New York, Feb 19, 2026, 10:56 (EST) — Regular session.
- Amazon shares were down about 0.3% in late morning trade, tracking a broader tech pullback.
- Morgan Stanley reiterated an Overweight rating and flagged AWS “capex yield” and AI shopping agents as key watch items.
- An SEC filing showed Amazon’s retail chief sold shares under a preset trading plan.
Amazon.com shares edged lower on Thursday as investors weighed fresh insider-trading filings and a still-unsettled debate over what Big Tech’s AI spending will deliver. The stock was down about 0.3% at $204.15 at 10:40 a.m. ET, after closing at $204.79 on Wednesday.
The move is modest, but it lands in the middle of a market argument that has not cooled. Earlier this month, Amazon projected $200 billion of capital expenditures in 2026, up from $131 billion in 2025, as it builds out artificial-intelligence infrastructure. (Reuters)
U.S. stocks were lower, led by tech, and the mood stayed jumpy. The Dow was down 0.45%, the S&P 500 was off 0.36% and the Nasdaq slipped 0.58% as of 9:43 a.m. ET, Reuters reported; Kim Forrest, founder and chief investment officer at Bokeh Capital, summed it up this way: “So on any given day, the bias switches very fast and that’s a great indicator of overall investor nervousness.” (Reuters)
Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak reiterated an Overweight rating and a $300 price target, which implies about 50% upside from recent levels. “We remain bullish through this uncertainty,” he wrote, pointing to AWS demand and what he called early signs that AI tools can lift both cloud and retail. (Investing)
Nowak argued AWS backlog trends support 30%+ growth “for quite some time,” but said capacity constraints tied to data-center openings are limiting the pace of any acceleration. He used a “capex yield” lens — incremental revenue as a percentage of prior-year capital spending — and said that yield should improve as AWS adds capacity.
He also highlighted “agentic commerce,” shorthand for AI agents that can shop and reorder for consumers, as a second catalyst for Amazon’s retail engine. Nowak wrote that Amazon’s Rufus shopping assistant was already adding to fourth-quarter 2025 gross merchandise value growth; GMV is the total value of goods sold on a platform.
Insider activity added another datapoint for traders scanning the tape. A filing showed Douglas J. Herrington, CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores, sold 4,784 shares on Feb. 17 at weighted average prices between about $196.75 and $200.08 under a Rule 10b5-1 plan — a preset trading program — adopted on Nov. 10, 2025. (SEC)
A separate filing showed director Wendell P. Weeks converted 1,816 restricted stock units into common shares on Feb. 15. (SEC)
But the risk case has not gone away. If AI-related spending does not show up in clearer revenue and profit gains — or if cloud capacity stays tight longer than investors expect — Amazon’s shares could remain hostage to the same stop-start sentiment that has been hitting the rest of megacap tech.
What investors watch next is the next hard read on the AI trade. Nvidia is scheduled to discuss quarterly results on Feb. 25, after the close, a date markets have treated as a key checkpoint for data-center demand and the broader spending cycle that includes Amazon. (Nvidia)
