How to buy Amazon shares

Amazon shares have fallen 3.06% from their previous closing price ($186.51). Learn how to easily invest in Amazon shares in the UK.

How to buy Amazon shares Step-by-step instructions

Led by business magnate Jeff Bezos, Amazon (AMZN) is a global retail giant and one of the five biggest listed companies in the United States by market capitalisation. It's best known globally for its Amazon marketplace and video-streaming service, Amazon Prime. Besides its cloud computing branch, Amazon Web Services, Amazon also manufactures and sells electronic devices such as the Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TVs and the Echo.

How to buy shares in Amazon

  1. Open a brokerage account. Choose from our top broker picks or compare brokers in depth. Then, complete an application.
  2. Fund your account. Add money to your account via bank transfer, debit card or credit card.
  3. Search the platform by ticker symbol. AMZN in this case.
  4. Choose an order type. Place a market order or limit order with your preferred number of shares or dollar amount.
  5. Submit the order. It's that simple.
The whole process can take as little as 15 minutes. You'll need a smartphone or computer, an internet connection, your passport or driving licence and a means of payment.

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Fees calculator for buying Amazon shares with popular apps

Both exchange rates and share prices fluctuate in real time, so the costs estimated here should be considered as a guide only. They don't factor in spreads, which can be hard to pin down. Always refer to the platform itself for availability and pricing.

Quantity of shares

10
Platform Finder Score Account fee Min. initial deposit Trade cost Link
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£0 $100 £1,401.85
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Freetrade logo
4.4 ★★★★★
£0 £0 £1,389.28
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XTB logo
4.4 ★★★★★
£0 £0 £1,388.04
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Hargreaves Lansdown Fund and Share Account logo
4.2 ★★★★★
£0 £1 £1,406.89
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Full comparison of share dealing platforms

These providers cover a wide range of stocks, but we can't guarantee they'll all offer this stock.

All investing should be regarded as longer term. The value of your investments can go up and down, and you may get back less than you invest. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. If you’re not sure which investments are right for you, please seek out a financial adviser. Capital at risk.


Alternative ways to invest in Amazon

Buying shares in just one company is generally considered a riskier bet than investing in a range of investments - AKA a "diversified portfolio". Experts generally recommend holding a mix of investments in specific assets and funds. Funds are ready-made portfolios of multiple companies' shares (potentially including Amazon), and the idea is that drops in the value of one constituent company's share price might be offset by rises in others.

Amazon is a major part of the NASDAQ, so it's included in many global funds and investment trusts, as well as tracker-style exchange traded funds (ETFs).

ETF5-year performance (to August 2024)Link to invest
Invesco S&P 500 (SPXP)Invesco icon94.07%Invest with XTBCapital at risk
Xtrackers S&P 500 Swap (XSPX)DWS Xtrackers icon93.77%Invest with XTBCapital at risk
iShares Core S&P 500 (CSP1)iShares icon91.84%Invest with XTBCapital at risk
HSBC S&P 500 (HSPX)HSBC icon80.38%Invest with XTBCapital at risk
Vanguard S&P 500 (VUSA)Vanguard icon79.29%Invest with XTBCapital at risk
SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPX5)SPDR icon79.17%Invest with XTBCapital at risk

Latest updates for Amazon

October 3, 2024: Morgan Stanley analysts said in a note Thursday that Wall Street's profit expectations for Amazon, particularly for the fourth quarter of 2024, may be overly optimistic, according to Investing.com.

September 17, 2024: Amazon has ordered its full workforce to return to the office 5 days a week and looks open to more job cuts as it attempts to remove layers of bureaucracy.

September 11, 2024: Amazon has announced an £8 billion investment in the UK to build cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build and operate data centres over the next 5 years.

September 10, 2024: Amazon stock rose on Tuesday, just enough to maintain its place as the S&P 500’s fourth-largest company by market value after overtaking Alphabet on Monday, according to Barron's.

Is it a good time to buy Amazon stock?

Review technicals and fundamentals to help you determine if now's a good time for you to invest.

Technical analysis

View Amazon's price performance, share price volatility, historical data and technicals.

Use our graph to track the performance of AMZN stock over time.

Historical closes compared with the last close of $180.80

1 week (2024-09-30)-2.34%
1 month (2024-09-06)-91.07%
3 months (2024-07-07)-9.28%
6 months (2024-04-07)-2.37%
1 year (2023-10-06)-91.07%
2 years (2022-10-06)-90.82%
3 years (2021-10-07)-94.50%
5 years (2019-10-07)-89.40%

The gauge below shows real-time ratings that are based on 26 popular indicators such as moving averages, for specific time periods. It's not a recommendation but is simply technical analysis that can form part of your research.

Finder might not agree with the analysis and we take no responsibility. We also give no representations or warranty on the accuracy or completeness of the information provided on this page.

Is Amazon stock a buy or a sell?

georgesweeney profile pic George Sweeney

Finder Money Expert

Like most tech stocks, Amazon didn't have a very successful year in 2022, falling by 49.62% versus the S&P500 performance of -19.44%.

