, Columnist
Profiting from Disruption Trades
Also Equifax, stress tests, Bridgewater, paternal disappointment and sports blockchain.
Amazon, etc.
From time to time Amazon.com Inc. will announce that it is going to start doing a thing, and the stocks of other companies that do the thing will drop on the assumption that Amazon will eat their lunch. Amazon, the reasoning goes, is big and smart and good and efficient at doing things, so it will probably be able to out-compete the incumbents. Also Amazon is strikingly good at training investors to allow it to do things without making money on them, so it can undercut the incumbents’ margins by just doing the thing for free. You don’t want Amazon as a competitor, any bookstore owner will tell you.