Amazon.com AMZN +1.44% founder Jeff Bezos sold a small sliver of his stake in the e-commerce giant last week. If he had waited a few more days, he would have been able to make the sale at a fresh all-time high.

Shares of Amazon jumped as high as $699.71 Tuesday morning, topping  the high of $696.44 hit Dec. 29, when the stock also notched its record close of $693.37. Bezos got $1.4 billion richer thanks to the rally, with a fortune now worth $60.7 billion.

Update 4:15 p.m.: Amazon shares touched an intra-day high of $704.55 before closing at $703.07, both record levels. The gains added $2 billion to Bezos' net worth, which is up to $61.3 billion.

Jeff Bezos, chief executive officer of Amazon. (Matthew Staver/Bloomberg)

The recent rally of Amazon shares – with Facebook FB -0.34% it's keeping at least half of the big "FANG" trade going this year — has pushed Bezos to fourth place among the world's richest people, overtaking Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu. Since the Forbes list of The World's Billionaires was published in March, Bezos' net worth has grown by more than $14 billion, to $59.3 billion through Monday. (Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg isn't far behind, having climbed to sixth place on the list with a $51.5 billion fortune).