Online book seller Amazon managed to surprise the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street with quarterly results that were much better than expected.

Amazon posted a narrower quarterly loss and grew sales by a better-than-expected 24 percent. The revenue performance indicated strong momentum of the world's largest Internet retailer going into the crucial U.S. holiday season. It apparently needs a running start because Christmas is expected to be miserable this year for retailers.

Ebay gave a disappointing holiday forecast saying the U.S. economic environment is pants due to the Republican party shutting down the government because the country voted for Obamacare during in the last election.

Amazon forecast sales of between $23.5 billion to $26.5 billion. Much of that growth came from its home market, where net sales leapt 31 percent to $10.3 billion as a faster delivery by a growing network of distribution centres drove customer demand, Amazon said. International sales also expanded 15 percent, up from 13 percent in the previous quarter.