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Billionaire bosses of Meta Platform (META), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), and Oracle Corp (ORCL) sold millions of dollars of personal shares ahead of President Donald Trump's tariffs announcement in April, according to a Bloomberg News report.
Meta chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg sold 1.1 million shares worth $733 million in the first quarter through his Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, according to an analysis by the Washington Service, which tracks insider buying and selling.
Those trades were made in January and February, according to the report. Meta shares peaked in mid-February and have lost 32% in value since then.
Trump announced sweeping tariffs on nearly all U.S. trading partners on April 2 and paused those for some countries and categories of goods later, sending global markets into a tailspin.
Shares of nearly all companies across industries have fallen this month as they assess the impact of tariffs on their business and reconfigure supply chains.
S&P 500 (SPX) is down 5.5% month to date. It had dropped 4.6% in the first quarter.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon reportedly sold about $234 million of stock during the quarter.
Oracle CEO Safra Catz unloaded 3.8 million shares worth $705 million. With those proceeds, her remaining stake, and other investments, Catz landed on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index for the first time with a net worth of $2.4 billion.
Washington Service data, however, showed that insider selling declined in Q1 compared to the same period in 2024. Some 3,867 insiders sold shares totaling $15.5 billion, down from 4,702 insiders who offloaded $28.1 billion a year earlier.
A significant portion of the 2024 sales came from Jeff Bezos, who sold over $8.5 billion in Amazon.com (AMZN) stock in February.
Some billionaire insiders are already taking advantage of the current market slump to buy shares at depressed prices and increase their stakes.
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