Executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, Safra Catz, and Jamie Dimon, sold billions in shares just ahead of a tech selloff driven by Donald Trump’s tariff threats.

Before President Donald Trump's tariff pronouncements rocked markets, insiders such as Oracle Corporation’s Safra Catz, Meta Platforms Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg, and JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon sold out shares worth billions of dollars. Facebook made $733 million from the sale of 1.1 million shares with the help of its Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and its linked foundation.

All these sales were successful at the beginning of the year, when Meta's stock peaked on the 14th of February at around $736; it was still trading above $600. Since then, the share price of the social media company has dropped by 32% as a result of the general market selloff.

The CEO of Oracle sold 3.8 million shares for $705 million, making him another top seller, before the price of the IT giant plummeted by almost 30%. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which is estimating her net worth for the first time, those profits, along with her residual share and investment portfolio, give her a fortune of $2.4 billion.

Markets were erratic during the first quarter. Even while technology stocks jumped in the early days of Trump's presidency, the selloff that wiped trillions of dollars off global markets was prompted by the uncertainty around tariffs in the run-up to April 2, Trump's so-called Liberation Day. The richest man in the world, Elon Musk, has lost $129 billion so far this year as tech industry stocks have been severely impacted by tariff uncertainties that could impact everything from phones to semiconductors.