Topics: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Politics, US News, Money
Donald Trump’s inauguration in January saw five of the richest men in the world stand behind him in support and now, they’ve lost billions.
January 20 was a big day for US politics, it marked a moment where Trump took his second term in office and began his mission to create numerous executive orders which saw him enforce high tariffs worldwide, a LGBTQ+ pride flag ban, and the controversial two-genders order.
But it was also a big day for the five billionaires surrounding him and attending the event.
Those people were Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bernard Arnault and Sergey Brin.
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We’ve all seen the Tesla mogul as he was very active during Trump's presidency campaign, and now continues to be of service to White House by having a key role in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
But nobody knew why the rest of the uber wealthy men were there.
Well, as it turns out, it was initially a great payout for them to be there as all five members enjoyed an increase in the stock market, and its financial gain.
However, weeks later it dipped and left them less off than they were before the inauguration.
Just seven weeks after the start of Trump’s second term, the group lost $209 billion in their collective wealth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The publication stated that is was due to the S&P 500 index dropping by nearly 7 percent since Trump took office.
Bloomberg shared that the weeks between Trump's election and his inauguration, the S&P 500 index reached several historical highs as investors jumped on the stock and cryptocurrency markets.
This is because they expected Trump's policies to boost the markets all round.
Because of this, Musk's Tesla Inc. increased by 98 percent, Bernard Arnault's LVMH increased by 7 percent, and Zuckerberg's Meta by 29 percent.
However, that didn’t last long.
Soon, the companies the billionaires’ businesses went on to drop by a total of $1.43 trillion in market value.
Musk’s Tesla sales in Germany fell by more than 70 percent after Trump took to office, which is believed to be because of Musk’s political affiliation, which has gone on to leave him $145 billion worse off.
Amazon had donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration, but Bezos ended up losing $31 billion after Amazon sales fell by 15 percent.
Brin, who co-founded Google (Alphabet Inc.) with Larry Page and has 6 percent of the shares, his shares fell by more than 7 percent in the weeks after the company missed quarterly revenue estimates, losing him $23 billion in total.
The Facebook founder and his company Meta then lost $8 billion when The Magnificent Seven index fell by 21 percent from its mid-December peak.
Lastly, Arnault lost $5 billion.
You might know his family, who owns the conglomerate (LVMH) behind fashion designers Louis Vuitton and Bulgari.
Arnault has been a close friend of Trump’s for decades but Morningstar analysts confirmed that the 10-20 percent tariff on European luxury goods Trump ordered could reduce his already struggling sales.
