It was a bad day at the market for many of the world’s wealthiest individuals – but no billionaires had it worse than Jeff Bezos.
It was a bad day at the market for many of the world's wealthiest individuals
It was a bad day at the market for many of the world’s wealthiest individuals – but no billionaires had it worse than Jeff Bezos.
As the stock market tumbled on Monday, Amazon $AMZN share prices declined by five percent – translating into an $8 billion loss for the company’s founder and executive chairman, according to Forbes’ real time wealth tracker.
Bezos, 60, has an estimated net worth of $180.1 billion, making him the second wealthiest person alive after Tesla $TSLA CEO Elon Musk. In 2019, Bezos became $38.3 billion poorer, following his divorce from writer and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.
The decline in Amazon’s stock value — and consequently Bezos’ fortune — was the result of global market rout. It started with Japan’s Nikkei 225 index plunging 12%, its worst day since the 1987 Black Monday crash. In the U.S., Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell more than 1,000 points, or 2.7%; S&P 500 futures dipped 3.6%; and Nasdaq $NDAQ-100 futures dropped 4.8%.
The culprit? Friday’s weaker-than-expected U.S. jobs report, which saw employers add just 114,000 jobs in July. This fell far short of the 175,000 gain economists had projected, according to estimates compiled by FactSet. At the same time, unemployment ticked up to 4.3%, its highest level in three years.
Those figures pointed to a slowing U.S. economy and renewed concerns about a potential hard landing — as opposed to a soft landing, when the central bank brings down inflation without tipping the economy into a recession.
Rocio Fabbro contributed to this article.
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