Amazon Stock Volatility Explained: Beta, Range and Drawdowns

Some shares drift by a fraction of a percent on most days, while others swing hard enough to change a week's result in one afternoon. How far a share tends to move decides how much of it you can comfortably hold, how much room a stop needs, and how much a rough month will hurt.

The word volatile gets used loosely, though. A quote page shows one beta and one implied-volatility figure, usually with no window or date beside it, and the next page shows different ones. Both can be right, because a reading taken over a calm month and one taken over a year that includes a results night describe two different stretches of trading.

Traders deal with that by measuring volatility in a few standard ways from dated daily prices. The usual set is the standard deviation of daily returns, beta against an index, the average true range of each session, the deepest drawdown and the implied volatility priced into options. Read side by side, and over more than one window, they give a profile of how a share behaves.

For Amazon, that profile matters on two BloFin markets. Tokenized Amazon trades on the AMZNX/USDT Spot pair and follows the share price one for one. The AMZNUSDT Perpetual tracks the same price with leverage, and leverage turns each of these numbers into a decision about position size.

What is Amazon stock volatility?

Amazon stock volatility is how far and how often Amazon's share price swings. In the year to the October 2, 2026 close it ran at 33.8% a year. That is about 2.6 times the 13.0% of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), and the share's typical daily move was 1.3%.

Volatility is a measure of risk based on the standard deviation of an asset's returns (source: Nasdaq glossary, volatility). A standard deviation measures how widely a set of numbers spreads around its average (source: Nasdaq glossary, standard deviation), and for a share those numbers are its daily log returns, which on an ordinary day are almost the same as its percentage changes. Traders quote the result as a yearly figure so that different stocks and different windows can be compared, which is where the 33.8% comes from.

To turn a yearly figure back into a single day, divide it by the square root of 252, the usual count of trading days in a year, which is about 15.9. For Amazon over the past year that gives a daily standard deviation of 2.13%. On 194 of the year's 252 sessions, the share closed within that distance of the previous close (source: Nasdaq AMZN prices). The other 58 sessions moved further, some of them much further.

Say you own 1,000 USDT of AMZNX. A one-standard-deviation day moves it by about 21 USDT, and a one-standard-deviation year by about 338 USDT, in either direction. Over the past year the share moved 2% or more on 64 of 252 sessions, roughly one day in four (source: Nasdaq AMZN prices). The S&P 500 fund did so on just 5 (source: Nasdaq SPY prices).

Each of those days has a cause, from cloud growth to spending plans and interest rates, and what moves the Amazon stock price traces them one by one. The size of the moves is a separate measurement, and it starts with the window.

How Amazon's volatility is measured from daily prices

Amazon's volatility is measured from its daily closing prices. You work out each day's log return, take the standard deviation of those returns, and multiply it by the square root of 252 to get a yearly figure. The window you choose changes the answer more than any other step in the calculation.

A log return is the natural logarithm of the close divided by the previous close, which a spreadsheet works out with its LN function. A 2% rise, for example, gives a log return of 1.98%, and a run of daily log returns adds up exactly to the log return over the whole run.

Each window ends at the October 2, 2026 close. The figures use Nasdaq's daily prices for Amazon and for two index funds, SPY for the S&P 500 and Invesco's QQQ for the Nasdaq-100 (source: Nasdaq AMZN prices) (source: Nasdaq SPY prices) (source: Nasdaq QQQ prices).

The one-month and three-month readings disagree on the same close, and one session explains most of the gap. On July 31, 2026, the day after Amazon's second-quarter results, the share rose 15.32% (source: Nasdaq AMZN prices). That session sits inside the 63-session window and outside the 21-session one, so the shorter reading describes a quiet September while the longer one still carries the results night.

The long windows tell a steadier story. Every window from one year to ten years sits between 31.9% and 36.4%, and Amazon has run at 1.8 to 2.6 times the S&P 500 fund's level across them. The short windows swing far more, because a single large day weighs heavily when there are only 21 of them.

