Bezos Calls The Top? Sells $1.1 Billion Of Amazon Stock At Record Highs

Is the world"s richest man starting to get a little concerned that his $90 billion fortune in Amazon stock might just be fully valued?  Well, judging by his SEC disclosures from last Friday, Bezos provided investors with roughly 1.1 billion reasons why the answer to that question may be a resounding "yes".

As Bloomberg points out, Bezos sold a total of 1 million Amazon shares over the course of three days last week netting roughly $1.1 billion in proceeds.  The sale represented just 1.3% of Bezos" total stake in Amazon and leaves him with 16.4% of the company"s shares outstanding.

Of course, the stock sales came after Amazon beat earnings estimates the week prior (see: Amazon Soars Above $1,000 After Smashing Expectations) and pushed the stock to new all-time highs.  As an added benefit, the move also once again thrust Bezos ahead of Bill Gates on the Billionaire leader board.

Of course, Bezos previously reported that he would sell $1 billion a year in Amazon stock to fund his Blue Origin LLC, the rocket company fueling his dream of sending people into space.  That said, this was Bezos" second $1 billion sale in a matter of 6 months so perhaps Blue Origin just needed a little extra cash this year?

Then again, maybe this is just "tax planning" or "diversification" or any of the many other excuses executives give for selling their own stock...certainly it has nothing to do with Amazon"s 282x P/E ratio...

The Richest Person On Each Continent

With a stock price surge of 13% after Amazon’s most recent quarterly filing, Wall Street analysts were reportedly “shocked” by the company’s rapid growth. The e-commerce juggernaut beat both quarterly revenue and earnings forecasts, and continues to trailblaze with a 34% revenue growth rate.

This boded well for the net worth of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, which fluctuates wildly based on Amazon stock price movements. In fact, as Visual Capitalist"s Jeff Desjardins notes, the recent jump in price on October 27 helped catapult him past Bill Gates (again) to become the richest person in North America, as well as the entire world.

As of publication time, according to Forbes’ real-time wealth tracker, his wealth stands at $92.6 billion.

NET WORTH LEADERS BY CONTINENT

Today’s graphic comes to us from HowMuch.net and it shows the richest person on each continent.

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

Here is the full breakdown:

Net worth figures from HowMuch.net as of November 3, 2017

To be thorough, HowMuch.net also “nominated” a person to represent the continent of Antarctica, even though it has no permanent residents.

Chosen for this title? It’s none other than Arnold W. Donald, the CEO of Carnival, the world’s largest cruise company, which monetizes the icy continent for its Antarctic cruises on a regular basis.

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This graphic has been amended since initial publication. Just yesterday, Mukesh Ambani climbed up the list to become the richest person in Asia, and it now reflects that. Thanks to everyone who pointed this out.

Who's The Richest Person In Your State?

The United States is known to have many millionaires and billionaires. But, as HowMuch.net details, it turns out that not all states are equal when it comes to the rich and powerful.

Where does your state fall? Take a look at the map below to see the richest person in every state.

Source: HowMuch.net

A photo of the richest person in any given state is superimposed on each state in the map, along with the person’s name and net worth. States are color coded based upon how the richest person in that state attained his or her wealth: red for self-made, blue for inherited and purple for inherited and growing. There is a total of 52 wealthy individuals on the map because there was a tie in two states. The data were collected from Forbes.

An outright majority of the richest people in the states are self-made. Nearly all of the wealthiest people in Western states are self-made, while a more mixed group is found among the richest individuals in Northeastern states. There is also a small trend found in familial ties. The wealthiest person in both Texas and Arkansas – Jim and Alice Walton - are from the family that founded retail giant Wal-Mart. The Mars family, the founders of the Mars candy company, also appears twice on the map; John and Jacqueline Mars in Wyoming and Virginia.

Although the individuals found on the map represent the wealthiest person in each state, the net worth of each person varies to a significant degree. The West Coast – California, Oregon and Washington – is home to some of the wealthiest people in the country. This includes Bill Gates, the wealthiest man in not only the U.S. but the world. The wealthiest person in states with a small population, like Midwestern America states, tend to have a relatively lower net worth compared to larger states. But there are a few notable exceptions, including the world’s third wealthiest man Warren Buffet in sparsely-populated Nebraska.

There are many millionaires and billionaires found throughout the United States. But some states, particularly highly populated states, are home to the ultra-rich, while other states with smaller populations tend to be home to individuals with relatively lower net worth. It appears that the further you go West, the more you find wealthy individuals that are self-made, rather than inheritors of large fortunes.

