Image credit:
REUTERS | Brendan McDermid
It was October 2013 when famous Wall Street investor Carl Icahn began selling his shares in a DVD rental company that had recently managed to switch to streaming. Icahn had already made a 457% return on his initial capital injection so he decided to retire. His son Brett begged him not to, but the investor went on to finally sell in 2015, earning $ 2 billion for his shares.
The company that Icahn left? Netflix .
Sold last of our $ NFLX today. Believe $ AAPL currently represents the same opportunity we stated NFLX offered several years ago.
- Carl Icahn (@Carl_C_Icahn) June 24, 2015
Since then, the price of the entertainment company's stock has increased by almost 10. However, Ichan has no regrets about his decision.
In a recent interview with the US version of Forbes , Icahn indicated that the market was telling him that it was time to "take some chips off the table."
The 85-year-old Icahn illustrates the change on Wall Street, Forbes suggests, as companies with less tangible assets like GameStop and Bitcoin have grown, while old-guard investors like Ichan continue to bet on wealth-rich companies. assets and cash that need restructuring.
As reflected in Nathan Vardi's article , this investor's strategy is not totally wrong. His company Icahn Enterprises owns shares in the CVR Energy refinery and the retailer Pep Boys, which are trading at about $ 60, growing 20% a year.
It also has Occidental Petroleum investments, bullish shares thanks to the recovery in the price of crude oil to 60 dollars a barrel since last year.
With everything and his "mistake" with Netflix, Carl Icahn's net worth is around $ 15.8 billion. Almost nothing.