By Tyler Durden | 3 January 2021
ZERO HEDGE — Tesla billionaire Elon Musk captivated the financial press during Q4 by selling a chunk of his shares in the EV carmaker after asking his Twitter followers whether he should sell or not.
But while Archegos secret billionaire Bill Hwang lost his entire fortune in 2021, Musk and other billionaires benefited from the ballooning equity valuations.
According to Bloomberg, “for the wealthiest people on the planet, 2021 was a year of enormous gains, extreme losses and unprecedented scrutiny.” BBG went on to call it the “Year of the Super Billionaire”.
And it’s not just soaring equity markets; rising valuations of everything from mansions to crypto to commodities boosted the collective fortune of the world’s 500 richest people by more than $1 trillion as the rest of the world struggled with the second year of the COVID pandemic.
Thanks to these gains, there are now a record 10 fortunes in excess of $100 billion, more than 200 above $10 billion and Musk has now surpassed the level of riches (adjusted for inflation) achieved by modern history’s previous wealthiest person. Combined, the net worth of the 500 billionaires now exceeds $8.4 trillion, greater than the GDP of all countries except the US and China. […]
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