Amazon Profits Fall Far Short of Expectations, but Investors Shrug - The New York Times

Investor adaptation... Also see It looks like Amazon would be losing a lot of money if not for AWS (TechCrunch)

"The company’s stock fell only about 3 percent in after-hours trading.

The relative indifference to Amazon’s bottom line was another sign of why the company is so frightening to competitors and critics. Investors would almost certainly have pummeled any other retailer that turned in the kind of performance that Amazon reported Thursday. Instead, they give Amazon several miles of leash because of its history of turning investments into sales growth and technology leadership.

“Yes, we are continuing to invest and stepping up investments,” Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s chief financial officer, said in a conference call with reporters, repeating a variation on a theme that company executives have expressed many times before."

Amazon Profits Fall Far Short of Expectations, but Investors Shrug - The New York Times