The shares of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) are up 2.8% to trade at $1,382.31, after the tech giant announced record breaking sales for the holiday season -- citing strong demand for Amazon devices. Today's pop puts the FAANG stock on track to snap its four-day losing streak, and potentially log its second win in nine sessions.
More broadly, Amazon is still down 32% in the fourth quarter, which would mark the stock's worst quarter since March 2001. What's more, the shares have surrendered almost 19% since their 50-day and 200-day moving averages formed a death cross earlier this month. The FAANG stock is still hanging on to a 17.9% year-to-date gain, after surging almost 56% in 2017.
Analysts are keeping the faith, with Baird calling Amazon a "triple A stock," and a good bet for a rebound. Plus, Cowen placed AMZN on its "Best Ideas" list for 2019, and 24 analysts call AMZN a "strong buy", while two see it as a "buy", and two rate it as a "hold."
Elsewhere, short sellers have started targeting the e-tail giant, with short interest up 8.6% in the past two reporting periods. However, the 5.61 million shares represent a slim 1.4% of AMZN's available float, and it would take less than a day for shorts to cover, at the average daily pace of trading.