Jeff Bezos just sold nearly $2.5 billion in Amazon shares

Bezos is the world’s wealthiest individual, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with a net worth of about $191 billion. Last year, Bezos sold more than $9 billion in Amazon stock, and he has previously said about $1 billion of that goes every year to his rocket startup, Blue Origin.

Last week, Amazon reported it tripled profits in its first quarter, compared to a year ago, and forecast sales above $110 billion in the second quarter. That is expected to be the last full quarter with Bezos as CEO; earlier this year Bezos said he would step down in the third quarter to become executive chairman of Amazon.

Amazon shares AMZN, -1.25% have slipped more than 5% over the past week and are flat for the year, though are up 39% over the past year, compared to the S&P 500’s SPX, +0.07% 46% gain in the past 52 weeks.