The wealth of the 10 richest people in the world – a list dominated by US tech billionaires – increased by a record amount after Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election, according to a widely cited index.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated that the world’s 10 wealthiest people gained nearly $64bn (about £49.5bn) on Wednesday, the largest daily increase since the index began in 2012.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, registered the largest increase with a $26.5bn addition to his fortune, which now stands at $290bn. The prominent backer of Trump’s campaign, benefited from a surge in the share price of Tesla, the electric carmaker where he is chief executive and in which he owns a 13% stake.
I don’t see in the article what percentage of this increased ‘value’ was actually spent on stocks. It seems such a house of cards to say the unrealised value of retained holdings is worth anything like the figure you get if applying the most recent trade’s value to all existing shares. A value beyond a percentage of the company’s assets and projected yield makes for a pretty risky game of hot potato for anyone buying in at the end and the potential for ridiculously overblown paper losses for anyone who got in at the start of the pyramid scheme with knock-on effects that propagate out to the real economy through the contagion of doomsaying. Bonds are a far more transparent way of raising funds and incentivise productive endeavours with good fundamentals as the company needs to pay from profits rather than offloading rewards to the system of finding another sucker (which can happen with bonds as well if sold before maturity in the belief that the issuer will be unable to fulfill their promise).