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> if he tried to sell a large number those shares, they'd plummet in value as he was selling them I think this is a good starting point to understanding the "r

> if he tried to sell a large number those shares, they'd plummet in value as he was selling them I think this is a good starting point to understanding the "real" value of Bezos' and Musk's fortunes, but I'm not sure it would play out like you say. As you pointed out, the valuations of both of their companies are held up by widely held beliefs about the men. A lot of Tesla's value comes from Elon Musk, super-genius-capitalist, being at the helm. So, if the stock value comes from trusting the humans, it seems possible that Musk or Bezos could sell a large chunk of stock with the right explanation. Like, if Jeff Bezos said he was selling $30bn of stock to contribute to charity right now so he could get critics off his back and concentrate on Amazon...would the price go down? I don't see it.

banana_giraffe 6y ago
> if Jeff Bezos said he was selling $30bn of stock to contribute to charity right now so he could get critics off his back and concentrate on Amazon I wonder if a lot of people would view that as the CEO version of a politician saying "I'm stepping down to spend time with my family", and immediately try to find the "true" reason he's selling the stock. Perhaps even causing more of a problem than if he had said "I'm selling this stock to buy a _really_ fancy yacht"
- aeturnum 6y ago
  Maybe? I haven't seen any reactions like that to MacKenzie Scott's contributions.
NineStarPoint 6y ago
There’s two parts of how the sale would effect the price. One effect is trust in the business due to it’s shareholders, which could definitely be dealt with yes. The other effect though would be a massive amount of shares entering the market place, which would have purely mechanical outcomes. 30 billion dollars of amazon stock would be about 10 million amazon stock. About 4 amazon stock is traded daily, so that would be 2.5 days of total average amazon stock entering the market over some period of time. This means higher competition between people selling the stock to find people willing to buy it, which would lower the price. The quicker the stock was sold off, the more dramatic this effect would be. 10 million stock also represents about 1/50th of all amazon stock in existence. Another 4/50th’s of that stock also belongs to Bezos. Increasing the amount of stock available to the general populous by a not insignificant amount would also lower the price of the stock, although probably not very dramatically. In the end, those effects probably wouldn’t be too major. I’m actually surprised that so much of amazon’s stock gets traded every day, I wasn’t expecting 4 million stock to be traded daily. Still, it would have an effect that means Bezos couldn’t liquify his position in just a day or two even with a good explanation.
- aeturnum 6y ago
  Thank you for the notes about stock availability and the impacts of that! I hadn't thought about how the volume of available shared affects the price. Though it feels like market makers would feel this the most? I guess I'm not sure how much of a stocks' price is driven by limited availability. >Bezos couldn’t liquify his position in just a day or two even with a good explanation That absolutely makes sense. I wasn't imagining a quick liquidation necessaraly - selling $30bn worth of stock over 5 or 10 years would be plenty of fuel in the fire of charitable giving. For reference, MacKenzie Scott just gave away $4bn over one year that, I think, came from Amazon stock and it doesn't seem to have hurt the price?
bern4444 6y ago
I thought when such large quantities of shares were being traded, its typically done in a dark pool so as to purposefully not impact the stock price. Dark pools are a means for individuals or organizations who want to trade massive amounts to do so without impacting the public market.

banana_giraffe 6y ago

> if Jeff Bezos said he was selling $30bn of stock to contribute to charity right now so he could get critics off his back and concentrate on Amazon I wonder if a lot of people would view that as the CEO version of a politician saying "I'm stepping down to spend time with my family", and immediately try to find the "true" reason he's selling the stock. Perhaps even causing more of a problem than if he had said "I'm selling this stock to buy a _really_ fancy yacht"

aeturnum 6y ago
Maybe? I haven't seen any reactions like that to MacKenzie Scott's contributions.

NineStarPoint 6y ago

There’s two parts of how the sale would effect the price. One effect is trust in the business due to it’s shareholders, which could definitely be dealt with yes. The other effect though would be a massive amount of shares entering the market place, which would have purely mechanical outcomes. 30 billion dollars of amazon stock would be about 10 million amazon stock. About 4 amazon stock is traded daily, so that would be 2.5 days of total average amazon stock entering the market over some period of time. This means higher competition between people selling the stock to find people willing to buy it, which would lower the price. The quicker the stock was sold off, the more dramatic this effect would be. 10 million stock also represents about 1/50th of all amazon stock in existence. Another 4/50th’s of that stock also belongs to Bezos. Increasing the amount of stock available to the general populous by a not insignificant amount would also lower the price of the stock, although probably not very dramatically. In the end, those effects probably wouldn’t be too major. I’m actually surprised that so much of amazon’s stock gets traded every day, I wasn’t expecting 4 million stock to be traded daily. Still, it would have an effect that means Bezos couldn’t liquify his position in just a day or two even with a good explanation.

aeturnum 6y ago
Thank you for the notes about stock availability and the impacts of that! I hadn't thought about how the volume of available shared affects the price. Though it feels like market makers would feel this the most? I guess I'm not sure how much of a stocks' price is driven by limited availability. >Bezos couldn’t liquify his position in just a day or two even with a good explanation That absolutely makes sense. I wasn't imagining a quick liquidation necessaraly - selling $30bn worth of stock over 5 or 10 years would be plenty of fuel in the fire of charitable giving. For reference, MacKenzie Scott just gave away $4bn over one year that, I think, came from Amazon stock and it doesn't seem to have hurt the price?

bern4444 6y ago

I thought when such large quantities of shares were being traded, its typically done in a dark pool so as to purposefully not impact the stock price. Dark pools are a means for individuals or organizations who want to trade massive amounts to do so without impacting the public market.