Does he think Microsoft is close to peak valuation or that the markets are frothy?
Or maybe he just wants to diversify or buy personal toys and real estate.
He still has about $300 million in shares.
There also seems to be a potential tax element to it:
“Satya sold approximately 840,000 shares of his holdings of Microsoft stock for personal financial planning and diversification reasons,” a Microsoft spokesman said in a written statement. “He is committed to the continued success of the company and his holdings significantly exceed the holding requirements set by the Microsoft Board of Directors.”
Analysts said the move could be related to Washington state instituting a 7% tax for long-term capital gains beginning at the start of next year for anything exceeding $250,000 a year.
> It matters if your a MSFT shareholder and are wondering if you should “diversify” too.
The answer to that question is yes, regardless of what Nadella does/did. I guess if you have a feeling MSFT is going to outperform the tech market or market as a whole, not diversifying can work, or if you lack the ability to hedge much and want a chance to get rich (and a chance to lose it also).
Of course, he lost out selling at $100/share (vs today's $300+/share). And in 2014 when he sold a bunch of stock at $50/share. I'm going to say that if history has any saying in this, it means that the stock will be at $600/share the next time he sells.
Can't tell if you're being factious with the second part of your comment. It's almost certainly untrue. Iirc Gates was quoted regretting missing out on the mobile market.
In most cases where I have been given company stocks as part of compensation, I usually sell them as soon as I can. Depending on your role in the company you are often very restricted about how much you can sell and when. There are limited trading windows where you can legally sell and any inside information may prevent it even then. I’d rather have my money in some other stock where I have more freedom to trade.
If you're restricted in trading for insider information reasons, you're often also restricted in trading other industry stocks for conflict of interest reasons.
Not a bad thing to diversify, but of you diversify to e.g. an index fund, often you end up correlated with tech owing to how large a chunk of index growth is down to Apple, Google, Amazon etc.
I've never heard of this. There are plenty of companies that add each and every engineer, developer, and r&d person on the insider list. I've been to two, and haven't seen any such guidance.
Ask yourself "if I was given the equivalent in cash instead of equity (e.g. a bonus or just an increased base), would I buy shares in my employers' company?"
If the answer is no, then it makes sense to sell immediately.
Diversification. If you consider that your employment at an employer is one part of your investment strategy, then it makes sense to diversify your portfolio as much as possible. Keeping those eggs in the same basket presents increased firm-specific risk .
I thought there might be some kind of specific tax loophole or trick to moving the money out of the ESPP. I'm finding more and more of these tricks as time goes on, such as post-tax traditional 401k mega-backdoor Roth money (if it lasts past this year), etc...
I've done this in previous jobs - nothing to do with the company itself, I just don't like tying both my investment and wage income to the same company.
Gave this advice to people in successful startups: if you had $X million, would you sink it all into one company? If the answer is no, you should diversify.
There’s a significant amount of luck involved with what you’re pointing out. In the situation of owning a relatively small amount of a company, the actions of billionaires have nothing to do with the actions of your average non-early employee.
If your goal is to become a multi-billionaire then sure, you need to take way more risk. But I'd wager that this is not most people's goal. If your goal is to accumulate enough wealth to have a safe retirement portfolio then you don't need to take the large risk for the large potential maximum benefit.
The context seems to be reallocating several hundred million dollars.
I agree that at least 1% of it, if a person had nothing else, which they probably would, should be put aside for retirement. I thought that went without saying.
Nevertheless, keeping 99% in one company would not be diversified.
Or maybe he just wants to diversify or buy personal toys and real estate.
He still has about $300 million in shares.
There also seems to be a potential tax element to it:
“Satya sold approximately 840,000 shares of his holdings of Microsoft stock for personal financial planning and diversification reasons,” a Microsoft spokesman said in a written statement. “He is committed to the continued success of the company and his holdings significantly exceed the holding requirements set by the Microsoft Board of Directors.”
Analysts said the move could be related to Washington state instituting a 7% tax for long-term capital gains beginning at the start of next year for anything exceeding $250,000 a year.