Short Sellers Are Piling On to Amazon Stock

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) saw its short interest jump for the most recent settlement date of March 15. Short interest in this stock has been building up since late November, and short sellers have added nearly 50% to their positions since then.

The number of shares short came in at 4.68 million shares for this two-week period, which was up from the previous 4.32 million shares. The same period of last year had 4.40 million shares shorted.

It’s worth pointing out that only six months ago, short interest was only half of where it is now, coming in at 2.31 million shares. Also in this same period, Amazon’s stock is actually down about 1%.

The average daily share volume for Amazon is 3.32 million shares, which would give short sellers about 1.41 days to cover.

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24/7 Wall St. recently reported on Amazon:

Since September of 2019 when Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) first announced its Amazon Care program for employees in Washington state, the company’s stock has added about 77% to its share price. The company most threatened by Amazon’s limited entry into the health care business was Teladoc Health Inc. (NASDAQ: TDOC).

Since that Amazon announcement, Teladoc’s shares have increased by 175%, and that includes a drop of around 50% in the share price since early February. Another entry in the digital health care industry since Amazon Care was announced is 1Life Healthcare Inc. (NASDAQ: ONEM), which came public in January of last year.

On Wednesday, Amazon announced that Amazon Care is now available to other employers in Washington state and that, beginning this summer, the service will expand its virtual care to companies and every Amazon employee in all 50 states. Amazon Care’s in-person services also will expand to include Washington, D.C., as well as Baltimore and other U.S. cities, over the next several months.

Amazon Care is just the latest Amazon foray into the health care business. Last November, the company launched its Amazon Pharmacy service, built around its 2018 acquisition of medication delivery startup PillPack.

Excluding Thursday’s move, Amazon.com stock had underperformed the broad markets with a decline of about 5% year to date. However, in the past 52 weeks, the share price was up closer to 59%.

Amazon.com stock traded down nearly 1% to $3,064.07 on Thursday, in a 52-week range of $1,889.15 to $3,552.25. The consensus price target is $3,999.36.

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