Tumbling tech stocks and cryptocurrencies have seen the fortunes of some of the world’s richest people take a hit over the past week.
Bloomberg reports that Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk lost $25.1bn, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos saw a $20bn drop in his fortune, Changpeng Zhao of Binance lost $17.7bn, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is $10.4bn worse off.
It was the worst week for the stock market since the crash at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Big-name companies suffered, with Peloton falling below its IPO price and Netflix suffering its steepest drop in a decade. Stocks in chipmakers also struggled.
At Friday’s close, the tech-focused Nasdaq was down 7.6 per cent for the week, its biggest decline since March 2020. This is also the fourth successive weekly drop for the index, the longest decline in nine months.
The prospect of interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve is on the cards with a meeting planned for Tuesday and Wednesday of the coming week. Investors are hoping for more guidance on the central bank’s plan to raise rates.
Turbulence in the markets is expected to…
