Fifty of the world’s wealthiest people have seen their fortunes implode by over half a trillion dollars over the last eight months according to Matt Durot of Forbes, writing for MSN.com.
In September 2021, when Elon Musk passed Jeff Bezos to become the world’s wealthiest person, he was in quite a jovial mood. He even told Forbes that he was going to send a silver medal to the Amazon CEO. Now, nearly 8 months later, neither Musk nor Bezos appears to be in a joking mood. Needless to say, we don’t think we can expect to see a repeat of 2021’s summer space race.
This high-profile draining of the world’s top 50 bank accounts was precipitated by brutal hits to the US stock market, taking a huge bite out of the stock values of many public trading companies. That, coupled with soaring interest rates and accelerating inflation, has made 2022 one of the worst years on record for investment profiles.
On Monday the 24th, the S&P 500 posted its seventh consecutive week of consistent losses, the longest losing streak for the index since 2001, and the Nasdaq has just had its worst week since the financial crisis of 2008.
Taking all of this into consideration, the losses of Musk and Bezos appear to reflect the same global economic circumstances. During the last month of 2021, Musk lost $29 billion and Bezos lost $18 billion. The fortunes of both men started to recover from the hit around the end of February, though Bezos’ recovery was not as impressive as Musk’. However, both accounts have taken a sharp nosedive since then, and their bottom lines still appear to be dropping.
It should be noted that public and private sanctions have triggered enormous bottlenecks in trade, business relations, and shipping all around the world as the international business community turned its back on Russia. The economic isolation of Russia has had an impact on business and trade all around the world. Regardless of the soundness of any given investor’s stock choices, these circumstances have effectively cut off access to money, resources, and opportunities for commerce without regard to industry or market.
As of Friday, Bezos’ fortune is estimated to have dropped by nearly $60 billion since the end of December 2021. Amazon shares have slumped by 35 percent, an even faster drop than that suffered by the Nasdaq index. This could place Bezos as the biggest of the world’s top 50 losers during this recession.
Source: MSN.com
Dil Bole Oberoi
