Imagine if you had invested in a stock for pennies and then sold for $68.5 billion 25 years later.
That would be the stock pick of a lifetime. Certainly life changing, to say the least.
But let’s say that investment was a little less business and a little more personal.
Well, you’ve probably heard about it by now, but that’s exactly the sort of capital at stake for MacKenzie Bezos in her upcoming divorce from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
The couple met in 1992 in New York, where they both worked for D.E. Shaw, an investment management firm.
MacKenzie Bezos, then MacKenzie Tuttle, was no slacker herself. Tuttle was an aspiring novelist fresh out of Princeton, where she graduated with highest honors. There she studied under renowned author Toni Morrison, who described MacKenzie Bezos as “one of the best students I’ve ever had in my creative writing classes.”
MacKenzie Bezos published her first novel in 2005, The Testing of Luther Albright. The book tells the story of devoted family man and dam architect Luther Albright as he attempts to protect his family from his own descent into madness.
Bezos’s novel won the American Book Award in 2006, but her short and successful literary career has been largely overshadowed by her role as wife to the richest man on the planet.
Jeff Bezos’s net worth is currently estimated around $137 billion. What makes this coming divorce so interesting is that this inhumanly wealthy couple has no prenuptial agreement.
And why would they? Prenups are commonplace, if not the norm, for marriages among wealthy athletes, actors, or other celebrity millionaires.
But the couple met in 1992, both working in private equity and enjoying the financial success that comes with the territory. Jeff Bezos created Amazon in a garage in 1994 after the couple had left D.E. Shaw and moved to Seattle.
MacKenzie had no idea that her husband would one day become the richest man in recorded history.
The Bezos divorce stands to be the costliest separation in the history of the institution, but the two have every reason to keep it amicable.
First and foremost, they have four children. This couple is under the scrutiny of the public spotlight, so it’s in the best interest of the family to keep it clean and cordial.
From a colder financial perspective, MacKenzie Bezos does not want those Amazon shares to drop. A messy divorce is only going to hurt her stake in the company.
You can’t have the figurehead for a massive company like Amazon looking unstable.
When Elon Musk smoked marijuana on Joe Rogan’s podcast and followed that stunt with further erratic behavior and tweets, Tesla shares experienced a sharp and immediate drop.
When the head of a major company seems unreliable, the shareholders get spooked. And it may be too late to maintain Bezos’s illusion of security.
Seemingly, the root cause of the divorce was Jeff Bezos’s affair with Lauren Sanchez, Fox News anchor, former host of So You Think You Can Dance, and wife to Hollywood agent Patrick Whitesell.
Celebrity gossip rags are already running the content of Jeff Bezos’s texts to Sanchez, as well as confirming the presence of nude pictures from Bezos within their text stream.
The two most damning pieces of sultry communiqué come from Bezos in May of last year:
I love everything about you. I love that your last pic takes me completely out of my head. I am crazy about you. All of you. I need to smell and touch you. I want to hold you. I know you’re right for me. I know we fit.
You know what I want? I want to get a little drunk with you tonight. Not falling down. Just a little drunk. I want to talk to you and plan with you. Listen and laugh… I basically WANT TO BE WITH YOU!!! Then I want to fall asleep with you and wake up tomorrow and read the paper with you and have coffee with you.
On the more formal, professional side, Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos issued this joint statement from Jeff Bezos’s Twitter account last week:
We want to make people aware of a development in our lives. As our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends. We feel incredibly lucky to have found each other and deeply grateful for every one of the years we have been married to each other. If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all again. We’ve had such a great life together as a married couple, but we also see wonderful futures ahead, as parents, friends, partners in ventures and projects, and as individuals pursuing ventures and adventures. Though the labels might be different, we remain a family, and we remain cherished friends.
Jeff & MacKenzie
This may ultimately be the best choice for them. As disgraced comedian Louis C.K. once said, “No good marriage has ever ended in divorce.” And hopefully that is still the case as the couple proceeds with the most expensive divorce of all time.
We here at Pro Trader Today wish Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos all the best on the rocky road to come.
That’s all for now.
Until next time,
John Peterson
Pro Trader Today