Originally Posted by pugman
In short they aren't.
Depending on what you think might happen companies like Apple, Google etc are in a pretty bad position since their revenue streams are based off techonological based products.
Bill Gates knows this. I remember reading an article several years ago about his personal financial consultant whose job it is every day to sell something like 50,000 shares of Gates's stock...I don't quite remember the number.
As of August, 2009 he owned 725 million shares so sheading 1.8 million shares a year sounds about right.
Google, Apple, MSFT can't run a successful business model thinking the economy is going to crash - simply because if it does, I think people might be more focused on food than downloading songs to their iphone. I know SOME people see this as a necessity....
Bill Gates sells the maximum amount of shares of Microsoft he can sell every quarter. It's called diversification.