A lot of financial analysts like to talk about a company’s “moat,” that part of its business where it’s dominant and difficult to challenge.

The wider and deeper your moat, as the thinking goes, the better your prospects and the better your stock.

Another cool term they use is “runway.” That is, how far into your opportunity are you, how much more can you grow while maintaining the current business plan? Again, the longer the runway the better the stock.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) has the deepest moat, and the longest runway, in the world of business. That’s why its market cap, $483 billion, is approaching that of America’s “cloud czars” — Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) — even though it is just now starting to build out its cloud.

Alibaba Stock Is Better Than Amazon

Over the last year, Amazon has grown impressively, with the stock up 75%. Alibaba’s shares are up 87%. At the current rate, it could overtake Facebook within a matter of months.

This despite Alibaba’s capital budget being $1.8 billion, a little over 10% of what Facebook expects to spend this year. The Alibaba Cloud is a minnow next to its American rivals. But it owns the fast-growing China market, a party to which U.S. companies are still not invited, and that market should be worth over $100 billion by 2020.

Alibaba is currently focused on its domestic retailing battle with TenCent Holdings Ltd (OTCMKTS:TCEHY), a battle that is making both better, spending a combined $10 billion on retailing infrastructure, which includes payment, logistics, social media and big data platforms.

Alipay, the Alibaba mobile wallet with one-third of the Chinese mobile payment market, is also coming to the U.S., despite the Trump Administration’s effort to fight it off by refusing its proposed acquisition of Moneygram.

Then there’s media, where Alibaba has signed a deal to stream the animated shows of the Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS) in China. Its Youku-Toudu services have about 21% of a China market that’s worth $5 billion. 

Despite all this, Alibaba stock is still selling for 46 times earnings, against 323 times for Amazon. That’s also 23 times sales for Alibaba, against just three for Amazon, because Alibaba operates with a “capital light” structure. It doesn’t warehouse goods the way Amazon does, allowing it to bring about one-fourth of its revenue to the net income line.

Alibaba Stock’s Wall of Worry

China is Alibaba’s moat, and that moat is a runway into Southeast Asia, where it is locked in direct competition with Amazon.

The growth and profit it can expect on its current trajectory is outstanding, with cloud and payment services that are still at the height of their growth stages, huge markets across Asia it has yet to explore, and the U.S. payments industry, where it is being quickly welcomed into the mainstream.

There remain skeptics, which is always good when you’re looking for a stock to rise. James Brumley worries about the distractions of its far-flung business interests while Ian Bezek doesn’t trust its accounting, a concern Josh Enomoto shares. 

Nicholas Chahine disagrees, suggesting an interesting options strategy for the stock. I’m more of a fundamental investor. My own position in Alibaba having gone up 87% since I got into it back in November 2016.

So long as the global economy is growing, I am inclined to let that ride.

Dana Blankenhorn is a financial and technology journalist. He is the author of the historical mystery romance The Reluctant Detective Travels in Time, available now at the Amazon Kindle store. Write him at danablankenhorn@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @danablankenhorn. As of this writing he owned shares in BABA, MSFT and AMZN.