Amazon shares jump on news of record holiday sales


Amazon shares surged 4.4 percent higher on Thursday after the online retail giant announced "record-breaking" holiday sales, Barron's reports. The company said its customers ordered "billions of items" in the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas season. Amazon said its own devices helped boost sales, with customers snapping up tens of millions of Echo Dots, Fire TV Sticks, Echo Show 5s, and other Alexa-enabled gadgets, according to CNN. The devices have been big sellers for several years, making Amazon the biggest provider of voice assistants. Other popular items included the LOL Surprise Glitter Globe Doll Winter Disco Series with Glitter Hair, iRobot's Roomba 675 vacuum, and the Instant Pot Duo 80 pressure cooker.
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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.
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