By spending $1bn, Amazon made $14bn disappear. The money that went missing was not Amazon’s, though. That sum was the loss in market value at the biggest players in US drug distribution and retailing, after Amazon announced on Thursday that it would spend that billion to buy online pharmacist PillPack. Shares in those six companies (Walgreens, Boots Alliance, CVS Health, Express Scripts, Cardinal Health, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen) had been depressed last year by the very suggestion that Amazon was coming into their territory. Proof positive trimmed their values by as much as 10 per cent.

It is hard to think of any other company in the modern era that could have that kind of impact on a market that it is not even in yet, just by the industrial equivalent of clearing its throat — not even IBM, General Electric, or Microsoft in their heydays.

And yet the market is not overreacting. Amazon’s success in colonising other branches of retail, and even some big non-retail businesses, justifies the wariness. What is more, there are good reasons for everyone to be grateful that Amazon has such tremendous power.