Chart Of The Day: In The New, Distanced World Amazon Will Only Head Higher

 | Aug 10, 2020 10:55AM ET

Amazon's (NASDAQ:AMZN) second quarter profits, released at the end of July, were at record high levels.

That's not an accident of course. Consumers who've been stuck at home, or are now warily going back to offices amid ongoing spikes of the coronavirus, have opted to shop online rather than return to bricks-and-mortar stores—if in fact, those establishments are even open.

And based on the soaring valuations of a variety of technology shares, investors are betting most people will be stuck close to home for quite some time to come. The current and projected market caps of some of the US's largest tech companies, whose output enables work, entertainment and yes, shopping, from home—including Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) and Amazon—have swollen to bubble-era extremes at the same time the worst pandemic in 100 years rages.

The value of companies listed on the NASDAQ has expanded by $2.9 trillion in this of all years, suggesting investors expect social distancing to become more permanent, making tech solutions for everything including shopping a higher priority in the new, touchless world.