You’ve probably seen the charts. Those vertical green lines that make Amazon look like an unstoppable rocket ship. But if you actually sit down and look at Amazon historical stock prices, the story isn't just about "up and to the right." It’s a messy, often terrifying saga of 90% drops, decades of flatlines, and a few massive bets that barely paid off.
Honestly, it’s kinda wild how much revisionist history happens with this stock. We talk about it now like it was a sure thing. In the late '90s? It was the "Amazon.toast" era.
The $18 Gamble (and the Math Nobody Does)
When Amazon went public on May 15, 1997, the IPO price was $18. Simple, right? Except if you look at a chart today, you’ll see the "split-adjusted" price for that day is something like $0.075.
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Nobody was buying shares for seven cents in 1997. That number only exists because of the math involved in four separate stock splits.
- June 2, 1998: 2-for-1 split
- January 5, 1999: 3-for-1 split
- September 1, 1999: 2-for-1 split
- June 3, 2022: The massive 20-for-1 split
If you’d bought just 100 shares at the IPO for $1,800, you wouldn't just have 100 shares today. You’d have 24,000 shares. At early 2026 prices—with the stock hovering around **$238**—that initial $1,800 would be worth over **$5.7 million**.
But here is the catch. You would have had to watch your $1,800 investment grow to nearly $100,000 during the Dot-com bubble, and then watch it crash all the way back down to basically nothing in 2001. Most people would have sold. I probably would have.
The "Dead Decade" and the Cloud Pivot
There’s this huge gap in the middle of the timeline that people sort of forget. From 2000 to about 2009, Amazon was basically a zombie stock. It spent years trapped between $30 and $80 (pre-2022 split prices).
Wall Street was convinced Bezos was just a guy who sold books at a loss.
Then came 2006. Amazon launched AWS (Amazon Web Services). At the time, investors were annoyed. Why was a bookstore building data centers? Fast forward to today, and AWS is basically the reason the stock has its current valuation. By Q3 of 2025, AWS was pulling in $33 billion in a single quarter. It’s the profit engine. Without it, the retail side—which has much thinner margins—wouldn't be able to support a $2 trillion market cap.
Recent Volatility: 2021 to 2026
If you bought in 2021, you’ve had a stressful few years. The pandemic sent the stock to then-record highs as everyone stayed home and ordered... everything. But 2022 was a brutal reality check. The stock lost nearly 50% of its value that year.
We saw a massive recovery in 2024 and 2025, fueled mostly by the AI boom.
Why the 2025 Performance Felt "Tepid"
Despite the hype, Amazon actually underperformed the S&P 500 in 2025. While the broader market was up nearly 18%, Amazon only managed about 5%.
Why?
Basically, the company was spending too much. They poured roughly $125 billion into capex (capital expenditure) in 2025. That is a staggering amount of money. Most of it went into Nvidia chips and data centers to catch up in the generative AI race. Investors got a little twitchy about the margins.
Where things stand in 2026
As of January 16, 2026, the stock is showing signs of a breakout. We’re seeing prices around $238.18. Analysts like Nikhil Devnani from Bernstein are calling 2026 the most attractive "bull case" since the pandemic. The theory is that all that money spent in 2025 on AI infrastructure is finally starting to generate revenue.
The Split Myth: Will it happen again in 2026?
There is a lot of chatter about another stock split in 2026. Honestly, don't hold your breath.
The last split was in June 2022. It took 23 years for them to do that. Usually, a company splits when the share price gets so high that it’s "unaffordable" for retail investors (think $2,000+ per share). At the current range of $230–$250, there is zero pressure on Amazon to split the stock.
Actionable Insights for Tracking AMZN
If you're looking at Amazon historical stock prices to decide your next move, don't just look at the price. Look at these three things:
- AWS Operating Margins: This is the heart of the company. If AWS margins dip below 30%, the stock usually takes a hit, regardless of how many Prime packages get delivered.
- Capex Cycles: Amazon tends to spend in "waves." They spend billions, the stock goes sideways, then they "harvest" that investment and the stock rockets. We just finished a massive spending wave in 2025.
- The $254 Resistance: The all-time high (closing) was $254.00 on November 3, 2025. Watch that number. If it breaks that with high volume, it’s usually a signal that the "sideways" period is over.
Your Next Step:
Open your brokerage app or a site like Yahoo Finance. Pull up the "Max" chart for AMZN. Switch it to a logarithmic scale. You’ll see that the recent "volatility" is actually just a tiny blip in a much larger cycle of infrastructure spending. If you're a long-term holder, the key is watching the AWS revenue growth rate—if that stays above 20% in 2026, the historical trend suggests the price will eventually follow the earnings.
Check your current exposure to the "Magnificent Seven." With Amazon's high capex, it often moves differently than Apple or Microsoft during earnings season, so don't assume they all trade in lockstep.