What amazes me about Amazon is how Wall Street treats them. I love companies that put their profits back into the company to make the future better. Some companies, like Apple, cannot necessarily put all of the profits back into the company, it goes against their strategy of extreme focus.

However, the secrecy of all the spend is what baffles me. Not that Amazon has to tell anyone where it spends its money, but that Wall Street gives them a break on it. Apple doesn't say what their future products will be and Wall Street gets very upset, yet Amazon spends billions of its profits on reinvesting in Capex and then tells Wall Street its none of your business what we are spending it on and Wall Street says, "ok".

The thing that would worry me about Amazon is lack of focus. The varying array of different businesses Amazon has gotten itself into continues to grow. From the article:

Amazon is in fact organized not just in these segments, but in dozens and dozens of separate teams, each with their own internal P&L and a high degree of autonomy. So, say, shoes in Germany, electronics in France or makeup in the USA are all different teams. Each of these businesses, incidentally, sets its own prices.

The bigger Amazon becomes, the harder it is to manage. Amazon then becomes a conglomerate and eventually starts doing nothing well, just runs a bunch of revenue through its coffers. This leaves the valuable revenue and cash flow at risk, giving an upstart the opportunity to out perform Amazon by focusing on one part of their business. If that happens to be the profitable retail business, Amazon could find itself vulnerable as it may be focusing on other business lines and be too late to react.