Billionaires Lose $206 Billion in One Day

The world's 500 richest people have lost a total of $1.4 trillion this year, including $206 billion on Monday alone, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, as global financial markets collapse under the weight of rising interest rates and inflation worries.

Contrary to last year, when rising markets increased the global high net worth inpiduals by about 8%, including 13% in North America, according to a Capgemini World Wealth report released Tuesday.

The data shows that the ranks of the wealthy in Asia and the Pacific only increased by 4.2% - lagging Europe and falling further than North America after it dominated the growth of the rich over the past decade.

China's crackdown on tech companies and a cold real estate market were partly to blame, but it also reflected aggressive gains in the US stock market, helping to inflate everything from cryptocurrency to real estate values.

That is quickly reversing now with inflation surging, raising concerns about how aggressively the Fed will raise interest rates. However, Capgemini's report shows how beneficial a pandemic and monetary response have been to the economic elite and where they mostly reside.

The United States, Japan, China and Germany are still among the countries where the world's most wealthy people live. The Capgemini report showed that the four are home to about 64% of the world's high net worth inpiduals. What's more, even among the very highest net worth inpiduals in the world, it is the very wealthy who have achieved the most benefits.

People with investable assets of $30 million or more saw their wealth expand 9.6% compared to 2020, the fastest pace among the groups studied in the report are those with $1 million to $5 million, who recorded the slowest wealth growth at 7.8%.

The report also highlights how women of all classes will inherit 70% of global wealth over the next two generations. The massive wealth generated by the high valuations of technology companies and startups has also led to more young and wealthy inpiduals emerging, including in the cryptocurrency market.

Of course, this rapid rise is now under control, as bitcoin, ether and the rest of the crypto space collapse and tech startups find that raising fresh capital is about to become more expensive.

"Just looking at the world's five wealthiest inpiduals, the combined losses amounted to more than $345 billion in 2022. The top five wealthiest people are — SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, LVMH boss Bernard Arnault, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffet," according to Kito.