Why Amazon's $1 trillion valuation matters

Amazon is now the second public US company to hit $1 trillion market cap in history. The first was Apple, who hit the same landmark just this August. This isn't likely a moment that'll change the way Amazon operates – just the way they're viewed in the history of our consumer-centric world. Alexa's in your living room and an iPhone is in your pocket.

Amazon's most recent earnings report suggested they'd expected to continue to grow by leaps and bounds. Net sales for the 3rd quarter of 2018 were expected to be between $54 and $57.5-billion. That'd put the company at between 23% and 31% year-over-year.

If you have an Amazon Prime account, you've assisted Amazon in growing 57% year-over-year for net sales of subscription services. Subscription services were up to $3.4 billion in net sales this most recent quarter (Q2 2018), after having grown steadily for the past several quarters (save Q1, if we're talking sequential growth).

Amazon added the category "Physical stores" to their list of income sources in Q3 of last year. Sales were at $1.276-billion that quarter, and this most recent quarter they were at $4.3-billion. Amazon is doing very well, very well indeed.

Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, is currently the richest person in the world with a net worth of over $140-billion. Let's be sure to keep an eye on him, as such. Especially on how he's letting this money drip, drip, drop back into the economy.

Those of you following the stock price will find that Amazon reached a high of $2,050.50 in early Tuesday trading. That put the company's total valuation at over $1-trillion and places Amazon next to Apple in the race to the next big marker. It all depends on how well they keep your attention, really – be it with AI, with a smartphone brand, or with something completely new.