Amazon has brief turn as Wall Street’s most valuable company

Amazon briefly became the world’s most valuable company, days after Microsoft had ended Apple’s longtime stint at the top.

Shares of the Seattle-based Web giant early Monday rose as high as $1,778.34, momentarily giving it a market value of $865 billion — eclipsing Apple by a mere $200 million and putting Amazon in the top spot for the first time.

By the close of the day, however, Apple got a boost from news of positive trade talks between the US and China, gaining 3.5 percent to close at a market value of $877 billion versus Amazon’s closing price of $866.6 billion.

Last week, Microsoft briefly edged past Apple to take the top spot for the first time since 2010, when Apple had blown past it amid surging demand for iPhones. On Monday, however, Microsoft had fallen back to third place with a market value of $860.4 billion.

Shares of all three companies have since gotten hammered by market anxiety, leaving them down sharply from the summer when Apple and Amazon became the first companies to pass the $1 trillion mark.

Amazon’s Monday spike came just hours after President Trump announced on Twitter that he will postpone a hike on tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods until April 2019. China agreed to buy more US farming products and autos — an unexpectedly positive development for investors who were bracing for a heightened trade war.

“We have seen a bromance between President Trump and President Xi — something which wasn’t expected at all,” Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at ThinkMarkets, said in a note.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 287.87 points, to close at 25,826.43.

Amazon was likewise boosted by a report saying that the company was testing cashierless checkouts across its budding chain of retail stores.

Apple became the first company to reach a $1 trillion valuation in August, and went on to be worth more than $1.2 trillion at its height in October.

Since then, the company has lost more than 20 percent of its value.

Amazon reached the $1 trillion mark on Sept. 4, when its stock rose to $2,079 a share, but fell below that threshold the following day — and hasn’t crossed back since, amid a broader “tech wreck” that deflated Silicon Valley companies.