The Amazon stock has seen a crucial revival since late 2018, adding more than $300 to its share price since December (source: Yahoo Finance)
The strong momentum of AMZN led a key technical indicator called the short-term 50-day moving average to surpass a long-term 200-day moving average, flashing the infamous “golden cross.”
Golden Cross Confirms Bullish Momentum for Amazon (AMZN)
According to Ari Wald, the head of technical analysis at Oppenheimer, an investment bank with more than $25 billion in assets under management, the golden cross confirms the likelihood of a strong upside movement form AMZN in the medium-term.
Speaking to CNBC, Wald said:
“We continue to expect a premium is going to get placed on these higher growth companies in this low growth world, and this includes Amazon. In general, growth outperformance has been correlated to a flattening yield curve, and generally, I think these late cycle conditions are a tailwind for continued leadership.”
In late April, Amazon released its quarterly earnings, recording a revenue of $3.6 billion, a new quarterly.
The growth of Amazon in the first quarter of 2019 was primarily triggered by the unexpectedly strong growth rate of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing division of the firm.
The revenue of AWS surged by 41% to $7.7 billion, pushing the operating income of the division to $2.2 billion.
AWS was expected to perform well by many analysts but investors likely did not anticipate the operating income of the division to increase by a magnitude that it did from January to March.
Another surprising component of Amazon’s earnings was the steady growth of the advertising sector of the U.S. and international market.
Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s CFO, said:
“I would just say, we’re early on in this venture. There’s a lot of — it’s having a lot of pickup by both vendors, sellers and also authors. So again, we feel like if we work on the inputs on this business and continue to grow traffic to the site, we will have a good outcome in the advertising space.
The quarterly earnings report of Amazon further fueled the company’s momentum from the first three months of 2019, leading to a 6% gain in the past 30 days and pushing technical indicators to flash positive signals for AMZN.
Long-Term Technical Indicators Still Strong
In the long-term, Ari Wald noted that due to the optimistic technical indicators of AMZN, the company is likely to sustain an upside momentum.
“The stock is breaking above a six-month base. … We’re also seeing a positive inflection in its weekly MACD [moving average convergence divergence] which is coming out of negative territory for the first time since 2014, so we think the long-term uptrend is resuming. Speaking in terms of levels, the breakout at $1,800 is now support and with the resumption of this uptrend we’re thinking break out above that $2,050 resistance that was the peak from 2018,” Wald added.
Throughout the first quarter, most technology giants in the U.S. market in the likes of Microsoft and Apple with the exception of Alphabet and Google have outperformed the expectations of Wall Street analysts.
Backed by the recovery of the financial sector with leading institutions such as Blackrock seeing record quarterly numbers, the revival of the technology industry could impose a positive impact on the landscape of the U.S. equities market.
The Dow Jones has risen by 0.24% on the day, rising to 26,655 points and the S&P 500 has also gained 0.19% within minutes after its opening.