The race to $1,000 – Alphabet and Amazon hit new record highs
Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Alphabet both hit new record highs on Wednesday, as shares of both companies race to $1,000 a pop.
Shares of Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) are trading up about half a percent, likely on the tail of the company's "Marketing Next" event in San Francisco on Tuesday, where it unveiled its new Google Attribution tool.
Google Attribution relies on machine learning to show advertisers how effective their ads are across multiple platforms. Google also explained that Google Attribution can help advertisers predict how likely a specific person is to make a purchase.
The company also revealed that it now has information on 70 percent of all credit card transactions in the US, data that will help it continue to effectively target relevant ads to consumers.
Google also held its annual developers conference last week, Google I/O, where it laid out new plans to dive deeper into virtual reality and augmented reality, two areas where tech firms are expected to wage war over the coming years.
Amazon's new record high is likely a result of a culmination of effects in the market.
Retailers such as Macy's, JC Penney had huge earnings misses earlier this month, and the S&P 500's Retail ETF (XRT) posted its worst week of the year on Friday. Amazon has its hand in plenty of successful sectors outside of retail.
Amazon Web Services generated $3.5 billion in revenue for Amazon during the last quarter, a piece of its business that's likely to continue to grow as more businesses rely on the cloud for everything from enterprise storage to AI, IoT and productivity services.
Finally, and perhaps in a bit of a kick-to-the-shin of the nation's largest retailers, Amazon opened up a new brick and mortar bookstore in New York City on Wednesday. Similar locations are already open in Seattle, Portland, Boston and San Diego and show Amazon's attempt to mix retail with both the digital and physical worlds.
Alphabet's Class A shares ended the day 0.73 percent higher at $977.61, while Amazon shares ended the day 0.91 percent higher at $980.35.
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