Despite the massive losses on Thursday, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index showed that in 2020, the 500 richest people have collectively gained $830 billion in wealth.
On Thursday, the world’s top ten tech billionaires lost $44 billion as U.S. equities tumbled. Among the billionaires, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos tops the list with a loss of $9 billion.
On Wednesday, the U.S. equities dropped the most in almost three months. Also, the S&P 500 declined more than 3.5% in response to the plunge in tech stocks such as Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB). Due to the decline, the Nasdaq 100 also fell 5%, making it the biggest loss since March.
The co-chief executive officer at Essex Investment Management, Nancy Prial, commented on the losses in the tech industry. According to Prial, it is too soon to know if the decline will worsen or recover.
As a result of the downswing in the tech industry, Jeff Bezos, Tesla’s Elon Musk and eight other tech billionaires collectively lost $44 billion from their net worths. Following Bezos is Musk who lost the second-highest at $8.5 billion. More billionaires who also lost money according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index are Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer (-$4.8 billion), Mark Zuckerberg (-$4.2 billion), Bill Gates (-$2.9 billion) and Larry Page (-$3.6 billion). Others include Sergey Brin (-$3.5 billion), Larry Ellison (-$2.4 billion), MacKenzie Scott (-$3.2 billion) and Jack Ma (-$1.6 billion).
Despite the massive losses on Thursday, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index showed that in 2020, the 500 richest people have collectively gained $830 billion in wealth.
Tech Billionaires before Recent Losses
During the stay-home period, many tech companies recorded increases. Before the recent losses, both Tesla and Facebook stock surged massively, pushing the fortunes of their CEOs to climb over $4 billion in a day. Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos became centibillionaires.
As of the 27th of August, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index recorded Tesla’s CEO as the fourth-richest person in the world. This coincides with the time Tesla shares jumped over $2,000. At that time, the index revealed that Musk was worth $101 billion.
According to the index, the richest person at that time was Bezos, who was leading the list with approximately $202 billion. Bezos was followed by Bill Gates who was worth $124 billion. Before Musk was Zuckerberg, who was also the third-richest person at the time, with a value of $115 billion.
On the 6th of August, Zuckerberg’s fortune exceeded $100 billion with 13% of his fortune from Facebook. Apart from Zuckerberg, only Bezos and Bill Gates were on the centibillionaires status.
In addition, the tech companies also reported gains in their second-quarter earnings results. Facebook reported a 11% increase in revenue while Amazon also reported a rise in revenue. For Q2, Amazon’s also jumped 40% to $88.9.
On Thursday the 3rd of September, Apple had its worst trading day since March. The giant tech company lost 8%, only second to the 16th of March when it crashed by 12.9%. Regardless of the plunge, AAPL has been performing quite favorable in the last twelve months.
Tolu is a cryptocurrency and blockchain enthusiast based in Lagos. He likes to demystify crypto stories to the bare basics so that anyone anywhere can understand without too much background knowledge.
When he’s not neck-deep in crypto stories, Tolu enjoys music, loves to sing and is an avid movie lover.
