很难说以下哪件事更让我觉得难以理解：是亚马逊（Amazon）的历史市盈率高达114.6，还是苹果（Apple）的市盈率仅为13.9。

    我们注意到，到这一悬殊的差距自六月以来一直在进一步扩大。当时杰夫•佛斯伯格给我们发来他的“苹果螺旋弹簧状走势图”，强调了这两家公司的股价与跟踪该公司的分析师为其设定的目标股价的中位数之间的差距。自那时以来，这个差距没有多大改变。

    然而市盈率的差距却在变大。五个月前，亚马逊的追踪市盈率大约是苹果的5倍。上个月是7倍。而如今是8倍，而且这还没有考虑一个因素，即苹果公司持有的现金和可出售有价证券（约合825.7亿美元）是亚马逊持有的现金和可出售有价证券（约合63.3亿美元）的13倍。

    为了亚马逊的投资者，我希望定于周二发货的Kindle Fire能够如宣传的那样大卖特卖。亚马逊首席执行官于假日销售前在其新的平板电脑产品系列上押下重注。如果出现任何闪失，该公司将遭受沉重的打击。

    最新消息：佛斯伯格在进一步研究汤姆森金融（Thomson Financial）的数据之后，向我们提供了如下对比数据：

    It's hard to say which makes less sense to me: The fact that Amazon (AMZN) is trading at a price that's 114.6 times its earnings over the past 12 months or that Apple (AAPL) is trading at a P/E of 13.9.

    We've been watching this disparity grow since last June. That's when Jeff Forsberg sent us his Apple as a coiled spring graphic emphasizing the gaps between the stocks' share prices and the median targets set by the analysts who track them -- gaps that haven't changed much since then.

    The price-to-earnings gap, however, has only grown wider. Five months ago, Amazon's trailing P/E ratio was roughly 5 times Apple's. Last month it was 7 times. Today it's 8 times Apple's, and that's not taking into account the 13x difference between the size of Apple's hoard of cash and marketable securities ($82.57 billion) and Amazon's ($6.33 billion).

    I hope for the sake of Amazon investors that the Kindle Fire scheduled to ship Tuesday is as big a hit as it's been touted to be. CEO Jeff Bezos has bet heavily in advance of holiday season sales on his new line of tablets. Any weakness on that front could really hurt.

    UPDATE: Drilling down a bit more into the Thomson Financial data, Forsberg offers this tale of the tape: