We all remember Donald Trump’s inauguration day, January 20, when some of the richest people in the world stood next to each other.
When would we have the opportunity to see up close four or five people with a total wealth exceeding $800 billion?
They were, Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.
They were joined by Apple’s Tim Cook, who is wealthy to some extent but runs one of the world’s largest companies by market capitalization, as well as Google’s Sundar Pichai, who also runs a tech giant.
Not even 100 days have passed since January 20, and due to Donald Trump’s much-talked-about announcement, which “scattered” tariffs across the planet, the inaugural billionaires have lost a significant portion of their wealth.
Two days after the announcements, U.S. stock markets fell dramatically, in one of the biggest declines in recent years. Hundreds of billions in the market capitalization of almost every company on Wall Street’s desk were wiped out in a matter of hours, and with them the personal wealth of their bosses.
Let’s see what the wealth of the photo rich was on January 20, according to Forbes’ estimate.
The “champion” Elon Musk with 434 billion dollars, while Jeff Bezos followed with 239 billion and Zuckerberg with 211 billion. dollars. Three people, therefore, with a total wealth that reached almost 900 billion dollars.
In terms of their companies’ capitalization, Tesla was around $1.3 trillion, Amazon around $2.5 trillion, and Meta at $1.5 trillion.
Apple was the unofficial market capitalization champion at $3.5 trillion on January 20, with Alphabet, Google’s parent company, trailing at $2.4 trillion.
We cannot ignore two stock market giants that “abstained” from the ceremony, Microsoft had a capitalization reaching 3.2 trillion and Nvidia with a capitalization of 3.35 trillion.
Where are we after Trump’s tariffs? Companies lost hundreds of billions of dollars in two days.
Tesla, which is also suffering from low sales due to Elon Musk’s missteps, is currently under $800 billion. Amazon has lost ground and is around $1.9 trillion, while Meta is holding up relatively better and is at $1.3 trillion.
Important is the decline of Apple, which is at 2.9 trillion and Alphabet, which is below 1.8 trillion dollars.
In other words, in two months or so, these five companies lost about $2.5 trillion in market capitalization, or 10 times Greece’s GDP. Most of that was lost this week as the tariffs were announced and in the aftermath.
The situation is even worse for Microsoft, which fell to 2.7 trillion, or $500 billion, but also for Nvidia, which lost a whole trillion and is at 2.35 trillion.
This means that companies that sell services, like Microsoft, are in better shape than Tesla or Apple that rely on sales of physical items.
The losses of the owners of these companies – and let’s not forget the large shareholders – follow the flow of values ​​on the stock market.
On Thursday alone, the big players lost more than $200 billion in total, with Trump’s guests being the biggest losers.
Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune fell by about $18 billion (or 9%), Bezos by about $16 billion and Musk by more than $11 billion in one day – although year-to-date losses have exceeded $110 billion.
Within two days, the losses reach and exceed 50 billion dollars, a considerable sum. Do they regret it, do they see it as a temporary phenomenon, or are they powerless to do anything to change the situation?
