As Amazon ‘s shares tank on Friday, CNBC’s ” Halftime Report ” traders see a buying opportunity. The ecommerce giant tumbled nearly 7% in afternoon trading after earnings per share narrowly missed expectations and big spending plans worried some investors. Amazon shares have dropped around 13% this week, on track for their biggest weekly drop since 2022. “I already loved the stock where it was, so it made perfect sense to me that I would want to add more shares,” Malcolm Ethridge, managing partner at Capital Area Planning Group, said on CNBC’s “Halftime Report” Friday. AMZN 1D mountain Amazon, 1-day Ethridge said Amazon’s plan for $200 billion in capital expenditure makes sense given that they have to work through a backlog valued at hundreds of billions of dollars. Amazon said much of that spending would be focused on artificial intelligence data centers . Ethridge said he wasn’t surprised to see the stock fall sharply in overnight trading. With the rise of retail investor participation since the Covid pandemic, he said the market is more likely to have a reaction of selling first and then deciding how to actually play a stock later. “We have to accept that that really is just one of the dynamics of how the market is going to work,” Ethridge said. Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner pointed out that Amazon joins a list of major technology firms announcing large-scale spending plans recently. He said he trusts executives helming Big Tech companies to ensure their investments bear results, or walk back their plans. To the credit of Amazon CEO Andy Jassy specifically, Gerstner pointed out that he grew the Web Services business to $140 billion. In its early days back in the late 2000s, many questioned why Amazon should be investing in it, Gerstner added. “I don’t think this is a permanent new normal in the amount that’s going to get built,” he said of Big Tech’s AI spending. “But I think for the next three years, this is like building the interstate highway system.” Wall Street appears to agree with the viewpoint that Amazon’s steep pullback may be short-lived. But while analysts remained bullish, many lowered their price targets on the company’s stock. To be sure, Short Hills Capital Partners CIO Stephen Weiss sees reason for investors to be concerned. While Weiss said selling may be overdone, he said the spending announcement can explain why the stock would slide. “I’ve always bought the companies that are the beneficiaries of CapEx and come back into the ones that have been the expender for CapEx when that cycle is near an end,” Weiss said. “The issue here is that we don’t know where it’s ending.” With Friday’s decline, Amazon shares are now down 10% in 2026. Still, shares have doubled over the past three years.
