How to lose a quick $1.5 million

Timing is everything.

3M boss George Buckley told the Securities and Exchange Commission in a filing that he plans to sell a third of his shares in his company by the end of the year.

The filing said Buckley could sell up to 376,037 shares, worth about $32.4 million based on the stock’s Wednesday closing price of $86.18 a share, the Star Tribune reported this morning.

In the egg Wall Street laid today, 3M’s stock dropped almost 5% in value, to $82.23 a share. Buckley’s value of the shares he intends to sell dropped $1.5 million. It lost $364,000 in the last 20 minutes of trading.

He’ll probably be OK, anyway.