February 13, 1986: Jobs Says: “Sell, Sell, Sell!”

Steve Jobs has been lauded as a master marketer and design aesthete. One thing nobody has ever accused Steve of is being a financial savant. Steve's bank account may be heavily weighted to the happy side of zero but he didn't get there because of canny stock market trading.

Perhaps no event speaks more loudly of Steve Jobs’ lack of investing acumen than his divestment of Apple after Sculley ousted him in 1985. Taking the ouster as a sure sign of Apple mismanagement, Steve proceeded to sell all his shares in Apple save one.

The sale of Jobs' stock is reported to have netted more than seventy million dollars, which sounds impressive until you realize that Steve left far more than that on the table. Had Steve sold all shares at the Sculley stock price high he'd have netted a cool $817 million. Canny trader or not, it was this week in February 1986 when Steve Jobs unloaded his second-to-last share of Apple Computer stock.