Bill Gates is extremely bullish on the stock markets and his investments have paid off, adding $16 billion to his net worth, regardless of his philanthropic efforts worth $35 billion. Gates is still the world’s second-richest man.
Principal Founder of the Microsoft Corporation, Bill Gates, has been very popular for many years not just for his contribution to the tech space but is also known far and wide for how much wealth he’s been able to amass over the years.
Gates who is also known for his many humanitarian efforts including consistent philanthropy, gave away more than $35 billion of his wealth to charity in 2019 alone, according to Bloomberg. Regardless of this, Gates still added $16 billion to his net worth in less than 10 months, bringing his total wealth to about $106 billion. Gates is currently the world’s second-richest, only after Jeff Bezos – founder and CEO of Amazon.
Gates has spoken about his investment methods, expressing that he’s usually not unnecessarily careful with related efforts. Currently, Gates has about 60% of his entire net worth in investments including stocks and index funds, a very large percentage for anyone even when they aren’t the second richest in the world. According to Gates:
“We’re not, you know, in some defensive posture where we’re mostly in cash, or anything like that. The strategy that’s been used on the investments is to be over 60% in equities.”
Apart from the large percentage in investments, it’s also pretty unusual to see billionaires put in so much investment into stocks and index funds. What’s more common is a wider range of diversification across the stock market as well as other routes including real estate, government bonds and also investments in viable startups.
This feat, especially regarding his investments, has been largely credited to Gates’ investment chief, Michael Larson, who manages Cascade Investment, L.L.C., an American holding and investment firm based in Washington and controlled by Gates himself.
Gates also spoke on taxes and has pushed for an increase in income taxes for some of America’s most wealthy people. If this happens, Gates’ fortunes might dwindle depending on how much tax is added but apparently, the billionaire doesn’t mind and is all for wealth tax even though he’s not sure the government will approve. Still speaking in the interview, Gates said:
“I doubt, you know, the U.S. will do a wealth tax but I wouldn’t be against it. The closest thing we have to it is the estate tax. And I’ve been a huge proponent that that should go back to the level of 55% that it was a few decades ago.”
As much as Gates is bullish on the stock market, the billionaire doesn’t think that everything will continue rising consistently in the future. According to him:
“There’s reason to think absolute returns for the next decade will be less than they have been for the last several decades.”
Gates also spoke about his foundation’s efforts to tackle inequality, naming it the greatest obstacle to creating a decent life in the world’s poorest countries. Even in America, it is said that for at least 90 years now, just about 0.1$ of its riches people have controlled more wealth in the country. Gates mentions that inequality is worse in other countries and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is actively working on that, specifically mentioning the mortality rates in other parts of the world as well.
At the time of writing MSFT stock is up by +0.78% making $137.39 per share. The company’s market cap makes $1.057T.
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