Billionaire and Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, has lost $50 billion so far this week after Tesla’s shares plunged for the second day in a row, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
According to the report, Tesla’s stock price witnessed a 16% drop this week, becoming the biggest two-day decline in the history of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Elon Musk’s $50 billion loss is the largest in his history, surpassing the $36 billion loss Jeff Bezos incurred following his divorce from MacKenzie Scott in 2019.
Elon Musk surpassed Jeff Bezos as the world’s richest man in January, with the gap between the two widening to $143 billion, an amount bigger than the net worth of the world’s fourth-richest person, Bill Gates. This was before this current decline.
This current decline puts the billionaire’s worth now at $323 billion, although he still retains the spot as the richest man on earth, leading second-wealthiest man Jeff Bezos by $82 billion.
What led to the decline?
Tesla’s stock witnessed a massive decline this week following a tweet by its billionaire owner asking his followers over the weekend if he should sell 10% of his stock to pay taxes.
The answer to this tweet poll was a resounding yes, prompting Tesla stock to fall by as much as 7% at its closing on Monday.
These stock prices also took an additional hit on Tuesday, falling as much as 12%, when famous short-seller, Michael Burry speculated in a now-deleted tweet that Musk could wish to sell his shares to pay off his personal debts.
The downward slope in Tesla’s stock price is also due to news that Elon Musk’s cousin and Tesla director, Kimbal Musk, also sold over $100 million worth of Tesla stock last week.
Tesla’s stock prices also might have taken a hit following a similar Tweet by Elon Musk last week disclosing that Tesla was yet to actually receive an order from Hertz. That deal was believed to have fostered the company’s trillion-dollar valuation.
Elon is not the only person to have been adversely affected by this fall in stock prices, as Cathie Wood’s ARK Investment Management lost more than $700 million in Tuesday’s selloff.
Similarly, Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison, Tesla’s second-largest individual shareholder, lost $2.1 billion.
The billionaire’s stance
Although Tesla stock prices are witnessing a current decline, Elon Musk’s fortune has increased by 70% this year, thanks to Tesla’s outstanding delivery statistics and profitability gains, as well as a greater value for SpaceX.
Irrespective of the drop, Tesla continues to retain its above $1 trillion market capitalization, a level it reached last month after the company’s third-quarter earnings exceeded forecasts.
The company also achieved this feat after rental-car giant Hertz Global Holdings Inc. reportedly placed an order for 100,000 Tesla automobiles.
“Electric vehicles are now mainstream, and we’ve only just begun to see rising global demand and interest,”
Mark Fields, Hertz’s interim Chief Executive Officer
That report has however been debunked as Mr Musk clarified the orders haven’t been officially sealed yet.
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