Billionaires who attended Trump’s inauguration have since lost $209 billion

Donald Trump took the oath of office for his second term on January 20 surrounded by five of the world’s wealthiest individuals; Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, and Bernard Arnault. That month, the front three had reached highs in their net worths. But the months of greens have now turned to weeks of reds.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the five billionaires who attended the ceremony have collectively lost $209 billion since Trump returned to the White House. The downturn comes against the backdrop of a decline in stock markets, with the S&P 500 dropping 6.4% since the last trading day before the inauguration, January 17.

Market ‘deflation’ wipes out top three richest men gains

According to Bloomberg’s analysis, companies associated with all these billionaires have seen a staggering $1.39 trillion erased from their combined market value. The broader market decline accelerated on Monday, with the S&P 500 plunging 2.7% in a single day.

Economists are looking at Trump’s unpredictable trade policies as the main reason why the stock market is in a downturn. They claim the president’s tariffs have pushed global markets into volatility. 

No billionaire has been hit harder than Elon Musk. The Tesla, xAI, and SpaceX CEO, who reached an all-time peak net worth of $486 billion on December 17, has seen his fortune plummet by $148 billion since Trump’s inauguration. The drop follows Tesla’s stock losing all of its post-election gains and also seeing a five-year record drop of 15% on Monday.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s losses shrank his wealth by about $29 billion, as Amazon shares fell 14% since January 17. The billionaire, who had a hot-cold relationship with Trump during his first term, appeared to mend ties after the election. As of the start of March, he had dropped from second to third place on Bloomberg’s index.

Among the most-predicted winners of Trump’s return to the White House was Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta. The company had the biggest stock price rise among the so-called Magnificent Seven tech equities, gaining 19% between mid-January and mid-February. 

Yet, in the last six weeks, those gains have gone to thin air, and the Magnificent Seven index as a whole is now down 20% from its December peak. Zuckerberg’s net worth also tanked by $5 billion. 

Other industry leaders count more losses

Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who once protested Trump’s immigration policies in 2017, also reconnected with the president following his re-election. Brin joined Trump for dinner at Mar-a-Lago in December. Brin might be in the president’s good graces, but Alphabet Inc. has certainly not evaded the stock market plunge. 

The company’s stock dropped more than 7% in early February after missing quarterly revenue expectations. Alphabet was also in battle with the Justice Department, which recently just eased the pressure on the tech startup that sought to break up its search engine business. 

Outside of the tech sector, Bernard Arnault, the billionaire behind luxury conglomerate LVMH and a longtime friend of Trump, has also lost $5 billion from his wealth.

LVMH shares had surged over 20% following Trump’s re-election back in November, but those gains now count for naught. Analysts at Morningstar see that proposed tariffs of 10% to 20% on European luxury goods could depress the company’s sales and add to its existing struggles.

Was it safe to go ‘not support Trump?’ 

Going against the POTUS was a bold move by many billionaire’s standards, and with how the stock market is seeing out trillions of dollars, many of these individuals have also counted losses, with the exception of the silent Warren Buffet, and conversely vocal Mark Cuban.

As reported by Cryptopolitan, Warren Buffet was the only billionaire in the top ten world’s richest whose net worth grew by about $15 billion, buoyed by the uptick of Berkshire Hathaway’s stock prices, which grew by about 10% in February only.

Former NBA franchise Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who coined Trump’s policy-making decisions in an interview last November as “very transactional,” saw his net worth shoot to $7.4 billion, from about $5.6 in the last three months.

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