In just 8 minutes, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell sparked a market downturn that reduced the fortunes of America’s richest people by $78 billion.
Elon Musk lost about $5.5 billion of his fortune. Jeff Bezos lost $6.8 billion, the largest loss in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s fortunes fell by $2.2 billion and $2.7 billion, respectively, while Sergey Brin’s fell to less than $100 billion.
Wealth is fading away
America’s billionaires
Powell used his speech at the Federal Reserve’s annual policy forum in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to reiterate that the US central bank will continue to raise interest rates and may leave them high for a while to reduce inflation.
It was seen as countering the recent rally in US stocks fueled by speculation that policy makers will soon reverse course from their strong monetary tightening.
The S&P 500 fell 3.4%, its worst day since mid-June. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index – of which Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla and Alphabet are among its biggest components – fell more than 4%.
The world’s 500 richest people lost $1.4 trillion in the first half of 2022, the biggest drop in 6 months for the richest people on the planet. But in July, US stocks recorded their strongest monthly rise since November 2020, prompting investors to bet that the worst of the market was over.