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Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

bloomberg.com

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Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#61

Post by afterburner »

FlyingSideKick wrote: post #58

Who cares? I don’t understand why the media wastes their time with stories like this or how much movies earned over the weekend.

It has some relevance as to the future. If Bezos was bleeding money, he might change Amazon's direction. If summer blockbusters started tanking, there might be fewer in the future. It's feedback, it's not necessarily the most useful information but it's not useless.

Now, endless discussion on a topic when there's hardly any new information (as 24h news stations do), that's useless...

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#62

Post by prklmn »

garmaine wrote: post #27
hidenotslide wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

P/E is a very meaningful metric. It's not that Amazon has infrastructure that matters, it's that they are reinvesting their earnings at a higher rate than other companies. If they returned capital to investors because they didn't have enough potential projects, then the investors would need to decide how to reinvest it. Your comment about reflecting the infrastructure in valuation would lean toward looking at Price/B…

My “not meaningful” point should perhaps been “can’t conclusively draw data from it alone” or “don’t make investment decisions based on this metric only” and I’d stand by that.

P/E is without a doubt meaningful, and looking at it in the context of growth i.e. PEG, makes it even more meaningful. Amazon is selling at an objectively absurd PEG ratio of 5. Anything over 2 is fundamentally considered overvalued by people who use this metric. However, You could argue that none of the fundamentals are meaningful because we are in a bubble, with Amazon on the forefront.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#63

Post by comboy »

clubmg wrote: post #47
jandrese wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it is worth, Bill spends a lot in the third world, where a more equitable US would have minimal impact on the standard of living.

Meanwhile America looks more and more like a third world country thanks to the billionairs like Besoz and Gates that hog much of the wealth and resources of our country. By hey Amazon Prime and Microsoft 10 are worth it right?

It would look more like a third world country without guys like Gates and Bezos.

I'm really surprised by all the hate in this thread towards wealthy individuals who worked hard to attain it. Especially in this environment, where people try to figure out ways to be one of them. It's HN FFs.

Also, maybe UBI just seems reasonable to Jeff, like it does to many people. He really doesn't need it for anything which he couldn't have many other simpler ways.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#64

Post by prklmn »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #43
hidenotslide wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

P/E is a very meaningful metric. It's not that Amazon has infrastructure that matters, it's that they are reinvesting their earnings at a higher rate than other companies. If they returned capital to investors because they didn't have enough potential projects, then the investors would need to decide how to reinvest it. Your comment about reflecting the infrastructure in valuation would lean toward looking at Price/B…

I generally prefer free cash flow yield (fcf / dollar invested), although both PE and FCF can be fucked with depending on how certain expenses are classified. That being said, if I had to choose one of the two, I would go with FCF yield every time.

It's also very common now for companies to buy back a ton of stock thus lowering the share denominator in the earnings portion of the ratio, while not actually growing revenue much if at all.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#65

Post by WalterBright »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #23
justboxing wrote: post #5

AMZN, the stock, is trading at a P.E. Ratio of nearly 300. http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AAMZN Serious question: Considering that it nearly doubled over the past year, is it already too late to buy Amazon stock? Or not? What's the upside?

Asking whether it's too late to buy I think makes no sense... if it were, immediately market forces would drive up the price. If it were too soon, immediately market forces would sell. You can ask anyone, any individual, of course and they'll have a particular answer which will differ. But I wouldn't be quick to trust a particular answer over the answer of the market (which IS the stock price), unless the particular…

The stock price at any point in time is set by about an equal number of investors thinking it'll go up as those that think it'll go down.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#66

Post by Pyxl101 »

barrkel wrote: post #56
protomok wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates has also given a lot to charity, from the article - 'Gates, 62, who has a net worth of $86.8 billion according to the Bloomberg index, would be worth more than $150 billion if he hadn’t given away almost 700 million Microsoft Corp. shares and $2.9 billion of cash and other assets to charity, according to an analysis of his publicly disclosed giving since 1996.'