Say you check Amazon's volatility in a quiet week and see 21.6%. Sizing a position on that figure alone treats a calm month as normal, when the one-year figure is more than one and a half times as large. Reading the two together, and asking whether a results day is about to enter the shorter window, gives you a fairer picture of the swings to expect.

Amazon's beta against the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq-100

Amazon's beta against the S&P 500 fund was 1.43 over the year to October 2, 2026. So a 1% move in the index came with an average move of 1.43% in Amazon. Against the Nasdaq-100 fund, which swings harder than the S&P 500, Amazon's beta was 0.84.

Beta measures an asset's risk in relation to a market such as the S&P 500. Roughly speaking, a stock with a beta of 1.5 moves on average 1.5 times the market's return (source: Nasdaq glossary, beta). The same entry warns that betas change through time. It also notes that beta measures how an asset moves with the market, a different thing from how much it moves (source: Nasdaq glossary, beta).

Over longer windows, Amazon's beta against the S&P 500 fund was 1.39 for three years and 1.49 for five (source: Nasdaq SPY prices). Against the Nasdaq-100 fund it was 1.04 and 1.17 (source: Nasdaq AMZN prices) (source: Nasdaq QQQ prices). The Nasdaq-100 figure sits lower mainly because that fund swings harder. Its volatility was 19.9% over the past year, against 13.0% for the S&P 500 fund, so the same Amazon move is a smaller multiple of it.

Beta shows the average pull of the market, and correlation shows how tightly the two move together. Amazon's daily returns had a correlation of 0.54 with the S&P 500 fund over the year. Squaring that gives 0.29, the r-squared: the index accounts for about 29% of the variation in Amazon's daily returns, and Amazon's own news accounts for the rest.

Say you hold AMZNX and the S&P 500 fund falls 2% in a session. A beta of 1.43 points to an average fall of about 2.9% in Amazon. With a correlation of 0.54, though, the actual move on any single day can land well away from that, on either side. A market-wide sell-off tends to hit Amazon harder than the index, while on a quiet day for the index, Amazon's own news decides most of its move.

Amazon's daily range and average true range

Amazon's average true range over the 14 sessions to October 2, 2026 was $5.63, or 2.24% of that day's $251.52 close. Over the past year the average session's true range was 2.76% of the close, about twice the 1.27% median move from one close to the next.

The true range of a session is the largest of three distances: the high to the low, the high to the previous close, or the low to the previous close. That way a gap at the open counts as part of the day's range. J. Welles Wilder's average true range, or ATR, smooths that figure, usually over 14 periods, and measures volatility without saying anything about direction (source: StockCharts ATR). It is the same tool traders use on crypto charts, applied to a share.

The gap between the two measures matters for a stop. A chart of daily closes shows the change from one close to the next, while the true range is the distance the price actually travels during and between sessions. A stop sits in that wider range. A stop placed 1.5% from your entry can be hit on an ordinary day, even when the share closes almost where it started (source: Nasdaq AMZN prices).

Say you buy at the October 2 close of $251.52 and want a stop that a normal session leaves alone. One ATR is $5.63, so a stop two ATRs below your entry sits near $240.26, 4.48% away. In the 14 sessions to October 2, the widest true range was $7.22, on September 23, which a two-ATR stop would have absorbed. Where to place a stop covers the other ways traders set that distance.

The share's range is set during Nasdaq's sessions, while AMZNX keeps trading when Nasdaq is shut. The token can therefore cover part of the next morning's gap before the open, as Amazon's tokenized stock price gaps shows. The largest gaps of all come on one kind of day.

How much Amazon moves after its results

Amazon's results move its share far more than an ordinary day does. Across the 24 quarterly results releases from October 2020 to July 2026, the next session's median move was 6.8%. That is about 5.8 times the 1.17% median of every other session over the same years.

