A sour mood took hold among investors as the U.S. stock market cratered Monday morning, with all three major indexes sliding dramatically amid new data reflecting a slumping economy at home, frustrations with the Federal Reserve’s handling of inflation, and fears of further market volatility abroad.
After an unexpectedly weak jobs report dropped on Friday, showing the unemployment rate having risen to 4.3 percent—the highest level since Oct. 2021—Wall Street began grumbling that the Fed has waited too long to address rate cuts. Concerns that the central banking system will have to move quickly to play catch-up and prevent a hard landing proliferated on Monday.
The signs of a slowing economy were apparent at market close, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1,034 points or 2.6 percent, its worst day in nearly two years. The S&P 500 shed 3 percent and the more tech-focused Nasdaq lost 3.4 percent, a correction spurred by the burgeoning skepticism around A.I. The crypto industry followed suit, with Bitcoin falling 12 percent and Ether nearly 20 percent.
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The downturn follows several bad days in overseas trading, particularly in Japan, where the benchmark Nikkei index closed at more than 12 percent down—its largest single-day drop since “Black Monday” in Oct. 1987, according to Reuters. On Tuesday morning, local time, the Nikkei began to recover, rising more than 8% in its opening minutes of trading, the outlet reported.
With the cascade effect of a global sell-off and the specter of a recession successfully having been raised (see the “Sahm Rule”), all this means that a whole lot of on-paper wealth just got wiped out.
The world’s top tech billionaires were slapped around particularly roughly by the markets, seeing a collective $68 billion erased from their net worths overnight, according to numbers crunched by Bloomberg. Just how hard-hit were they?
Jeff Bezos
Call him the biggest loser at the market. No single human fared worse on Monday morning than Jeffrey Preston Bezos, who lost $8 billion, according to a Forbes tracker. That’s small potatoes compared to his Friday losses, however, when Amazon shares dipped by nearly 9 percent, translating to the vanishing of more than $15 billion for its 60-year-old co-founder and executive chairman.
Friday’s wipeout represents only the second-worst such incident for Bezos, who currently owns just under 10 percent of Amazon. He previously lost $36 billion in April 2019 in a slide connected to the announcement of his divorce settlement, according to Fortune.
Late Monday, he was worth an estimated $180.1 billion, per Forbes. Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index had him pegged at a slightly more optimistic $185 billion.
Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth shrank to a paltry $164 billion after a loss of $7 billion on Monday. The dip followed a similarly rough Friday, which saw Meta shares retreating 1.9 percent and a personal net loss of $3.39 billion.
Still, the Zuck’s fall only won him the bronze medal, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang tallying a loss of $7.9 billion. And the Facebook founder doesn’t have too much to cry about overall—he’s seen a leap of $45.6 billion this year, making his the single largest increase in net worth of the world’s 10 wealthiest people.
Zuckerberg was worth an estimated $171.2 billion on Monday evening, according to Forbes.
Elon Musk
Ah, Elon Musk. The world’s richest man, with an unfathomable net worth of roughly $227 billion on Monday evening, Bloomberg reported. But that’s after a loss of around $6 billion earlier in the day as Tesla shares spiraled six percent, compounded by further losses last week.
The carmaker has lost much of the recent ground it gained over the past few months, not only thanks to the winds of A.I. skepticism but also to Musk courting controversy after controversy. (It was reported earlier on Monday that X, which he owns, was officially beginning the process of shuttering its San Francisco headquarters in favor of a move down south to Texas.)
Between July 31 and Aug. 2, Bloomberg noted a precipitous drop of his net worth, from $252 billion to $235 billion. How will he ever afford child support now?
