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Market slumps but upgrade sends Amazon to all-time high

New report expects Amazon revenue to top $1 trillion by 2016, shares soar on upgrade by Morgan Stanley.

Charles Cooper Former Executive Editor / News

Charles Cooper was an executive editor at CNET News. He has covered technology and business for more than 25 years, working at CBSNews.com, the Associated Press, Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet.

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Charles Cooper

Jan. 7, 2013 9:56 a.m. PT

When it reports tomorrow, Alcoa officially kicks off the quarterly earnings season. In the meantime, the stock market -- and tech stocks in particular -- are selling off. Not Amazon. In fact, the company touched an all-time high earlier today after an analyst upgrade from Morgan Stanley sent shares of Amazon climbing to $269.30, the highest intraday price since the company's 1997 IPO.

In his upgrade note, Morgan Stanley's Scott Devitt said Amazon should exceed $1 trillion in revenue by 2016, up from $512 billion in 2012. That, in turn, inspired the expected veneration and rhetorical overkill marking the event -- Jim Cramer likened Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to Walmart founder Sam Walton. Still, investors haven't found much not to like in the Amazon story as the company continues to confound skeptics waiting for a slip-up.

Not that the company walks on water 24/7. Amazon had to apologize when its cloud services hobbled Netflix's streaming services on Christmas Eve.

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