It’s hard to believe, but by the luck of the draw or perhaps the ability of predicting the future, Jeff Bezos seems to have seen the COVID-19 outbreak coming from miles away! While everyone else was hit hard by the effects of the virus, with businesses going under due to quarantines, Bezos managed to sell nearly $3.4bn of Amazon stock at the beginning of February, before all hell broke loose. This type of three-day stock market rally has not been seen since the early 30’s. By selling 3% of his Amazon shares, the ecommerce guru managed to help Amazon recover its losses. He managed to get out of the water dry, keeping himself safe from colossal losses by taking this crucial step.
It seems he managed to predict the whole situation with COVID-19 and the collapse of the stock market, just like other US executives. Either that or he got lucky. The risk he took by selling large portions of the company’s shares has apparently paid off, especially at a time like this. That being said, he, or better to say Amazon, is still under pressure because of the outbreak. At least now Bezos can take devise better incentives knowing that he can tread safely while the world is in mass panic.