Excluding a crash that bankrupts everyone else also. Could it happen all at once?
Without knowing the ins and outs of Gates’ portfolios, and with the caveat you posit (no worldwide crash) the only way for him to go broke would be for him to give it all away. Perhaps to a registered charity. All he needs is a pint a day.
He could go all in during a crazy night of drinking and poker.
Not much is known about Gates’ investment portfolio but we know that he owns a lot of land, at least 100,000 acres. He owns a lot of real estate, including investments in several hotels. He has a diversified portfolio of stocks. Microsoft is a relatively small part of his portfolio now since he sold off the majority of his MSFT stock to diversify. He probably owns US government bonds as a “cash” holding.
For him to lose everything, the US government would have to default on its debt, the stock market would have to not just crash, but effectively disappear, and real estate would have to become worthless. He simply owns so much of so many things that the only way for him to become broke is for everything to lose all of its value. He has 300,000,000 or so shares of Microsoft. Even if MSFT dropped to $0.01 his shares would still be worth $3,000,000. Excepting silly answers like him losing it all in a bet, he simply can’t go broke unless the entire economy disappears.
Couldn’t a large legal judgment against him do it, like tax fraud? Combined with Microsoft going bankrupt, of course, to get his asset sheet low enough that the IRS could seize the rest?
Probably have to find a way to have him lose all of his property too - non-payment of property taxes, perhaps? I’d have to assume he’s well insured against any loss or liability on his properties.
Silly? Maybe a little, but it happens. John Daly blew 50 -75 million dollars gambling. Leonard Tose lost over one hundred million and is pretty much destitute. An old buddy of mine put up his car’s pink slip during a poker game. He lost his car, which led to him being fired and eventually becoming homeless.
Just saying.
How many years did it take John Daly to lose $50 million? He didn’t lose it all in one year, but let’s suppose that Bill Gates loses $100 million per year gambling and that he lives to be 100 years old (he’s 59). That’s $4.1 billion dollars lost gambling. Still too rich to go broke.
And prostitutes:D
Well sure, you’re being reasonable.
I’m picturing him in an ego-stoked battle with David Koch, saying, “Fuck you Koch, you bluffing ass” and putting all he owns on the line then losing on the river.
He could borrow heavily and then try to corner the market in copper, like Hamanaka, or silver, like the Hunt brothers. Then, when the market crashed, he’d have to payt his losses out of his own fortune.
Even the Hunts, however, weren’t crazy enough to tie up all their assets.
Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy could orchestrate an elaborate trick, like they did to the Dukes.
The way people lose everything in one day is they borrow a ton of money against their assets and make an investment that turns out to be spectacularly wrong. Then they have to repay the loan, which means liquidating your assets to cover the loan. Some types of speculation can leave you owing more than the amount of your investment if things go wrong.
If you just buy and hold a bunch of stuff you can lose money when the assets decline in value, but you can’t lose everything unless all your assets somehow crater, all at the same time. If your entire portfolio is Kmart stock, and Kmart goes bankrupt, then you’ve lost everything. Except only crazy people invest in only one company, even if you’re the founder of the company.
Another thing that can happen is that you own a lot of stuff, but live well beyond your means. You buy fancy art, houses, real estate, race horses, cars, and so on. Eventually the monthly cost of maintaining all this is greater than your income. Pretty soon you have a negative net worth despite your lavish lifestyle. Suddenly you have a liquidity crisis when people realize you don’t have the assets to back up your borrowing, and refuse to loan to you. And without new loans you can’t maintain your nut and suddenly everything crashes and you’re broke. That’s your classic MC Hammer story.
But Bill Gates is so rich that mere overconsumption of luxury goods couldn’t bankrupt him, unless he’s buying sports teams and private islands and so on. A classic problem in authoritarian countries is for a wealthy person to piss off the wrong guy, and end up in prison with your fortune confiscated. This was a classic way to fund state projects in the late Roman Republic. If Bill Gates was a Russian oligarch he could end up broke and in jail merely for annoying Vladimir Putin. But it would take a radical change in American politics for that to be a problem here.
Bill Gates wouldn’t notice losing a hundred million dollar bet. I don’t think Gates could lose all his money gambling because there’s no casino big enough to cover his bets.
This - unless he’s buying stocks on margin or borrowing money for speculative ventures - he will never go broke. He is a smart guy - and I doubt he does much of either.