Stock Market Power Rankings: Dreaming of an Amazon Christmas

Each week, I'm ranking the biggest companies that trade on U.S. exchanges based on their size ( market capitalization), momentum (total return over the past year), and recent news. Before we get to the rankings, a quick word on a major player.

Christmas has come and gone, and once again we saw Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) dominating the shopping channels. The leading online retailer issued a press release the day after Christmas, singing its own praises during the busy holiday season.

Amazon's post-Christmas press releases rarely offer quantifiable nuggets of growth. Investors will have to wait until late January to find out the actual percentage growth the dot-com darling mustered during the seasonally potent fourth quarter. However, Amazon did tell us it sold millions more Amazon devices than it did a year earlier.