Twitter's stock has traumatized former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
Twitter's painful stock decline hasn't just worried employees and undermined the social network's PR narrative.
It has also demoralized promising amateur investor Steve Ballmer.
Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft and billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, revealed in October that he had gradually bought up 4% of all Twitter stock, or about $800 million worth, during the previous few months.
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Since that announcement, however, Twitter's stock has dipped from around $30 a share to barely half that amount, likely costing Ballmer hundreds of millions.
At a Fortune tech conference on Wednesday night, Ballmer admitted his experience with Twitter taught him a valuable lesson: "I don't want to be an investor."
tl;dr: Never tweet. Never invest.
Don't feel too bad for Ballmer though. He is estimated to have a net worth of nearly $23 billion, according to current figures from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Ballmer can afford to lose a couple hundred million here and there and still have the resources and mental energy to slam dunk in front of a cheering crowd gathered to watch the basketball team he owns.
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Topics X/Twitter
Seth Fiegerman was a Senior Business Reporter at Mashable, where he covered startups, marketing and the latest consumer tech trends. He joined Mashable in August 2012 and is based in New York.Before joining Mashable, Seth covered all things Apple as a reporter at Silicon Alley Insider, the tech section of Business Insider. He has also worked as a staff writer at TheStreet.com and as an editor at Playboy Magazine. His work has appeared in Newsweek, NPR, Kiplinger, Portfolio and The Huffington Post.Seth received his Bachelor of Arts from New York University, where he majored in journalism and philosophy.In his spare time, Seth enjoys bike riding around Brooklyn and writing really bad folk songs.
