Although he remains obviously very wealthy, Elon Musk is no longer the world’s richest person, according to multiple metrics.
Musk is now listed by Forbes as the second-richest person in the world, behind Bernard Arnault — who’s ranked with his family, for some reason. Arnault has been involved in the development and leadership of brands like Louis Vuitton, Tiffany, Tag Heuer, and Celine. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index has also moved Musk to the runner-up spot behind Arnault, who is listed there by himself. Forbes and Bloomberg utilize slightly different methods for calculating the personal net worth of those in the publications’ rankings of billionaires, but they listed Musk up to about $15 billion behind Arnault early on Wednesday. Bloomberg reported that Musk had lost $107 billion from his net worth over the course of this calendar year.
The trading price for Tesla shares, from which a lot of Musk’s wealth is derived, has recently fallen by leaps and bounds amid chaos surrounding his takeover of Twitter — around which he has also further mired his public image with his treatment of staff at the social media site, many of whom he has fired, and his promotion of far-right nonsense like his recent insistence on prosecuting Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health and his complaints about individuals and companies going “woke,” a term seemingly used far more often by petulant conservatives than those the phrasing supposedly describes. At the rate these people make angry stops on the conservative media circuit and even pass legislation restricting the spread of ideologies they deem “woke,” you’d think there’s some arm of the Democratic Party dedicated to specifically promoting the “woke” mindset and terrorizing those who dare lodge opposition. There’s not, at least in terms of “woke” meaning something inherently anti-American and actively hateful.
Recent drops in the stock price for Tesla shares follow skyrocketing prices over recent years that drove Musk higher in wealth rankings. As of the middle of Wednesday morning, Tesla had seen a drop in share price of over 60 percent from that recorded at the start of the year. Musk also holds a substantial, near-majority stake in SpaceX, which isn’t publicly traded. Musk is seeing these economic hurdles amid more positive signs for the overall economy, like a consistently low unemployment rate, decreasing rates of both yearly and month-to-month inflation, and a recently released report on the job market for November that beat at least some economists’ expectations. Across the course of the year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has recorded a drop in value in the single digits in percentage terms, although this month has seen a (slightly lower) increase in value. Tesla hasn’t experienced a similar boost. Even looking at just figures comparing the present price to that from across roughly the last month, it’s down a full 18 percentage points.
