Jeff Bezos Is Stepping Back: Where Amazon Stock Goes From Here

Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), is arguably the most influential business leader of his era. Bezos has famously brought Amazon from a scrappy start-up selling books online to a global tech behemoth with dominant positions in e-commerce and cloud computing, with a track record of invention that may be unrivaled in the tech world.

The company announced Bezos' upcoming change of position away from CEO and into executive chairman in its fourth-quarter earnings report Tuesday after the bell, stunning the business world. At 57, Bezos is still far from retirement age, and there had been no sign he would step down from the CEO job.

But perhaps more surprising than his decision to move on was investors' reaction to the news. Ordinarily, when a much-admired chief passes on the reins, the stock flops, especially when it's a surprise, but Amazon stock was actually trading higher in the after-hours session, closing up 0.3%. The quarterly report included a huge earnings beat, but the Bezos news clearly overshadows any round of quarterly results.

Source Fool.com