Tuesday’s higher-than-expected US inflation figures rocked Wall Street, causing the net worth of America’s wealthiest billionaires to plummet. The most among the billionaires monitored by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Jeff Bezos’ fortune decreased by $9.8 billion (about Rs 80,000 crore) in one day.
Elon Musk, the richest man on earth, saw a $8.4 billion decline in his net worth. According to Bloomberg data, the fortunes of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates lost $3.4 billion and $2.8 billion, respectively, while those of Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Steve Ballmer all saw a fall of more than $4 billion.
The largest online store in the world, Amazon, was founded by Bezos. Through its main website, the Seattle-based business sells electronics, home items, and other things. He is also the owner of Blue Origin, an aerospace firm.
Tesla, which sells electric automobiles and residential solar batteries, is led by Musk as CEO. In addition, Musk is the CEO of SpaceX, a rocket maker contracted by NASA to resupply the space station, and he owns stock in Twitter.
The world’s wealthiest persons are included each day in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Every trading day in New York comes to a close with an update of the numbers.
According to Labor Department data, the US consumer price index (CPI) climbed 0.1% from July after remaining unchanged in the preceding month. Prices increased 8.3% from a year earlier, a modest slowdown but still higher than the median expectation of 8.1%. Forecasts were also exceeded for the so-called core CPI, which excludes the more volatile food and energy components.
After the hotter-than-expected report, which was keenly watched by the Federal Reserve as it gets ready to make its next interest rate decision next week, Wall Street equities crashed, with the Dow dropping over 1,300 points and the S&P 500 dropping 4.3 percent. Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, has made it plain that rate rises on benchmark loans would continue until inflation is under control. Due to extremely high energy and food prices this year, inflation has increased dramatically worldwide.
As investors clung to the optimism that slowing price hikes would eventually allow the Federal Reserve to scale back on its arduous anti-inflation struggle, stocks had recovered in recent days. However, the data has put an end to such hopes for the time being.
