On Thursday, the streak of the rise in the US equities for the past three months came to an end for the world’s richest people. This happened as the net worth of the world’s 10 richest people in the industry of technology dropped by $44 billion.
The fall was the worst for Amazon Inc.’s Jeff Bezos as his shares dropped by $9 billion. This has been the biggest drop for the company since June. Second to Bezos was Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk whose net worth suffered a drop of $8.5 billion. Tesla Inc.’s stocks have been falling for three days straight and the company is now moving dangerously close to the bear-market territory.
This turning of the fortune tables clearly emphasizes the temporary and elusive nature of paper assets, especially in a market that seems to have lost touch with the reality of our economic state.
While this pandemic drained the rest of the world economically and people suffered a lack of the most basic needs of life, the centibillionaires of the world kept still kept rising higher on seats of personal wealth.
Bezos hit the mark of centibillionaire twice and MacKenzie Scott, his ex-wife became the world’s richest woman overnight with a divorce settlement. Scott received a 4% stake in Amazon Inc. as part of the settlement. Musk and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg joined the centibillionaire club as well. Before Thursday, their wealth was increasing every day by about $4billion.
Quarantine made most consumers of the said companies turn to the internet which is why investors particularly paid attention to their tech stocks. Despite the huge fall on Thursday, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, wealth amounting to $830 billion have been added just by the 500 richest people in the world. As the new norm, Bezos had the highest gain of about $83 billion closely followed by Musk who rose by $69 billion.