Amazon publishes its results after the Nasdaq close. Its second-quarter 2026 filing, for example, was accepted by the SEC at 4.06PM ET on July 30 (source: SEC filing record). The share answers each release on the next session. Of the 24 next sessions since October 2020, 16 moved 5% or more and 4 moved 10% or more, with 10 rises and 14 falls (source: Amazon 8-K filings) (source: Nasdaq AMZN prices).

Those few days carry an outsized share of the year. Volatility is built from squared daily moves, and the four results sessions in the year to October 2, 2026 made up 28% of that total. With those four taken out, the year's volatility falls from 33.8% to 28.9% (source: Nasdaq AMZN prices).

The Cboe Amazon VIX is an index of the 30-day volatility priced into Amazon's options. It rose on the day of each of the four latest releases and fell by 11.7 to 17.2 points the next session, whichever way the share moved (source: Cboe VXAZN history).

That next-day fall is known as an implied-volatility crush: options carry extra value while the numbers are unknown, and it drains away once they are public. April 2026 shows the crush happens even when the share barely moves: it rose only 0.77%, and the index still fell nearly 15 points.

Say you hold 1,000 USDT of AMZNX through a release. The median results session would move it by about 68 USDT, and the July 2026 session moved it by about 153 USDT. Trading Amazon around earnings sets out how to plan for those nights, and Amazon earnings reports explained covers reading the release itself.

How deep Amazon's 2021-2022 drawdown went

Amazon's deepest drawdown of the past ten years took 56.1% off the share price, from a record close of $186.57 on July 8, 2021 to $81.82 on December 28, 2022. The first close back above that record came on April 11, 2024, 1,008 days after the peak.

A drawdown is the fall from the highest close so far to a later low, before the price sets a new high. It shows what holding through a bad stretch actually cost, which a yearly volatility figure smooths away. For a long-term holder, it is the size of fall to plan for.

Over the same dates the Nasdaq-100 fund fell 27.5% and the S&P 500 fund 12.6% (source: Nasdaq QQQ prices) (source: Nasdaq SPY prices). Amazon fell about twice as far as the Nasdaq-100 index it belongs to. The fall was also rough from day to day. Volatility inside it ran at 43.4% a year, and 24 sessions moved 5% or more. The largest single fall, 14.0% on April 29, 2022, came on the session after a results release (source: Nasdaq AMZN prices). The causes of that fall, a quarterly loss and a weak forecast among them, are traced in Amazon stock price history and cycles.

Smaller drawdowns come more often. In the year to October 2, 2026, the deepest fall from a record close was 21.7%, from $254.00 on November 3, 2025 to $198.79 on February 13, 2026. On October 2 the share closed at $251.52, 11.4% below its record close of $284.02 on August 3, 2026 (source: Nasdaq AMZN prices).

Say you had bought 1,000 USDT of Amazon at the July 2021 record. At the December 2022 low it was worth about 439 USDT, and the price then had to rise 128% just to bring you back to 1,000. Handling drawdowns covers how traders manage a fall of that kind.

Implied volatility on Amazon options

Implied volatility on Amazon options was 39.8% on October 2, 2026, measured by the Cboe Amazon VIX, against the 21.6% the share had actually shown over the previous month. Option prices were allowing for a livelier 30 days, with a one-standard-deviation day of about 2.5% against the recent month's 1.4%.

Implied volatility is the expected volatility of a stock's return, worked out from its option prices with a pricing model such as Black-Scholes (source: Nasdaq glossary, implied volatility). Cboe publishes an index of it for Amazon, the Cboe Amazon VIX (VXAZN), built with the same method as the VIX index. It is designed to measure the 30-day expected volatility conveyed by the prices of Amazon's options (source: Cboe volatility index methodology).

The October 2 close of 39.82 sat above the index's average of 37.2 over the past year, and above its level on 64% of that year's sessions. Over the same year it ranged from 25.82 on December 26, 2025 to 53.36 on February 5, 2026, the day Amazon released its fourth-quarter results (source: Cboe VXAZN history).

