$94.6 billion net worth at present per Bloomberg. I know he is basically guaranteed to be running all of these sales off a sale schedule set far in advance for obvious reasons. However, I'd probably be doubling up those $1 billion sales until/unless this market gives out. Raising $6 or $10 billion - enough to fund Blue Origin for maybe a decade - by selling out of a $94 billion base, sure beats doing the same out of…
I can't help but wonder what it's like to have that kind of money. Does such a person ever wake up, and wonder how the dice rolled so amazingly in their favor? Or do they wake up and stand proud, recognizing that they are so successful because of their own hard work and intelligence? Do they ever think about how insane life is that they ended up with 94 billion, while some people are starving? I'm not making any mora…
There are people in the world who’s life would be more transformed by your wealth than your’s would be by Bezos’.
How did you wake up this morning?
Also not making a moral projection here. We just tend to look up instead of down.
All of this is entirely dependent on whimsy. Amazon P/E is basically in the clouds. They and Telsa in some ways are basically impossible to value. So, people make difficult guesses. Though I agree that because AMZN could probably simply 'turn on profit' at any time, and so the classical P/E is not a great measure ... at the same time ... a small dip in something could ruin them. It only takes just a little bit of ret…
> though I agree that because AMZN could probably simply 'turn on profit' at any time I'm confused—Amazon is profitable already, no?
They only became profitable recently, like 2016 time frame.
Gates went from $10 billion to ~$78 billion ($68b gain; he topped out near $100b around Dec 1999) in about four years from mid 1994 to mid 1998. With an inflation adjustment, it's probably in his favor or very close. Masayoshi Son went from around $2 billion in early 1995, to $77 billion by the peak in late 1999 / early 2000 or so. Yasumitsu Shigeta was worth $42 billion briefly in February 2000, up from $1 billion a…
Were you just sitting on these data?
I never liked computers growing up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, not really anyway. I loved technology but I was mostly indifferent toward computers, regarding them as boring, constrained tools. Two of my neighbors had Windows 2.x machines, my interaction with them consisted mostly of gaming. At home we had an old commodore and some unusual other system (which had an awesome cartridge based rip-off clone of pac-man), both were about as interesting to me as a toaster. My father had purchased them at some point - in theory for business purposes - they didn't seem to get used much. I liked building things and I hated having other people tell me what to do with my time or brain. From an early age, I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur of some sort and I thought I might want to go into the aerospace field. Then in late 1994 I was introduced to the World Wide Web. That changed everything about how I viewed the world, I couldn't get enough of it. I grew up in Appalachia, a world apart from the kind of intellectual stimulation I craved. The potential of the Web was immediately obvious, it was like being hit with a sledgehammer. Suddenly you go from feeling disconnected from the world, to chatting with thousands of people from all around the planet on the WebChat Broadcasting System. Ecommerce, primitive streaming, communities, message boards, personal home pages, search, internet time, online gaming, blinking text, spinning gifs, applets, instant messaging, frames, oh man. Working on a solitary PC always felt like I was a TV repairman. With the Internet, the Web, you could be Spielberg, it was a platform seemingly infinite in potential to build upon. You didn't need permission, you didn't have to jump through red tape, you could just dial-in and start doing. I was enthralled by the era in general, it was an epoch, the big bang. Since it was simultaneously my formative teen years, the memories from 1995-2000 or so, are extremely vivid. Everything about the Web seemed incredible, every new site & service, no matter how silly. The stories from that time are permanently imprinted into my brain because of that. I had a pretty good recollection of the specifics, I double checked the exact figures.
My initial question was how did he sell $1B and not affect the share price substantially. And sure enough, the share price did drop a bit. But average trading volume is about 2 billion shares, which is about $2B. It's pretty crazy that the market has so much liquidity that $2B of AMZN changes hands every day, and that it could soak up a $1B sale and barely change the price.
I witnessed exchange of $300MM of stock for cash in late 90s at my job. You are correct that noone sels $1B of stock and doesn't make dent in trading value.
So to do that right, you get on the phone with broker who agrees to buy such quantity. You put order SELL at $5 and 1,000,000 shares ONLY, which means noone can buy just 10 shares: you take 1MM or none. Once your call reach the market, within seconds the other party puts a BUY call at 1,000,000 shares. 10 seconds later the whole transaction is done. It doesn't affect market at all, because the price fluctuates based on supply and demand. In our scenario X of supply met X of demand immediately, so the market didn't tick. Of course such large volume might be some sort of a signal (buy or sell, depends on party that looks at it), but will not trigger serious movement of stock, immediately.