Visualizing The Richest People In Human History (Part 1)

Click here for a larger, more legible version of the infographic that you can explore in-depth.

Attributable to: The Money Project, a collaboration between Visual Capitalist and Texas Precious Metals

When we think of wealth today, we often think of the massive personal fortunes of business magnates like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, or Warren Buffett. However, it is only since the Industrial Revolution that measuring wealth by one’s bank account has been a norm for the world’s richest.

For most of recorded human history, in fact, the lines around wealth were quite blurred. Leaders like Augustus Caesar or Emperor Shenzong had absolute control of their empires – while bankers like Jakob Fogger and Cosimo de Medici were often found pulling the strings from behind.

This infographic focuses on the richest people in history up until the Industrial Revolution – and in the coming weeks, we will release a second version that covers wealth from then onwards (including figures like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jeff Bezos, etc.).

Is This List of People Definitive?

While it is certainly fun to speculate on the wealth of people from centuries past, putting together this list is exceptionally difficult and certainly not definitive.

Here’s why:

Firstly, much wealth in early periods is tied to land (Genghis Khan) or entire empires (Augustus, Akbar), which makes calculations extremely subjective. What is most of Asia’s land worth in the year 1219? What separates personal fortune from the riches of an empire that one has full control of? There are a wide variety of answers to these questions, and they all influence the figures chosen to be represented.

Secondly, records kept from Ancient eras are scarce, exaggerated, or based on legends and oral histories. Think of King Solomon or Mansa Musa – these are characters described as immeasurably rich, so trying to put their wealth in modern context is fun, but certainly not guaranteed to be historically accurate.

Lastly, wealth and conversion rates can be approached in different ways as well. Take Crassus in the Roman Republic, who had a peak fortune of “200 million sesterces”. Well, that’s a problem for us in modernity, because that stash could be worth anywhere from $200 million to $169.8 billion, depending on how calculations are done.

So, enjoy this list of the wealthiest historical figures, but keep in mind that it is mostly for fun – and that the list of the wealthiest people in history changes depending on who you ask!

Where Are All The World's Billionaires?

Billionaires are the richest of the rich. Many young entrepreneurs hope to one-day reach this ultimate financial milestone. But before these entrepreneurs are allowed to join this group, they first must ask how did billionaires acquire their wealth in the first place? Take a look at the map below to see the distribution of billionaires by country and type.

As HowMuch.net details, the map above shows each country of the world separated by the percentage of billionaires into various types. The size of each country on the map is relative to its total number of the world’s billionaires. There are five categories of billionaires designated by the colors found in the legend: Inherited, Company Founders, Owners and Executives, Political Connections and Resource Related and the Financial Sector. The data was compiled from this report by the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

The first and most obvious conclusion to draw from the map is the large number of billionaires found in the United States. The world’s largest economy has close to 30 percent of the world’s billionaires and far more than any other single country. The distribution of billionaires in the United States is mostly equal, with the exception of the Political Connections and Resource Related type. Only 3.8 percent of American billionaires attained their wealth through political or resource related ventures, a likely consequence of the US government’s historical hands-off approach to business.

China, the world’s second largest economy, has very few billionaires who inherited money. Before China’s economic success of the past few decades, the country was exceptionally poor. But the rapid growth of its economy through a manufacturing boom has created over 200 billionaires. Around 40 percent of these billionaires are company founders, while around one-quarter are company owners or executives. An opposite trend can found nearby in South Korea. The majority of South Korean billionaires, a whopping 74.1 percent, inherited money from family. In Japan, the majority of billionaires are company founders at 63 percent.

The trend in South Korea can also be found in Europe to an extent. With the exception of the United Kingdom, many of the billionaires in the major economies of Europe inherited their wealth. Denmark has the highest percentage, with 83.3 percent of billionaires inheriting their money. Germany comes in second, at 64.7 percent, while Sweden comes in at a close third at 63.2 percent. Europe follows a slightly different path than the United States. While American billionaires are less likely to have inherited wealth, they are more likely the be either the founder of a company or come from the financial sector.

The United States boasts the highest number of billionaires by far and American billionaires acquire wealth almost equally from inheritance, the founding of a company and the financial sector. The number of Chinese billionaires has grown rapidly, with most being either company founders, owners or executives. Many European billionaires inherited wealth, but a large number are also either company founders or from the financial sector.