Amazon has become the biggest company in the world by market capitalisation. We can't invest directly into its shares on the ASX, but it is possible to get a slice of it via our Australian Stock Exchange.
By the end of Monday trade, the Amazon share price had risen 3.4% to a market capitalisation of around US$797 billion. This surpassed the Microsoft market capitalisation of US$784 billion.
The top spot used to belong to Apple, but volatile share markets and disappointing revenue guidance has seen the Apple share price fall by a third since the start of October 2018.
Amazon's first claim to fame was as a leading internet seller of books. But now its retail site sells vast amounts of products, it has world-leading distribution centres, Amazon Prime is now a huge subscription business for free postage & entertainment, its Alexa-powered devices are selling fast, it has a very profitable data centre business (AWS) and Amazon Home Services could be the next big thing for the company.
So, how can we get a piece of the retail & technology behemoth?
Except for going to an international share broker and buying shares directly, the easiest way would be buying an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that owns it as part of the ETF's holdings.
Some of the most widely-held ETFs include Vanguard US Total Market Shares Index ETF (ASX: VTS) and iShares S&P 500 ETF (ASX: IVV). However, the exposure to Amazon is quite small because of all the other holdings.
A less-diversified ETF such as BetaShares NASDAQ 100 ETF (ASX: NDQ) gives investors exposure to just the 100 largest businesses on the NASDAQ such as Alphabet, Netflix and so on. According to BetaShares, Amazon's weighting is 10.1% of this ETF.
A final way of getting exposure to Amazon is by owning Goodman Group (ASX: GMG) shares, a property business, which has Amazon as its largest source of net income.
However, I'd only want to buy shares of Goodman Group at a substantial discount, I think there are ASX shares trading at a more attractive value today.
