Over a little more than a year, billionaire and public menace Elon Musk — who often sounds like he might as well be on an explicit mission to make as many people dislike him as possible — has seen over $200 billion disappear from his personal net worth, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
In early November of last year, Elon’s net worth as reflected in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index hit $338 billion. On Thursday, the same source reported his net worth was at $132 billion using figures updated the previous day. Over that time, the stock price for Tesla, where Musk both serves as CEO and owns a substantial portion of the company, plummeted. On November 5 of last year, the share price passed $407. On Thursday, the price was around $122. Nearly one-third of Elon’s overall wealth is wrapped up in Tesla, according to Bloomberg numbers, with substantial portions also in the private company SpaceX and the social media site Twitter, which also isn’t publicly traded.
Musk led the Bloomberg list of the world’s richest people for awhile, but he recently dropped to second place — although he remains among a total of six on the list each with a reported net worth of more than $100 billion. While leading Twitter since finalizing his takeover in October, Elon has made significant dents to his public credibility for many. A prominent example is his handling of a disputed incident in southern California in which someone he described as a “crazy stalker” allegedly followed someone who turned out to evidently be on the billionaire’s security team and leaped on the hood of the latter’s car. In reality, later info indicated that cops showed up to the scene that night because the apparent Musk employee allegedly followed the other guy into a gas station parking lot, boxed him in with his car, and accused the other of tailing the vehicle — which Elon alleged carried one of his children — on the road.
The reported Musk staff member then hit the other guy with his car as he was trying to leave, according to recently reported allegations. He was gone before police showed up. It’s unclear there’s any confirming evidence the child was in the car or that the other man got onto the security team member’s hood. There is also no evidence tying the incident to a Twitter account booted from the site in the ensuing furor that tracked the location of Musk’s private jet — reporting on which was among Elon’s excuses for the suspensions of prominent journalists with accounts on Twitter.
