Amazon Has Surpassed Walmart in Market Cap After Stock Rally

Amazon (AMZN) just surpassed Walmart in market capitalization. Wall Street loved Amazon's surprise profit so much that they bought up the stock after hours, sending it to an a gain of 18%. The stock rally puts Amazon's value at $262 billion, more than the $233 billion of Walmart. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos became $7 billion dollars richer in less than an hour of extended trading. While Amazon has surpassed Walmart in terms of the value of the company in the eyes of investors, its annual sales still fall far short of those of Walmart. Amazon revenue in the past 12 months is $95.8 billion, which is a 5th of Walmart's $485 billion. But the 21 year old Amazon is growing and that is what what investors are buying and paying up for. One big contributor to Amazon's profit was web services, the cloud computing division whose numbers were broken out for the first time. Amazon stock is up 25% in the past 3 months.