In August, Amazon faced criticism when it announced that its Prime subscription service would rise from £79 to £95 per year or an additional £1 per month for monthly subscribers. In December, the share price was down 50% year-to-date due to a “bad online holiday shopping season”. Analysts cut their price targets due to revised revenue predictions for the company.

In early January the company cut more than 18,000 jobs worldwide in the largest layoffs programme in its history.

Amazon has several different streams of income, so it might be encountering a difficult period, but analysts expect that it’ll recover.

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All investing should be regarded as longer term. The value of your investments can go up and down, and you may get back less than you invest. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. If you’re not sure which investments are right for you, please seek out a financial adviser. Capital at risk.


Is Amazon under- or over-valued?

Valuing a stock is incredibly difficult, and any metric has to be viewed as part of a bigger picture of overall performance. However, analysts commonly use some key metrics to help gauge value. Check out the Amazon P/E ratio, PEG ratio and EBITDA.

Amazon's current share price divided by its per-share earnings (EPS) over a 12-month period gives a "trailing price/earnings ratio" of roughly 44x. In other words, Amazon's shares trade at around 44x recent earnings.

That's relatively high compared to, say, the trailing 12-month P/E ratio for the United States stock markets on average as of November 09, 2023 (20.44). The high P/E ratio could mean that investors are optimistic about the outlook for the shares or simply that they're over-valued.

However, Amazon's P/E ratio is best considered in relation to those of others within the industry or those of similar companies.

Amazon's "price/earnings-to-growth ratio" can be calculated by dividing its P/E ratio by its growth – to give 1.7286. A PEG ratio over 1 can be interpreted as meaning shares are overvalued at the current rate of growth, or may anticipate an acceleration in growth.

The PEG ratio provides a broader view than just the P/E ratio, as it gives more insight into Amazon's future profitability. By accounting for growth, it could also help you if you're comparing the share prices of multiple high-growth companies.

However, it's sensible to consider Amazon's PEG ratio in relation to those of similar companies.

Amazon's EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) is a whopping $104 billion (£79.5 billion).

The EBITDA is a measure of Amazon's overall financial performance and is widely used to measure a its profitability.

To put that into context you can compare it against similar companies.

How does Amazon compare to SPDR Tech ETF?

In order to see how they compare, we put the last 8 years share price of Amazon compared to the SPDR US Technology sector UCITS ETF.

Amazon vs the rest of the world. That’s what it feels like most of the time. But how does Amazon compare to the whole tech sector? The brand has mostly outpaced its industry benchmark over the last 8 years. But that’s not the whole story.

Our graph, above, shows that Amazon stock has been more spiky than the SPDR Tech ETF. So you’d need a stomach for volatility to ride Amazon’s wave of strong performance.

2022 was a particularly bad year, as Amazon lost 51% of its value. This was less than Tesla (68%) and Meta (66%), but still a sizeable chunk. Amazon has been nearing the performance level of the SPDR tech ETF. Perhaps proving that the investing catchphrase “regression to the mean” might just be right.

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Frequently asked questions

All investing should be regarded as longer term. The value of your investments can go up and down, and you may get back less than you invest. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. If you’re not sure which investments are right for you, please seek out a financial adviser. Capital at risk.


George Sweeney, DipFA's headshot
Deputy editor

George is a deputy editor at Finder. He has previously written for The Motley Fool UK, Nasdaq, Freetrade, Investing in the Web, MoneyMagpie, Online Mortgage Advisor, Wealth, and Compare Forex Brokers. He's focused on making personal finance and investing engaging for everyone. To do this he draws from previous work and his Level 4 Diploma for Financial Advisers (DipFA), sharing what he’s learnt. When he’s not geeking out about money, you’ll find him playing sports and staying active. See full bio

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4 Responses

    Default Gravatar
    MatthewFebruary 1, 2019

    If I invest £600 what would I get in return?

    Thanks

      AvatarFinder
      JeniFebruary 3, 2019Finder

      Hi Matthew,

      Thank you for getting in touch with finder.

      The return basically depends on your chosen provider. In addition, the value of investments can fall as well as rise, and you may get back less than you invested.

      I hope this helps.

      Thank you and have a wonderful day!

      Cheers,
      Jeni

    Default Gravatar
    DianeSeptember 26, 2018

    Can i invest £120000 into an Amazon fixed income bonds for a 3 year term.
    If so what are the figures please

      AvatarFinder
      JoshuaOctober 2, 2018Finder

      Hi Diane,

      Thanks for getting in touch with finder. I hope all is well with you. :)

      Technically, the answer to your question is yes. You can invest that amount of money into Amazon Fixed income bonds. However, when it comes to term year, it depends on the terms and conditions of your transaction. We currently don’t have the specific details to this type of income bonds. For this reason, it would be a good idea to directly get in touch with Amazon or someone who is an expert in this field.

      I hope this helps. Should you have further questions, please don’t hesitate to reach us out again.

      Have a wonderful day!

      Cheers,
      Joshua

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