That's factually wrong.

The S&P 500 was 1300 when he sold to Yahoo. He received $1.4 billion of Yahoo (14.6m shares at $95/each). He had to pay taxes on clearing out that position as well, so you can safely assume his after tax position was more like ~$1.1 billion. He very solidly beat the S&P 500.

He's worth $4.08 billion today according to Bloomberg (ranked #500 on their global rich list). He has increased his net worth by nearly 4x.

The S&P 500 is at 2747. It has just over doubled since April 1999. He'd be missing a billion dollars if he had gone with the S&P 500, including any dividends.

He was better off with what he did, he beat the S&P 500 index fund. Not only did he make more money his way, he got to do what he wanted to with his money, such as buying the Mavericks.

Sure, though given his investments in startups etc he could easily have lost 90% of it.

thank you. this is always something people forget. if you want to claim you are a good business man, you need to show that your businesses do better than an index fund.