Amazon CEO Bezos sells over a billion dollars in company shares

The Chief Executive Officer of retail giant Amazon Jeff Bezos sold off over a billion dollars in stock. However, he still owns almost 80 million shares.

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As discussed in a recent Digital Journal article, Amazon shares reached a record high near the end of October.

Bezos is officially the world's richest person being worth almost $95 billion. The Bloomberg Billionaires index places him first ahead of Bil Gates. His wealth increased $29.3 billion since the beginning of this year.

As much of his wealth is tied up in company stock, Bezos sells off some of his Amazon stock from time to time. When he does so the amount he sold is registered in a Form 4 he files with the US Securities and Exchange.

Over the past six years, Bezos has periodically replenished his cash position by selling shares in the 900,000 to one million share range. In May of this year he sold $940.7 million worth of stock.

This year to date Amazon shares have risen a whopping 48 percent and just since September the shares rose 18 percent. Bezos decided to take advantage of this huge increase in his wealth on paper to turn some of it into cash.

Although Bezos did say in June of this year he wanted to become more involved with philanthropy he may put some of his cash into his rocket company Blue Origin. He said last April that he wants to put about $1 billion per year into the venture.

Blue Origin is an aerospace manufacturer and spaceflight services company with headquarters in Kent Washington. The company is developing technologies that will enable private human access to space. It is attempting to dramatically lower costs and increase reliability.

The company is first improving suborbital flight and at each stage is improving on earlier work. It has been focusing on rocket-powered Vertical Takeoff and Vertical Landing (VTVL) vehicles in order to access suborbital and orbital space. He could also spend some money on the Washington Post, the newspaper he bought in 2015. Or perhaps he will donate to the Bezos Family Foundation run by his parents.

Bezos had briefly surpassed Bill Gates back on July 27 this year but lost the title later the same day only to regain it on October 27 as noted on the appended You Tube video.

Amazon is the largest online shopping retailer. It is also the world's largest provider of cloud services through its Amazon Web Services division.