Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is no longer the richest man in the world after the fortune of Tesla CEO Elon Musk soared to $188.5 billion on Thursday, $1.5 billion more than Bezos.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, shares in electric car manufacturer Tesla increased by more than 6 percent on Thursday to drive South African-born Musk into the top spot, dethroning Bezos from the position he has held for more than three years.
Since the start of last year, Tesla’s market capitalization, a calculation of the stock price of the company multiplied by the number of shares, has been on a roll, growing from around $80 billion in January 2020 to just over $760 billion today.
Last year, Musk’s personal fortune, which is related to Tesla’s share price, increased by over $150 billion.
The current valuation is more than eight times the combined prices of GM, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler, the conventional “Big Three” U.S. automakers.
Musk leapfrogged past Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in November to become the second-richest man in the world, with $128 billion at the time.
Most of Musk’s vast personal fortune comes from owning 20% of Tesla and 54% of his SpaceX space transportation business.
In December, Tesla entered the S&P 500, raising trading volume and volatility as the scale of its market cap forced investors to rebalance their portfolios to offset their index weight.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s shares have fallen from their September peak of about $3,500 to about $3,200 as investors sell off fearing that President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming administration would tighten tech regulations and slash the online shopping giant’s profits.
The cryptic and off-center tweets of Musk have done little to reduce the interest of investors from hitting new highs and have instead encouraged passionate fandom from online followers who lift the stock on message boards and invest using direct-to-consumer trading apps such as Robinhood, where it is one of the most popular stocks to hold.
Nor do conventional Wall Street analysts believe that Tesla’s median target is around $450 a share, nearly half of its present value.
According to the Center for Policy Studies, the U.S. gained 56 new billionaires between March and December of last year, taking the number to 659.
In the months since the pandemic started, their wealth has jumped by more than $1 trillion.
Source: NBC