‘The nail that sticks out gets hammered first’: Elon Musk’s net worth falls $113 billion from Tesla and SpaceX drops
Fortune · Mia Osmonbekov ·
Tesla and SpaceX bucked the market rally as investors worried about political retaliation.
Wall Street had a historic moment the day after Democrats swept the midterms, with the Dow rising 3% on Wednesday, its best performance after a midterm in 44 years. But on Thursday, it erased those gains, dropping 2.9% as investors dumped AI-related stocks like AMD and Micron.
But for Elon Musk, who spent an estimated $427.5 million to $483 million on backing Republicans, the losses started on the same day as the rally, and then accelerated. Tesla shares fell by 3.3% and SpaceX shares fell by 3.8% on Wednesday’s market close, erasing tens of billions from Musk’s fortune as they also underperformed against the S&P 500’s 1.6% growth and stocks like Amazon and Apple, which jumped 6.1% and 5.3%, per Fortune’s analysis. He lost $33.5 billion of his paper wealth that day, and another $79.7 billion in Thursday’s selloff, bringing his two-day loss to about $113 billion as of market close on Nov. 5, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
In short, in 48 hours, Tesla and SpaceX went from having a combined market cap of about $3.5 trillion on Tuesday night, to a combined $3.04 trillion on Thursday night, wiping out about $456 billion in total. As of Thursday night, SpaceX’s market cap is $1.68 trillion, about 87% of what it was on midterms night, and Tesla’s market cap is $1.36 trillion, about 86% of its value from then.