Amazon (AMZN) stock doesn't usually make headlines for dramatic short-term swings, but for long-term investors, even modest moves can add up. If you put money into Amazon at the start of 2025 and simply held on, you may be wondering how that decision looks today.
As of late January 2026, Amazon stock has shown renewed strength, trading in the mid-$240s and already delivering a positive year-to-date return. To see what that means in real dollar terms and whether it would supplement your income, let's walk through how a hypothetical Amazon investment at the beginning of 2025 would look today.
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How Amazon stock performed in 2025
Amazon remains one of the most closely watched large-cap tech stocks, thanks to its leadership in e-commerce, cloud computing through Amazon Web Services (AWS), and a steadily expanding services business. While many tech peers surged more aggressively in 2025, Amazon posted relatively modest gains before picking up momentum in early 2026.
According to historical price data for AMZN, the stock hovered around $222.03 on January 2, 2025. Throughout that year, Amazon's performance was fairly subdued compared with other megacap tech names, finishing 2025 in the low-to-mid $230s.
Hypothetical Amazon investment scenarios
For simplicity, we'll use Amazon's January 2025 opening price as the purchase point and the January 27, 2026, closing price as the current valuation reference.
If you invested $1,000 in Amazon at about $222.03 per share on January 2, 2025, you would have picked up roughly 4.5 shares. At the January 27, 2026, closing price of $244.68, that investment would now be worth about $1,102, a gain of roughly $102, or 10.2%.
A $5,000 investment at the same starting price would have purchased approximately 22.5 shares. At $244.68 per share, those shares would now be worth around $5,510, translating to a gain of about $510.
With $10,000 invested, you'd own roughly 45 shares of Amazon stock. At the late-January 2026 price, that position would be worth about $11,020, representing an increase of roughly $1,020.
And if you had put $50,000 into Amazon at the beginning of 2025, you would have bought about 225 shares. At $244.68 per share, that stake would now sit at approximately $55,101, for a gain of around $5,101.
In each scenario, a purchase at the start of 2025 and holding through late January 2026 would have delivered modest gains, reflecting Amazon's relatively subdued performance compared with other megacap tech names over the same period.
Where most of Amazon's gains came from
By January 27, 2026, Amazon stock had closed at $244.68, up roughly 8% year to date, after opening 2026 at $231.34 on January 2. That early jump highlights an important detail: most of Amazon's recent gains have come in 2026, rather than during the slower-moving market of 2025.
In fact, an investor who put $1,000 into Amazon at the beginning of 2026 would already be up around 8%, without having held the stock through 2025 at all.
Amazon's 2026 strength is partly rooted in solid underlying business momentum, especially from its high-margin segments. Its cloud arm, AWS, has been growing revenue at around 20% year-over-year, marking one of its fastest expansion rates in several years, while advertising revenue has surged more than 20%, giving the company a growing profit engine beyond traditional retail.
Amazon stock in a historical context
While Amazon's 2025-to-early-2026 performance may look modest on the surface, the stock's long-term track record tells a very different story.
Over decades, Amazon has transformed from an online bookseller into one of the world's most valuable companies, with dominant positions in e-commerce, cloud computing through Amazon Web Services, and fast-growing advertising and subscription businesses. Investors who held AMZN for extended periods historically benefited from the power of compounding and time in the market.
What the future could hold
Looking ahead, many Wall Street analysts expect Amazon to keep growing and currently rate the stock a 'Buy.' As of late January, firms including Morgan Stanley, Oppenheimer, and KeyBanc had set price targets above $300 for AMZN shares over the next 12 months, pointing to AWS growth and expanding AI use as key long-term drivers.
Of course, price targets are just estimates, not guarantees, and long-term results depend on far more than a few quarters of earnings or market sentiment.
Bottom line
If you invested $1,000 or more in Amazon at the start of 2025 and simply held your shares through January 2026, you would see moderate gains of roughly 10% in line with the stock's performance over that period.
Larger investments would produce proportionally larger dollar gains, but the core takeaway is that a buy-and-hold strategy yielded positive, if modest, returns in this timeframe.
As always, past performance isn't a guarantee of future results, and investors should consider valuation, business fundamentals, and broader market conditions when evaluating any investment when investing with the best investment apps.
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