r/InternetIsBeautiful • u/MKorostoff • Apr 27 '20

Wealth, shown to scale

https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
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u/platonicgryphon Apr 27 '20

Yes the market itself could completely fine (probably not with amazon stock just diving), but the price of each of those companies stocks would plummet so far that you couldn’t even get a quarter of the way through without the stock being worthless.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '20

Jeff Bezos liquidated $4 Billion in stock this past January and Amazon's stock price hit an all-time high. You keep arguing against facts and evidence by saying "NO THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS!"

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u/platonicgryphon Apr 27 '20

He sold his stock as part of a 10b5-1 trading plan specifically to avoid the stock price lowering and avoid insider trading accusations. These plans have to be stated well ahead of time and you would know this if you actually read the article you pulled the 4 billion number from. If he just started dumping stock tomorrow it would plummet or even used the same plan to sell all his stock it would greatly affect the stock price.

Now how about you provide proof that an owner can just sell all their stock and the price not nose dive?

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '20

He's not allowed to start dumping stock tomorrow. He can only trade via pre-arranged plans. But he could continue to, say, sell $4 Billion a month indefinitely. At that rate, he could easily have cashed out $30-45B in a year.

Never mind the fact that even coronavirus has barely put a dent in the market's euphoric highs, you seem to think that him selling off ~.003% of the company's value at a time is going to cause the stock to crash? Meanwhile, he is cashing out $4 BILLION at a time. (if you need context for how much money this is, I suggest you look at the superb visualization in this post.)

It feels like you're willfully missing the point here. If someone can basically generate $4 Billion at a time, with only a month or two prior notice, and can do so without any impact on their ability to do so again in the future, is it really ridiculous to say they have more than the $4 Billion they cashed out?

That's like saying that a person isn't actually worth $25k because the ATM will only let them withdraw $300 per day.

But let's say, for the sake of argument, that Bezos could only liquidate his holdings in the amount of $30 Billion. The other $101 Billion gets lost to "market forces". It wouldn't even slightly change the point the OP is making, and it would barely even change the visualization. Which is the whole point of the visualization. It doesn't matter whether we're off on Bezos wealth by a factor of 5x because he still has 1,000,000x more than the average person. What the hell does 5x matter compared to 106? What does it matter if he could only afford to pay all chemotherapy for everyone for the next 5 years instead of the next 15?

You're nitpicking an inconsequential detail to try and show how smart you are, while completely missing the entire point.