By Emmanuel Nduka
Two of the world’s richest men, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have lost a joint sum of $18.71 billion in a single day, following the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops on Thursday.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and founder of SpaceX, saw his net worth drop to $199 billion after losing $13.3 billion, which brings his total year-to-date loss to $71.7 billion, statistics from Bloomberg Billionaires index tracker confirms.
Also, Bezos who is the second richest man in the world and CEO of Amazon, recorded a $5.41 billion decline in his worth, bringing his net worth to $169 billion and his year-to-date loss to $22.9 billion.
The decline in both their net worth came on the back of the announcement that Russian troops have invaded some parts of Ukraine, which caused selloff sentiments in various markets.
The crypto market dipped significantly in the early hours of Thursday, while the crude oil market enjoyed bullish trade on the other hand, leveraging on the tension between Ukraine and oil-producing giant, Russia. Brent touched $95 per barrel at some point during intra-day trading.
On Wednesday, February 23, Tesla stock traded at $764.04 per share, representing a 7% decrease from the last trading session. Meanwhile, the stock has rallied as of press time with a 2.91% gain to trade at $787.02.
According to trading economics global macro models projections, there may be a further decrease in the price of the stock as they predict that by the end of this quarter Tesla stock would trade at $748.27 and further decrease to $703.84 in one year.
Amazon on the other hand took a hard hit as it traded at $2,896 on Wednesday decreasing by $107.41 since the last trading season. On an annual basis, the stock price of Amazon has dipped by 1.66%, with a further projection that its stock would be priced at $2,836 by the end of this quarter and at $2,668.24 in one year.
Stock markets responded negatively to the news of Russia invading Ukraine as tension caused sell-off actions across some notable financial markets in the world. Specifically, according to the Wall Street Journal, the stock markets in Europe dropped sharply and commodity prices soared.
Russia’s own stock market plunged by nearly one-half, as the Russian ruble fell to a record low against the dollar.
