How a 20-for-1 Stock Split Made Amazon Look Like It Crashed 95%
Raw price data from Amazon's trading history appeared to show a catastrophic 94.9% single-day drop on June 6, 2022, but the move was not a real loss in value. The apparent collapse was caused by Amazon's 20-for-1 stock split executed that day, which divided each share into twenty smaller shares at one-twentieth the price. While the raw closing price fell from $2,447 to $124.79, the adjusted closing price actually showed a modest 2.0% gain over the same period. The discrepancy highlights a common data pitfall: raw price columns record exact trade prices, while adjusted close retroactively rewrites historical prices to account for splits and dividends. Analysts are cautioned that neither column is universally correct, and using the wrong one in calculations such as return models or backtests can produce severely misleading results.
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