I can't help but wonder what it's like to have that kind of money. Does such a person ever wake up, and wonder how the dice rolled so amazingly in their favor? Or do they wake up and stand proud, recognizing that they are so successful because of their own hard work and intelligence? Do they ever think about how insane life is that they ended up with 94 billion, while some people are starving? I'm not making any mora…
There are people in the world who’s life would be more transformed by your wealth than your’s would be by Bezos’. How did you wake up this morning? Also not making a moral projection here. We just tend to look up instead of down.
I've never heard anyone say it like that. It's given me pause.
My initial question was how did he sell $1B and not affect the share price substantially. And sure enough, the share price did drop a bit. But average trading volume is about 2 billion shares, which is about $2B. It's pretty crazy that the market has so much liquidity that $2B of AMZN changes hands every day, and that it could soak up a $1B sale and barely change the price.
To prevent any accusations of insider trading, these sales tend to be announced months in advance and scheduled, so any movements on the sale day are more likely to be naieve investors reacting.
Yea but they can cancel those trades at any time. They can set up a weekly sale of a huge chunk of stock, cancel it every week while the company is doing fine, then right before a terrible quarter hits, allow the sale to go through. This does not stop insider trading.
The taxes (what, 20% capital gains?) seems an excellent deal for the ecosystem where he grew his company: a stable political system, strong asset protection enforced by strict laws, an educated workforce in a relatively unpolluted environment, etc.
20% does seem like a good deal for all those things, but it's important to remember that the top 20% already pays 95% of the taxes. So if those things are good they're only good because he's already been paying for them. So if you enjoy the stable political system, strong asset protection, your free education, and relatively unpolluted environment it might be time to add Jeff Bezos to your Christmas card list to than…
The real question is: how much do the top 20% make and/or own? If it's 95% or more, then those taxes seem quite fair, don't they?
$94.6 billion net worth at present per Bloomberg. I know he is basically guaranteed to be running all of these sales off a sale schedule set far in advance for obvious reasons. However, I'd probably be doubling up those $1 billion sales until/unless this market gives out. Raising $6 or $10 billion - enough to fund Blue Origin for maybe a decade - by selling out of a $94 billion base, sure beats doing the same out of…
I can't help but wonder what it's like to have that kind of money. Does such a person ever wake up, and wonder how the dice rolled so amazingly in their favor? Or do they wake up and stand proud, recognizing that they are so successful because of their own hard work and intelligence? Do they ever think about how insane life is that they ended up with 94 billion, while some people are starving? I'm not making any mora…
Bezos has taken to recently calling his immense wealth, his "Amazon lottery winnings." Which gives you an indication that he is fully aware of the role good luck has played in his life. I'm sure it's also meant to disarm or preempt criticism to an extent, Warren Buffet has done the same thing the entire time he has been famous & wealthy (using various explanatory concepts such as "the ovarian lottery," and joking about how he'd be dinosaur lunch in a different time given how a vicious carnivore might respond to his capital allocation skills). To the extent that Bezos's wealth is particularly wildly outsized, I'm sure - based on what he has said - that he recognizes it as being well beyond just the result of hard work and intelligence (both of which he usually gets credit for).
20% does seem like a good deal for all those things, but it's important to remember that the top 20% already pays 95% of the taxes. So if those things are good they're only good because he's already been paying for them. So if you enjoy the stable political system, strong asset protection, your free education, and relatively unpolluted environment it might be time to add Jeff Bezos to your Christmas card list to than…
The real question is: how much do the top 20% make and/or own? If it's 95% or more, then those taxes seem quite fair, don't they? Found some data: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Uni... Top 20% owned 93% of wealth in 2014, and I don't see why that number wouldn't go up. It's a bit harder to find numbers for income, though.
I don't take incident with the 20% mark. I only take incident with the insinuation that the great societal benefits Bezos enjoys for his 20% was provided by someone else.
My initial question was how did he sell $1B and not affect the share price substantially. And sure enough, the share price did drop a bit. But average trading volume is about 2 billion shares, which is about $2B. It's pretty crazy that the market has so much liquidity that $2B of AMZN changes hands every day, and that it could soak up a $1B sale and barely change the price.
I witnessed exchange of $300MM of stock for cash in late 90s at my job. You are correct that noone sels $1B of stock and doesn't make dent in trading value. So to do that right, you get on the phone with broker who agrees to buy such quantity. You put order SELL at $5 and 1,000,000 shares ONLY, which means noone can buy just 10 shares: you take 1MM or none. Once your call reach the market, within seconds the other pa…
That may have been the case in the 1990s, but isn't 10 seconds an eternity in today's HFT world? You'd need to arrange the sale off the exchange.