
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos sold more than $1B worth of stock this week - nwrk
https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/3/16604990/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-stock-sale-1-billion
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DiThi
He sells $1B every year to fund Blue Origin. Source:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14047650](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14047650)

~~~
bmcusick
Correct

[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/science/blue-origin-
ro...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/science/blue-origin-rocket-jeff-
bezos-amazon-stock.html)

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adventured
$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 $26
billion (where his net worth was at just ~33 months ago).

~~~
swendoog
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 moral projection here. I'm not saying there's anything
right, or wrong, about that situation. I'm just genuinely curious what it
feels like to be in their shoes.

~~~
jaxn
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.

~~~
albeebe1
I've never heard anyone say it like that. It's given me pause.

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prewett
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.

~~~
thisisit
Because of the order type.

 _Market Orders_ soak up all the liquidity as they need to be executed at the
best price available. So, if the price is at $10 and I dump a huge amount of
shares, it will go through the bids..$10, $9.9, $9.8...you get the idea.

 _Limit Orders_ kind of provide liquidity. It doesn't execute unless a certain
condition is met. So I can dump a large sell at $10, it won't change the
price. Anyone in the market can bid into $10 and buy shares if they want.

So, trading volume doesn't matter, order type matters. If Bezos had dumped his
shares in open market it would cause the price to change dramatically. People
will take it as a sign and jump out like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

Most of these trades are pre-planned and are limit orders.

The data has not been updated for the November sells you can see all the
Amazon insider trades here (including the March selling noted in the article):
[http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/amzn/insider-
trades](http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/amzn/insider-trades)

Most are _automatic sell_ and are pre planned. Disposition are trades which
are off market transaction, selling or buying, directly with the company.

~~~
candiodari
I think you'll find limit orders limit the price while they're executing. Say
I place a $10 million MSFT limit buy order at $80, that means that until my
$10 million is used up (the order is "filled") the price cannot drop below
$80.

Conversely if I place a $1B sell order for $1100 (ought to be close to what
happened here) the price cannot rise above $1100 until that amount of money
has been extracted out of the market.

~~~
alok-g
>> I place a $1B sell order for $1100 the price cannot rise above $1100

That should not prevent the price from falling with such an order.

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fataliss
That tax season will hurt!

~~~
clarkevans
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.

~~~
grandalf
I would much rather that Bezos be allowed to keep all of his capital gains but
have appropriate antitrust enforcement step in and reduce Amazon's market
power a bit.

The recent upsurge of counterfeit products are evidence that Amazon is abusing
its market power to the point of harming consumers.

~~~
toast0
What market does Amazon have a monopoly, and how are they abusing it or what
prohibited practices did they use to establish such a monopoly?

It looks like they may have 44% of internet retail by public companies; and
that's big, but it doesn't include private companies, and it doesn't fit my
definition of a monopoly. It is certainly large enough that they should be
scrutinized and attempts to increase share through prohibited practices should
result in enforcement actions.

~~~
grandalf
I don't think Amazon has fully crossed any lines just yet, but I do think it's
bound to happen fairly soon just due to scale.

My point is meant to compare antitrust enforcement to the other mechanisms
that are viewed by some as necessary to prevent large corporations from
causing negative externalities.

Arguably if proper antitrust enforcement had been done in the finance
industry, then no firms would have become too big to fail and all of the
perverse incentives underscored by regulators post 2008 could have been
avoided.

The problem is that since our regulatory state rewards size, there is a strong
incentive to become large and hence too big to fail. As Amazon becomes a
bigger and bigger part of the economy, it could start using the same rent-
seeking tactics that financial firms used in 2008 to get major corporate
welfare.