Options with a longer life were pricing a calmer stretch. AlphaQuery's 90-day implied volatility for Amazon on October 2 was 34.1%, below the 30-day level (source: AlphaQuery AMZN implied volatility). Amazon's third-quarter results came on October 29, 2020, October 28, 2021, October 27, 2022, October 26, 2023, October 31, 2024 and October 30, 2025 (source: Amazon 8-K filings). Each fell within 30 days of October 2 in its year. So 30-day options bought in early October have usually covered a results release, and the larger move that release can bring is part of what their price allows for.

Say you hold 1,000 USDT of AMZNX. A 30-day implied volatility of 39.8% works out to a one-standard-deviation move of about 11.4% over the month, roughly 114 USDT either way. That is what option buyers and sellers were pricing on October 2, and it describes the size of a move without any view on its direction.

Sizing a leveraged Amazon position by its volatility

BloFin's AMZNUSDT Perpetual allows leverage from 1x to 20x. At 20x on the first tier, a move of roughly 2.5% against an isolated position liquidates it. That is only about 1.2 times the 2.13% daily standard deviation Amazon showed in the year to October 2, 2026, so an ordinary day can close it, well before any results release.

Leverage on the contract runs from 1x up to that 20x cap (source: BloFin AMZNUSDT contract information). The cap covers only the first 300 AMZN of a position, the tier where the maintenance margin is 2.50% (source: BloFin AMZNUSDT position tiers). Maintenance margin is the equity a position must keep, and liquidation closes the position when its margin falls to that level. For an isolated position, divide 100% by the leverage and subtract 2.5 percentage points to get a rough distance to liquidation, before fees.

Set those distances against Amazon's own record, for a long and for a short. At 20x the liquidation price sits about 2.5% away, and over the past year the share closed 2.5% or more below the previous close on 18 sessions and 2.5% or more above it on 23. At 10x it sits about 7.5% away. No session in that year fell so far, but two rose further, both on the day after results. Over ten years, 11 sessions fell 7.5% or more and 12 rose that much, and 11 of the 24 results sessions since October 2020 moved 7.5% or more, 5 of them down (source: Nasdaq AMZN prices).

Over a longer hold, the drawdown is the number to size against. A fall like 2021-2022, 56.1% from the peak, would have liquidated a long at 2x, where the liquidation price sits about 47.5% away, while an unleveraged position rode it out. Leverage and liquidation explains isolated and cross margin, and the order steps for this contract are in how to trade Amazon with leverage.

Say you have 1,000 USDT and decide a failed trade should cost no more than 20 USDT, 2% of the account. Using the October 2 ATR of $5.63, you put the stop two ATRs below a $251.52 entry, near $240.26, which is 4.48% away. The position that loses 20 USDT over 4.48% is about 446 USDT of Amazon, or 1.77 AMZN. At 20x that needs about 22 USDT of margin, but the liquidation price sits about 2.5% away, inside your stop, so the position is closed before the stop can work. At 5x the margin is about 89 USDT, the liquidation price sits about 17.5% away, and the stop does its job. The same method works on any market, as position sizing in crypto shows.

A smaller position pays smaller fees as well. At BloFin's Regular tier a futures taker order costs 0.06% of the position, so opening and closing that 446 USDT position with market orders costs about 0.54 USDT. The maker and taker rates for every tier are on the BloFin fee schedule.

How to read Amazon's volatility before a trade

Read Amazon's volatility in three steps before a trade. First, compare the latest month with the past year and with implied volatility. Next, check whether a results release falls inside your holding period. Then size the position so that a normal day and your stop both sit well inside the distance to liquidation.

The readings at the October 2, 2026 close point to different actions depending on what you hold.

