The fortunes of America's wealthiest billionaires fell by $93 billion on Tuesday, the ninth-worst day loss in history, as hotter-than-expected US inflation statistics roiled markets.
Jeff Bezos' fortune fell by $9.8 billion, the largest of any billionaire tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Elon Musk's net worth has shrunk by $8.4 billion. Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Steve Ballmer's fortunes all fell by more than $4 billion, while Warren Buffett and Bill Gates' fortunes fell by $3.4 billion and $2.8 billion, respectively.
The billionaires' significant daily losses mirror the general selloff in the US stock market, as investors anticipated that higher-than-expected consumer price index data will prompt the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates more rapidly. The S&P 500 Index plummeted 4.4%, the biggest since June 2020, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index fell 5.5%, the largest since a more than 12% drop in March 2020.
It's the latest in a string of bad days for the markets and millionaires' fortunes this year. Last month, the same group of US millionaires lost $78 billion in a single day following Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's eight-minute speech.
Overall, the world's 500 wealthiest individuals are worth around $1.2 trillion less than they were at the start of the year. Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms Inc., has lost $68.3 billion, or approximately 54% of his fortune, while Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has lost $61 billion, or approximately 64%.