Charity is problematic too, though. It's subject to the whims of the wealthy, and worse it's damaging to the dignity of recipients - it denies them agency in their own well-being. I say this having been the beneficiary of charity myself: needing to be grateful to someone else is a kind of psychological servitude. We'd be better off with an economic system that values agency and lives worth living a little more than e…

The charities that Gates tends to invest in don't just distribute goods to needy people. His charities try to tackle core societal problems like fighting malaria in Africa:

https://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Health/Mal...

https://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Health/Dis...

> Working closely with other global programs at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Discovery & Translational Sciences program aims to create and improve preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic interventions for infectious diseases as well as other conditions that affect mothers, infants, and children. We do this by identifying and filling gaps in scientific knowledge, creating or implementing new technology platforms that can accelerate research in support of our goals, and investing in potentially transformative ideas.

> All of our investments advance the goal of creating solutions that can be deployed, accepted, and sustained in the developing world. To speed the translation of scientific discovery into implementable solutions, we seek better ways to evaluate and refine potential interventions—such as vaccine candidates—before they enter costly and time-consuming late-stage clinical trials.

There's nothing about fighting malaria that denies people agency in their well-being as far as I'm concerned.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#67

Post by matt4077 »

justboxing wrote: post #5

AMZN, the stock, is trading at a P.E. Ratio of nearly 300. http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AAMZN Serious question: Considering that it nearly doubled over the past year, is it already too late to buy Amazon stock? Or not? What's the upside?

Serious answer: don't pick a fight with the efficient market hypothesis.

It might be wrong. But it has more money to have remain wrong, than you have to prove it wrong.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#68

Post by WalterBright »

amelius wrote: post #55
tryingagainbro wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you're being sarcastic, I am sure he doesn't care. "Humanity" is complicated...maybe he'll make up for all with one invention on his space venture. He did save people a lot of money, but then he did also cause many stores to go kaput. So, how do you judge?

The sarcasm was not directed at him, but at us, and our lack of ability to come up with an economic system that can properly evaluate what somebody is worth. E.g. We have a legal system that decides when somebody is right or wrong, and it mostly matches with what people feel is right or wrong. Why can't we have a similar system that decides what somebody is worth?

Isn't that what a free market system does? Bezos' net worth is decided by what people freely decide his stock is worth.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#69

Post by matt4077 »

hidenotslide wrote: post #25
garmaine wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

P/E is not a meaningful metric. The 10x rule of thumb doesn’t work for all companies. For one, not all companies have the same level of infrastructure—Amazon has a lot of warehouse and distribution infrastructure, not to mention all those AWS servers they own, etc. you should properly subtract that out before doing the calculation. Even still Amazon has a crazy high valuation, just not insanely high. Not sure I’d bet…

P/E is a very meaningful metric. It's not that Amazon has infrastructure that matters, it's that they are reinvesting their earnings at a higher rate than other companies. If they returned capital to investors because they didn't have enough potential projects, then the investors would need to decide how to reinvest it. Your comment about reflecting the infrastructure in valuation would lean toward looking at Price/B…

Increases in "book value" are reflected in earnings.

Example: you make a profit of $100. You use those $100 to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. Your profit is still $100. It's only your cash flow that's now at $0.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#70

Post by smokeyj »

barrkel wrote: post #56
protomok wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates has also given a lot to charity, from the article - 'Gates, 62, who has a net worth of $86.8 billion according to the Bloomberg index, would be worth more than $150 billion if he hadn’t given away almost 700 million Microsoft Corp. shares and $2.9 billion of cash and other assets to charity, according to an analysis of his publicly disclosed giving since 1996.'

Charity is problematic too, though. It's subject to the whims of the wealthy, and worse it's damaging to the dignity of recipients - it denies them agency in their own well-being. I say this having been the beneficiary of charity myself: needing to be grateful to someone else is a kind of psychological servitude. We'd be better off with an economic system that values agency and lives worth living a little more than e…

> We'd be better off with an economic system that values agency and lives worth living a little more than efficiency and profit

So, charity. Any economic system rooted in the altruistic nature of man is doomed to fail. Only rational self interest in sustainable.

It comes back to teaching a man to fish. I don't think UBI solves the problem of how do you learn a marketable skill.

Maybe a program where investors can pay to train workers in exchange for a percentage of their income. This would create an incentive to train a highly skilled/paid work force. But it also has a modern slavery feel so idk.

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