one of britains most wellknown fund managers said hes sold his funds amazoncom inc stock because of its investment in the grocery sector terry smith who runs the fundsmith equity fund thats returned an annualized 156 since inception released his annual letter to shareholders and said the fund had sold its holding in amazon which it had started to buy in july 2021 smith said chief executive andy jassy who took over as ceo in july 2021 has not lived up to his principles of investment which include serving areas of the market in which consumers are not well served having a differentiated appropriate and having the competence to execute it is always easier to talk the talk than it is to walk the walk and the ceos pronouncement that he wanted amazon to seek routes to get bigger in grocery retail ran counter to all these principles in our view grocery retail has none of these characteristics and amazon has already stubbed its toe in this sector with the whole foods acquisition smith said amazon bought whole foods for 137 billion in 2017 and jassy discussed the opportunities in grocery in his annual letter to shareholders released in april over the past year weve continued to invest in the business while also making changes to drive better profitability said jassy whole foods is on an encouraging path but to have a larger impact on physical grocery we must find a mass grocery format that we believe is worth expanding broadly amazon fresh is the brand weve been experimenting with for a few years and were working hard to identify and build the right mass grocery format for amazon scale grocery is a big growth opportunity for amazon amazons stock price amzn has surged 51 this year one of the socalled magnificent seven driving the broader market higher this content was created by marketwatch which is operated by dow jones  co marketwatch is published independently from dow jones newswires and the wall street journal