Walmart vs. Amazon: How a $10,000 bet played out over 5 years
As seen on the 24/7 Wall St. homepage on August 20, 2026.
Over five years, $10,000 in Walmart is worth $21,842 today versus $16,257 in Amazon. Anyone who assumed e-commerce was the default winner gave up that gap.
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Walmart's total return over the five years ending August 20, 2026 came in at 118.4%, turning a $10,000 starting position into $21,842. Amazon returned 62.6% over the same stretch, leaving that position worth $16,257.
The two paths differed: Amazon's position spent a prolonged stretch below its starting value before clawing back, while Walmart's drawdowns were shallower and its climb built steadily across the back half of the period.
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For years the default assumption among retail investors was that e-commerce represented the structurally superior growth story, with Walmart's physical footprint and mass-market model treated as the slower alternative. This five-year scorecard challenges that framing.
Walmart returned 2.18 times the initial investment against Amazon's 1.63 times, a gap that scales with every additional dollar committed at the start of the period.