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Time for Cloud ETFs Following Amazon's Recent Hiring Move?

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Amazon.com Inc.’s (AMZN - Free Report) cloud unit plans to recruit employees next year and keep building new data centers, per a Bloomberg article. The news has come at a time when Amazon is reportedly cutting as many as 10,000 jobs from other departments. It also indicates that the company hasn’t stopped investment plans for its most profitable business.

Though Amazon’s latest earnings and sales missed estimates, strength in AWS was a positive. Sales in Amazon’s cloud unit, the largest provider of rented data storage and computing power, totaled $20.5 billion, up 27%, for the three months ended September. That rate, though, the slowest year-over-year growth since Amazon began breaking out the division’s performance in 2014, makes sense, as some businesses curtailed their spending on technology amid global growth worries.

The AWS segment continued to gain customer momentum in the third quarter, courtesy of its highly reliable services portfolio and the increasing number of data centers, availability zones and regions. Further, AWS experienced the addition of Pick n Pay to its clientele. AWS was selected by Pick n Pay as the latter’s strategic cloud provider. In the third quarter, Amazon announced the general availability of AWS IoT FleetWise.

AWS has long been a profit churner, sometimes making up all of the parent company’s operating income, per Bloomberg. “We’ll moderate our data center growth when the demand moderates,” management said in the interview. “We have a lot of supply chain models that tell us to keep building data centers, so we’re gonna keep building them,” as quoted on Bloomberg.

If this was not enough, Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) and Nvidia (NVDA - Free Report) announced their collaboration mid-November to develop an AI cloud computer. Azure’s cloud-based AI supercomputer will be the first of its kind. Alphabet’s Google, which is shelling out billions of dollars globally to compete with Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud space, is considering plans to build more data centers in the Middle East, an important market and one of fastest growing regions for the company’s business.

Notably, the global cloud computing market is projected to increase from $480.04 billion in 2022 to $1,712.44 billion by 2029, at a CAGR of 19.9% in the forecast period, per fortunebusinessinsights.com.

Against this backdrop, below, we highlight a few cloud-computing ETFs that can be tapped for gains if the Fed slows down its rate hike.

ETFs in Focus

There are a lot of cloud computing ETFs, both non-leveraged and leveraged. Within the non-leveraged segment, investors can bet on First Trust Cloud Computing ETF (SKYY - Free Report) , Global X Cloud Computing ETF (CLOU - Free Report) , WisdomTree Cloud Computing Fund (WCLD - Free Report) , Fidelity Cloud Computing ETF (FCLD - Free Report) and Simplify Volt Cloud and Cybersecurity Disruption ETF .

Within the leveraged ETFs, Direxion Daily Cloud Computing Bull 2X Shares (CLDL - Free Report) , ProShares Ultra Nasdaq Cybersecurity ETF (UCYB - Free Report) and ProShares Ultra Nasdaq Cloud Computing ETF (SKYU - Free Report) are available.


 

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