‘White knuckle’ week for tech titans as shares and fortunes fall
The world’s richest billionaires have lost more than $50bn (£37bn) this week as their fortunes – mostly held in technology companies – have dropped in a “white knuckle” rout on tech shares.
Elon Musk, the wealthiest person on the planet, saw his fortune fall by $25.8bn (£19.2bn) in a single day on Thursday (according to the latest data available) as shares in his electric car company Tesla fell 11% to their lowest since October.
Despite the dip – which is roughly equivalent to the annual salaries of 615,000 people earning the average UK salary of £31,000 – Musk is still the richest person alive by some distance.
The fortune of Jeff Bezos, the world’s second-richest person and the founder of Amazon, has fallen by $27.8bn (£20.76bn) since the start of the year to $164bn (£122bn), according to Bloomberg’s daily tally of billionaires’ fortunes. Amazon shares have dropped by a quarter since November.
The billionaire’s paper loses come as the tech-heavy Nasdaq stock exchange in New York has suffered its worst start to the year since 2008 as investors sell off “stay at home” stocks that had performed very strongly during pandemic lockdowns and prepare for interest rate rises.
“We view this as the most important earnings season for the tech space in potentially the last decade,” Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said in a note to clients. “The Street now needs to hear good news at a ‘white knuckle time’ from tech bellwethers.”
Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates and former chief executive Larry Balmer, as well as Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have each seen their fortunes drop by more than $10bn (£7.4bn) since the start of the month.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Meta (the company formerly
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