The February 2026 Selloff › When Being Worth \$200 Billion Doesn't Help

The wealthiest people are often among the biggest losers. Larry Ellison, Oracle's co-founder, entered 2026 worth approximately \$247 billion. By February 5, he had lost \$49 billion, roughly 20% of his fortune, making him the biggest loser on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index for the year. He had already lost \$22.6 billion in a single day during the DeepSeek selloff on January 27 and \$24.9 billion in a single day in December 2025 when Oracle fell on AI capex concerns. Ellison owns approximately 41% of Oracle. Selling would mean losing control of his company, triggering billions in capital gains taxes, signaling weakness to the market, and potentially accelerating the decline he'd be trying to escape. The software billionaires as a group lost more than \$62 billion in the first five weeks of 2026. Adam Foroughi, the CEO of AppLovin, saw his net worth drop from \$27.3 billion to \$17.3 billion, a 30% decline, as his company's stock fell 42% year to date under the combined weight of a short-seller report, AI disruption fears, and the broader software rout. His two co-founders suffered similar percentage losses. Dave Duffield, co-founder of Workday, fell 19% to \$11.3 billion as the stock hit a three-year low. Scott Cook, founder of Intuit, dropped 17% and fell off the Bloomberg 500 richest list entirely. Jeff Bezos lost \$9.21 billion on February 5 alone, before Amazon's after-hours plunge on its \$200 billion capex announcement potentially added billions more to the damage. Jensen Huang of Nvidia lost roughly \$5 billion in a single session, having already suffered a \$20.1 billion single-day loss during the DeepSeek crash, the biggest single-day loss of value for any public company in history. The "billionaire problem" is a concentration problem. These founders and executives hold enormous stakes in single companies for reasons that make diversification practically impossible. Selling means losing control: Ellison's 41% stake gives him effective control of Oracle, and meaningful selling would dilute that and invite activist investors or hostile boards. Selling triggers taxes: under the current U.S. tax code, unrealized gains are not taxed, but any sale crystallizes a capital gains liability approaching 25% or more of the proceeds. The rational strategy, which most billionaires follow, is to borrow against their stock at low interest rates, spend the loan proceeds, and never sell. This is the "buy-borrow-die" approach: borrow against appreciated stock, live on the proceeds, and when you die, your heirs receive a stepped-up cost basis and never pay taxes on the original gains. Selling also sends a signal. When a founder-CEO sells stock, the market reads it as a lack of confidence. The resulting price decline is often self-reinforcing, punishing the seller for the act of selling. And the stock that cannot be sold often serves as collateral for billions in personal borrowing. Elon Musk, who describes himself as "cash poor" despite a net worth exceeding \$660 billion, has used Tesla shares as collateral for personal loans. A significant decline in the stock would trigger personal margin calls, forcing sales at the worst possible time. The concentrated billionaire is stuck: too wealthy to need to sell, too concentrated to survive a crash unscathed, too constrained by taxes and control and collateral to diversify. Mark Zuckerberg lost \$29.8 billion in a single day in February 2022 when Meta reported its first-ever decline in daily users and the stock fell 26%. Musk lost \$35 billion in November 2021 after tweeting about selling 10% of his Tesla stake. These are the wealthiest people alive, losing more in a day than many countries' annual budgets, because their wealth is concentrated in a single volatile security they cannot sell.