With both Black Friday and the Christmas shopping season on the horizon, Edmund Shing explains why now is the perfect time to invest in online retail giant Amazon.

1) Biggest online retailer
Amazon is the world's biggest online retailer. It's listed on NASDAQ (NASDAQ:AMZN) with a market capitalisation of $301bn (£197bn, €282bn). It has huge sales figures of more than $100bn a year, and it has more than 154,000 employees.

2) Cloud computing
Amazon is not just the biggest online retailer in the world, it's also the biggest cloud computing company in the world – well ahead of rivals such as Microsoft and Google.

3) Rapid growth
The company is also growing very fast. In the third quarter to September 30, it grew sales by 23%. And it expects sales over the Christmas period, the last three months of the year, to be up by 15-20%. This is the most important period of the year for any retailer, and Amazon in particular.

4) Black Friday
It's not just the Christmas sales that Amazon looks to capitalise on. Amazon is the world leader in Black Friday, the manic day of shopping discounts that this year falls on 27 November. The American consumer trend has made waves over in the UK in recent years, with British consumers expected to spend £1bn in the 24 hours of Black Friday.

5) Tech giant
The fact that Amazon is a world leader in both retail and cloud computing, coupled with its rapid growth, mean that Amazon is now a quintessential tech stock that you really must own.

Edmund Shing is Global Head of Equity Derivative Strategy at BNP Paribas in London. He holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence.

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