With first-quarter earnings season accelerating, next week brings a deluge of reports from bellwether growth names, including Amazon (AMZN).
The parent of Amazon Web Services (AWS) reports results for the January through March period on Wednesday, April 29 after the close of U.S. markets. That could be the ideal opportunity for risk-tolerant traders to consider ETFs such as the Direxion Daily AMZN Bull 2X Shares (AMZU) and the Direxion Daily AMZN Bear 1X Shares (AMZD).
AMZU seeks daily returns that correspond to 200% of Amazon’s intraday price movements. Meanwhile, AMZD is a bearish, though not leveraged, play on the largest consumer discretionary stock. So, if Amazon shares fall 1% on a particularly day, the inverse AMZD should rise by the same amount. Experienced traders know that earnings updates can be ideal for evaluating single-stock ETFs like AMZD and AMZU.
Eyes on Amazon Earnings
Amazon’s status remains as the largest consumer cyclical company by market value. Indeed, it perches as one of the largest U.S. companies of any stripe. Combine that with its increasing artificial intelligence (AI) exposure, and an array of items could emerge in the earnings report to stoke upside or downside. Of course, commentary around AWS is on that list.
“We’re keeping an eye on Amazon Web Services’ growth, backlog, and capacity additions,” noted Morningstar’s Dan Romanoff. “AWS is the story, and artificial intelligence is driving it. Amazon doesn’t provide a wealth of data, so any data point is helpful for our predictions, such as capacity adds, utilization, or projects being on, ahead of, or behind schedule.”
It’s possible AMZD could be on traders’ shopping lists in advance of the report. Indeed, as Romanoff noted, some depreciation in AWS margins are expected. The recently announced acquisition of Globalstar, among other items, could spark the Direxion ETFs, too.
“We expect discussion of the just-announced deal to acquire Globalstar, Amazon’s grocery business (which the company entered more meaningfully during the third quarter of 2025), expansion efforts for next-day delivery to rural areas, news about Alexa being made available on non-Amazon devices, and the recent reduction of 14,000 corporate employees,” added Romanoff.
The state of Amazon’s free cash flow is another issue analysts and investors will focus on. It also could put AMZU and AMZD in the spotlight following the report.
“We note that the free cash flow yield is constrained by the significant AWS capacity expansion underway. Over the next five years, we project AWS revenue growing at a 19% CAGR and advertising revenue growing at a 21% CAGR. In total, Amazon should grow at an 11% CAGR through 2030,” concluded the Morningstar analyst.
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