Why Amazon Stock Crushed Earnings, Then Crashed 5.5%

This is not how earnings beats are supposed to work: On Thursday, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) reported a staggering profit of $12.37 per share (Wall Street had predicted only $7.41) on sales of $96.1 billion that likewise beat street estimates of $92.7 billion. Wall Street thinks Amazon will do only $112.3 billion in sales in the fourth quarter. About the only thing that might be "bad news" in the quarter is the fact that free cash flow declined from $3.2 billion a year ago to $901 million as Amazon invested heavily to deal with the influx of new business from consumers locked down during the pandemic.