Steve Ballmer was interviewed on the most recent episode of the Acquired podcast. He is the eight richest person in the world mostly because he simply “held the damn stock.” Outside of Microsoft, his investments include the LA Clippers (a passion project), a company called Stagwell Media, and other than that, mostly index funds.
If you are interested at all in MSFT it is well worth checking out.
His advisors have probably urged him to diversify his assets from all Microsoft stock. An index fund is a reasonable way to do that. And maybe following multiple indices.
The remarkable thing is that for the most part he didn’t do that. He talks about why in the podcast. The part I thought was interesting is that he didn’t speculate in start ups or real estate and such for the most part. He just went with boring old index funds.
Paul Allen and Bill Gates did diversify. If Gates had held onto his 45% original stake and never sold or gave away shares, he’d be worth approximately $1.6 trillion today.