1,000 mark en route to world supremacy.

Amazon had a rather excellent start to the week after Memorial Day weekend, reporting a $1,000 per share value on the stock market in the first hour of trading Tuesday morning. Overall, stock is up 35 percent this year and the company’s market value is worth twice that of Walmart.

For a sense of perspective for this accomplishment, CNBC reports that just 14 other U.S. stocks trade above 1,000 and only one other tech company. There’s even some financial jargon included in the piece to suggest that Amazon’s $1,000 share value is actually the equivalent of a $12,000 share price.

Back in the day, 1997 to be precise, Amazon was just a new upstart online retailer with “no clear path to profitability” in a landscape in which consumers not only still enjoyed going to bookstores IRL, they chose to go to places like Borders (RIP). Ah, to have bought Amazon shares in ’97 when the company first went public.

Things have gone rather well for Amazon since then. The company is now (accurately) described as a giant and a behemoth in the online retail space, expanding way past books into all sorts of home goods, furniture and now an aggressive push into apparel as well. Not to mention, the Amazon Echo and Alexa — the AI life-assistant with whom all Amazon tech devices come equipped.

Thanks to such things — but especially its cloud-computing business Amazon Web Services — the company has shown a profit for eight straight quarters. Shares have risen 40 percent over the past year and shortly after its twentieth anniversary of going public, Amazon reported a share value of $1,001.17.

A grand sure is a nice way to celebrate 20 years.

(Because literally everything is a race both out west and on Wall Street, analysts were charting to see who would reach $1,000 first: Amazon or Google-owning Alphabet. We have a winner.)