“A surge in Amazon.com Inc. shares Thursday morning in advance of the online retailer’s earnings report has propelled founder Jeff Bezos past Bill Gates as the world’s richest person,” Shelly Hagan and Spencer Soper report for Bloomberg.
“Shares of the online retailer rose 1.3 percent to $1,065.92 at 10:10 a.m. in New York, giving Bezos a net worth of $90.9 billion, versus $90.7 billion for Gates,” Hagan and Soper report. “If that holds through the 4 p.m. close, Bezos, 53, will leapfrog Gates, the Microsoft Corp. co-founder, on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Gates, 61, has held the top spot since May 2013.”
“Meanwhile, Facebook Inc.’s intraday gains have helped pull co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, 33, within $200 million of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chairman Warren Buffett, 86, who’s currently ranked fourth on the Bloomberg index with a net worth of $74.5 billion,” Hagan and Soper report. “Bezos owns about 17 percent of Seattle-based Amazon, which has surged 40 percent this year through Wednesday, helping to add $24.5 billion to his net worth. He started 2017 as the world’s fourth-wealthiest person and has since surpassed Buffett and Inditex SA founder Amancio Ortega, 81, who ranks third with $82.7 billion.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: You can argue that Amazon is overvalued, but you cannot argue that Bezos is a disrupter who gets big things done.
Poor Warren, falling down the list. Before you know it, he’ll only be able to afford to buy Luxembourg.
So was that Bezos 20 minutes of fame? Amzn stock down $5 now
amazing how he can become the worlds richest man by running a company that can’t turn a profit
Well, it’s easier when your company does not pay stockholders any dividends. With a P/E of 200+, by the same token AAPL should be worth about 7 Trillion Dollars. Amazon is like a big over-inflated basketball that gets more air pumped into it each day..glad I don’t own it.
Amazon is getting big and bigger by the days, its stock got to be split and paying investors dividends. Where is the activist?.
Amazon is a ponzi scheme.
It’s all gambling. No exceptions.