A claim goes around that $AMZN tends to find a bottom once it is down 16 to 20 percent. It is a tidy idea and it is easy to check, because every drawdown it has had is a matter of record. So we listed all of them.
There is no usual depth
Since the start of 2014, $AMZN has closed at least 10% below a record high on fifteen separate occasions. Fourteen of those have finished. They bottomed at 10.8%, at 56.1%, and at ten different places in between.
Only three of the fourteen finished anywhere in the high teens. The band that gets named as the bottoming zone is where the smallest group of them landed.
Four of them were not about Amazon
Four of the fifteen ran into broad market crises: the fourth quarter of 2018, the COVID crash, the 2022 bear market, and the tariff shock of April 2025. Those four took 34.1%, 22.7%, 56.1% and 30.9%.
It is fair to ask what the rest look like with those removed, so we did that too. The ten finished episodes that are left still run from 10.8% to 30.5%. Taking out the crises narrows the range at the top and changes nothing about the spread underneath it.
Two of the deepest drops survive that filter. In 2014 $AMZN fell 29.5% while the Nasdaq 100 rose, and in early 2016 it fell 30.5% while the index fell half as far. Neither had a bear market to point at.
What actually repeats
Most of the finished episodes stopped in the teens or close to them. The rest kept falling until they had lost closer to a third. What repeats is that split, not a depth.
The sharpest version of the point: of the ten completed episodes that ever reached 16%, seven kept going past 21%. Once $AMZN is down 16%, carrying on through the zone has been the ordinary outcome rather than the exception.
The one it is in now
The current drawdown began at the record close of 3 August 2026 and reached 13.4% below it on 16 September. It has not finished, so it has no final depth and it is listed here without one.
One thing does separate it from most of the list. Over the same window $QQQ is slightly higher. Whatever is happening to Amazon here, the market is not doing it too.