Who is the World’s Richest Person??
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So I find these world’s richest lists, which they come out from time to time. I find them useful. They’re teachable moments. And well, we got the latest out here. Jeff Bezos is back on top. The Amazon founder is once again the world’s richest person. He’s ahead of Elon Musk on top of Bloomberg’s billionaires index. 200.
billion dollars on Monday. This is according to Bloomberg. The was Bernard on alls from LVMH, Louis Vuitton. 198 billion must get 197 billion. Why is this a teachable moment? Why is this important? This is a bit nonsensical. Again, how do you go about defining rich?
People see $200 billion. Does Jeff Bezos have $200 billion? No. No, he doesn’t have $200 billion. He’s got $200 billion, let’s say, in Amazon stock, which is great. Why is this a teachable moment? Well, if Jeff Bezos wanted to cash in,
his $200 billion in Amazon stock, he would have to find a buyer for it. The stock market is not, it’s not a casino window where you have your chips and you go and you cash them in when you’re done. You have to find a buyer. So when Bezos does and he has selling programs that are set up where he sells portions of his stock,
Again, he has his people’s advisors find buyers for that stock, depending on the size of the block. So it won’t drop the price. If Jeff Bezos, let’s say he had a Schwab or a Robinhood account, and he’s got $200 billion worth of Amazon stock in it, and he pressed sell, what do you think would happen?
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You know, first and foremost, they wouldn’t be able to handle it. But anyway, let’s say if they could. The stock would tank. The bottom would fall out of the stock. He wouldn’t get what the price was that that that when you see a price of a stock, it’s good for a certain amount of shares. That’s it. The bid is only good for a certain amount of shares.
That bid is hit, the price is going to drop and it’s gonna drop quickly if you flood the market as such. Again, wealth, okay, it can be determined by a myriad of things. Okay, we just are watching this right now in regards to Donald Trump and his properties and saying he inflated his properties to too great of a degree, whatever.
You know, people do that all the time. They do it all the time with their own real estate, with their own holdings, with their belief and what their artwork is worth. To me, it’s about cash. We want to talk about the world’s richest people. They’re the ones that are selling commodities. They’re the ones that, you know, basically they go every single day and that’s a faucet of cash.
that continues to pour in oil, gas, whatever it may be. You never talk about the wealth of these people out there. And again, how do you put a true value on something where it’s just again, it’s constantly pouring out of a faucet for them. I always mention this. You go on vacation in the summer and we’re in the Mediterranean and you see these these
ships, ships, you wouldn’t call them these yachts that are, it’s hard to even get your arms around. And you know, you take a look at the name behind the, they actually have Wikipedia pages and nine out of 10 of them, nine out of 10 of them are owned by people you’ve never heard of. You’ve never heard of, but you know, ah, skies, Kazakhstan, what’s his business, energy, Ukraine.
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Azerbaijan, Russia, you name it.
These are people that have faucets where cash perpetually flows out of. So again, 197 billion Musk, 198 billion for LVMH, Bezos, $200 billion. Okay, they’re doing well. It’s great. They built up great businesses. But again, how do you define rich? How do you define it?
And again, it’s why I like this. And I think it’s important to talk about they come out these lists. People don’t understand, quite frankly, how the markets work, how they operate. Even Elon Musk, you take a look at his position that he has and what his Tesla stock is worth. You see the type of money that he doesn’t takes basically nothing as a salary. He holds his position in stock. He lives in a trailer more often than not.
Again, he wants to cash in a stock, which he’s done from time to time. He can do that, or he can use it to go buy Twitter or whatever he may choose. And this is one of the interesting things about having these large blocks of stock is sometimes they don’t even cash them in. They borrow against them. They have their bankers and they’re able to borrow against their shares if they’ve got solid companies. And again, there’s tax advantages to doing that too. But make no bones about it. OK?
It’s not Scrooge McDuck type stuff where they’re swimming around in bathtubs full of gold coins. And if Jeff Bezos tried to get liquid for $200 billion, he couldn’t do it. Watchdog on wallstreet .com.