Bill Gates Could Have Been 'World's First Trillionaire' By Ignoring Buffett's Advice — Instead, He Lost $10 Billion Shorting Tesla, Says Elon Musk

Billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO, Elon Musk, erstwhile again reignited the statement surrounding Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) co-founder, Bill Gates‘ monolithic wealth, and what it could person been, had helium not conformed to accepted wealthiness readying norms.

On Wednesday, successful a station connected X, capitalist Michael Arouet highlighted the existent apical 10 richest radical successful the world, a database that nary longer includes the Microsoft co-founder but does diagnostic erstwhile CEO Steve Ballmer astatine No. 8, with an estimated nett worthy of $166 billion.

This comes aft being ranked arsenic the world’s wealthiest idiosyncratic by Forbes mag for 18 of the 24 years betwixt 1995 and 2017.

Don't Miss:

• Americans With a Financial Plan Can 4X Their Wealth — Get Your Personalized Plan from a CFP Pro

• $100k+ successful investable assets? Match with a fiduciary advisor for escaped to larn however you tin maximize your status and prevention connected taxes – nary cost, nary obligation.

Arouet shared the communicative of Gates’ determination to merchantability his presumption successful Microsoft connected the proposal of legendary capitalist and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK) (NYSE:BRK) CEO, Warren Buffett, who asked him to diversify his holdings.

According to Arouet, if Gates hadn’t listened to Buffett, helium would present beryllium “the world's archetypal trillionaire, worthy doubly arsenic overmuch arsenic Elon.”

As Microsoft shares proceed to soar, and its marketplace capitalization is present astatine $3.6 trillion, Gates’ nett worthy would person stood astatine a staggering $1.5 trillion if helium had retained each of his shares successful the institution and hadn’t embarked connected the monolithic philanthropic travel with his ex-wife, Melinda Gates.

To beryllium fair, it's hard to responsibility Buffett for that advice. Few could person anticipated Microsoft's bonzer surge implicit the past decade, peculiarly aft the banal spent years mostly treading h2o pursuing the dot-com crash, taking astir 15 years to reclaim its anterior peak.

Bill Gates placed a monolithic abbreviated stake against Tesla of ~1% of our full shares, which mightiness person outgo him implicit $10B by now

See Also: Buffett's Secret to Wealth? Private Real Estate—Get Institutional Access Yourself

Musk weighed successful connected the post, erstwhile again bringing attraction to the abbreviated presumption that helium claimed Gates has held against Tesla for the past 8 years.

In his reply to the post, Musk said “Bill Gates placed a monolithic abbreviated stake against Tesla,” which helium said was 1% of the company’s full shares outstanding, portion adding that the presumption has since outgo the Microsoft co-founder arsenic overmuch arsenic $10 billion, arsenic Tesla shares soared implicit the past fewer years.