
Marc Andreessen sells nearly half his Facebook stake - wslh
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/facebook-director-sells-nearly-half-his-stake-2015-11-10-101034616
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ChuckMcM
One of common strategies if you have a large holding in a company and want to
diversify is to sell "half". That said, people also tend to trade around round
numbers, so the fact that Marc started trading when the stock crossed $100
might have been part of an earlier plan where "if this ever crosses $100 I'm
going to cash some out." I bought some Facebook when it was under $20 but left
instructions to sell it when, after fees, it doubled the original investment.
So pretty much sold it all at $40 ish.

The point I'm trying to make is that buying and selling stocks usually says
more about the investors rate of return goals and less about their opinion of
the underlying company.

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fraserharris
As a director in a public company, he is very restricted in when and how he
sells his stock. In one case I know of that meant placing sell orders 3 - 6
months in advance regardless of the stock performance.

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jhulla
Insiders can file 10b5-1 plans - committing to a sales plan in advance.

"These plans are widely used by officers and directors of public companies to
sell stock according to the parameters of the affirmative defense to illegal
insider trading available under Rule 10b5-1, which was adopted by the SEC in
2000."

[http://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2013/02/05/rule-10b5-1-plans-...](http://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2013/02/05/rule-10b5-1-plans-
what-you-need-to-know/)

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canistr
Also consider that Peter Thiel sold $100 million worth of stock back in August
at $93. A significantly larger size at one price as opposed to Andreessen's
multiple sales in the past 2 weeks.

You can see a list of Insider Trades here:
[http://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=FB](http://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=FB)

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apaprocki
The first block was reported on some news wires on 11/3 when the first SEC
Form 4 filing hit, but it wasn't really picked up by more outlets until a few
more days of sales (2 more Form 4 filings).

In the same time period he bought 50,145 shares of HP (on 11/2).

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rrggrr
Andressen is an exceptional growth investor. I'd expect these funds to be put
into new early stage growth opportunities, and I wouldn't be surprised to
learn they are outside traditional tech.

