The world’s billionaires saw $134 billion wiped off their fortunes overnight as stock prices plummeted, led by Jeff Bezos
The world’s 500 richest people saw $134 billion wiped off their fortunes overnight, as stock prices plunged on Friday due to Amazon.
The Nasdaq The 100 Index fell 2.4% on Friday, wiping at least $1 billion off the net worth of each of the world’s 10 richest people—at least on paper. The index is down more than 10% from its recent peak.
Tech billionaires alone — who make up many of the world’s richest people — lost $68 billion from their combined fortunes, according to by Bloomberg calculations. Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Larry Page parted ways with fortunes of more than $3 billion each on Friday.
Elon Musk’s net worth fell from $252 billion on July 31 to $235 billion on August 2, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
At that time, Oracle’s Larry Ellison’s fortune skyrocketed by $3 billion on paper overnight before losing all of his gains and another $3 billion the next day.
Meanwhile, when Amazon shares fell nearly 9% in one day on August 2, founder Jeff Bezos made nearly $16 billion. wiped out of his wealth.
Notably, this is the third worst loss for Bezos, who previously lost $36 billion in April 2019 after his divorce settlement. His net worth now stands at around 191 billion dollars.
The world’s second-richest person has also been steadily selling Amazon shares this year. The 60-year-old sold about $8.5 billion worth of shares in nine trading days in February, before recently revealing plans to sell another 25 million shares worth $5 billion.
Why are US tech stocks falling?
In short, AI uncertainty, Federal Reserve rate cuts and a Depressionas well as some notable earnings disappointments, helped push the tech-heavy index into correction territory.
The downturn began when Amazon announced on an earnings call That profit will no longer matter as the company plans to invest heavily in AI. This has investors concerned about overblown AI profits and led to Amazon’s biggest drop in shares since April 2022, when the stock fell 14%.
Simultaneously, Microsoft posted is slowing growth in its Azure cloud computing arm and said it expects to continue spending heavily on data centers. Meanwhile, Tesla miss Estimated income for the second quarter and Alphabet YouTube advertising revenue fell short of expectations.
Furthermore, a report from the Labor Department said the US economy created about 61,000 fewer jobs last month than expected.
Plus, with the unemployment rate at 4.3% — its highest since October 2021 — recession concerns are growing.