Say you want Amazon exposure for the next few weeks and can check it only once a day. On these readings, AMZNX/USDT carries the share's full moves with no liquidation price. The perpetual needs leverage low enough that a results-day move leaves room, and AMZNX against the AMZN perpetual compares the two side by side. Either way, the measurements give you a size before the market gives you a surprise.

Looking to gain exposure to Amazon? To get started, you'll need to first create a BloFin account, fund your account with cryptocurrency, and navigate to the AMZNX/USDT Spot trading page or AMZNUSDT Perpetual page.

Frequently asked questions

Why do websites show different beta figures for Amazon?

Each site picks its own window, data frequency and index. Over the five years to September 30, 2026, Amazon's beta against the S&P 500 fund was 1.44 on monthly returns and 1.49 on daily returns. Ten years of daily returns gave 1.20 (source: Nasdaq AMZN prices) (source: Nasdaq SPY prices). Across the one-year windows ending between October 2017 and October 2026, the figure ranged from 0.64 on June 24, 2020 to 1.87 on April 11, 2019. A beta quoted without its window and end date tells you little about the share today.

Is Amazon stock more volatile than Apple and Microsoft?

Over the year to October 2, 2026, Amazon was the most volatile of the three. Its volatility was 33.8%, against 32.4% for Microsoft and 24.7% for Apple. Its beta against the S&P 500 fund was 1.43, against 0.96 and 0.69 (source: Nasdaq MSFT prices) (source: Nasdaq AAPL prices). Over five years the order held, at 36.4% for Amazon and about 28% for both of the others. Amazon versus Microsoft stock compares the two businesses behind the prices.

What was Amazon's most volatile year?

Among the past ten calendar years, 2022 was the most volatile for Amazon, at 50.1% a year, in a year when the share fell 49.6%. 2020 came next at 38.4%, then 2018 at 36.2%, and the calmest was 2017 at 20.5% (source: Nasdaq AMZN prices). The S&P 500 fund ran at 24.3% in 2022, about half Amazon's level (source: Nasdaq SPY prices). In 2026 to October 2, Amazon's volatility was 34.3%, close to its ten-year figure.

What is the highest implied volatility on Amazon options?

In Cboe's daily history of the Cboe Amazon VIX, which runs from January 2011, the highest close was 72.66, on March 16, 2020 (source: Cboe VXAZN history). The index came close again at 68.33 on April 8, 2025, and closed at 63.06 on October 27, 2022, the day Amazon released its third-quarter results that year. Its average over the past ten years is 34.1, so the 39.82 close of October 2, 2026 sat a little above the long-run norm and far below the extremes.

Does implied volatility rise when Amazon stock falls?

On average it does. Over the year to October 2, 2026, the Cboe Amazon VIX rose by 0.57 points on the days Amazon's share fell and dropped by 0.54 points on the days it rose (source: Cboe VXAZN history). On October 10, 2025, for example, a 4.99% fall in the share with no results due came with a 5.12-point rise in the index (source: Nasdaq AMZN prices) (source: Cboe VXAZN history). Results days are the main exception, because the index tends to fall once the numbers are out, whichever way the share moves.

Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. All facts independently verified. Primary sources include Nasdaq's daily prices for AMZN, SPY, QQQ, AAPL and MSFT and its glossary, Cboe's Amazon VIX history and volatility index methodology, AlphaQuery's AMZN option statistics, StockCharts, Amazon's SEC filings, and BloFin's AMZNUSDT contract information, position tiers and fee schedule (last read October 2, 2026). The other sources are current as of October 5, 2026.

Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold Amazon in any form. Volatility, beta and implied volatility describe past moves and today's option prices, and the next month can be much calmer or much rougher than any of them suggest. A single results session has moved Amazon by more than 15%, enough to liquidate an AMZNUSDT position on the wrong side at 10x or higher. A stop can also fill well beyond its price when the share gaps. AMZNX carries the share's full drawdowns, which have included a fall of more than half. Past performance does not indicate future results. Do your own research and consider your risk tolerance before you trade on BloFin.