Has It Risen Enough? Bezos and Zuckerberg Sell Off Stocks One After Another

Insider Stock Purchases Surpass Sales at Highest Level in 3 Years

Peter Thiel, chairman of Palantir Technologies, Jeff Bezos, chairman of Amazon, and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, among other big tech executives, have recently been selling off their company shares one after another. This has led to analyses suggesting that the stock market growth driven by tech stocks has reached its peak.

On the 24th (local time), major foreign media outlets reported this citing data from financial information firm Verity.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

According to Verity, the ratio of insider stock sales to purchases in the first quarter of this year reached its highest level since the first quarter of 2021.

Experts interpret this as an indicator that the tech stock rally, triggered by the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI), is about to decline. Charles Elson, chair of corporate governance at the University of Delaware, said, "If tech company CEOs are selling because they believe this is the peak, it will be a sell signal for all investors." He added, "A large sale of shares by senior executives is never a good sign," explaining, "It means they have found better investment opportunities than the businesses they run."

Most of the large-scale sales in the first quarter came from executives in the tech industry. Chairman Thiel sold $175 million (approximately 234.7 billion KRW) this month, marking the largest sale since February 2021, when he sold $548 million (approximately 676.9 billion KRW).

Chairman Bezos sold 50 million Amazon shares in February, amounting to $8.5 billion (approximately 11.3985 trillion KRW). Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sold $21 million (approximately 2.82 billion KRW) worth of shares this year, nearly matching the $23.6 million (approximately 3.16 billion KRW) he sold over the two years from 2022 to 2023.

CEO Zuckerberg has sold millions of dollars worth of Meta shares over the past several years, but expanded his selling as the stock price reached an all-time high this year. In early last month, he sold 291,000 shares for $135 million (approximately 181 billion KRW).

Notably, former Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman sold $69.2 million worth of shares in early February ahead of his resignation. After Slootman announced his retirement, Snowflake's stock price dropped by 29%.

Ben Silverman, vice president of research at Verity, stated, "Insider stock sales are viewed as negative data points that investors need to be aware of," adding, "There is an unusual selling trend especially in the technology sector." He continued, "It is clear there is a current desire to generate liquidity, some of which is pent-up demand from 2022 to 2023, and one of the driving forces is stock market performance."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.