24-Hour Record Plunge: Zuckerberg In $29 Billion Loss, Bezos Pockets $20 Billion

There are contrasting fortunes for two of the world’s biggest billionaires if the new valuations are anything to go by.

With Meta Inc platforms witnessing a record one-day plunge on Thursday, its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg lost a whopping $29 dollars within 24 hours.

But Zuckerberg’s fate appears to be the opposite for Jeff Bezos with his personal net worth set to raise with $20 in the wake of his the blockbuster earnings from his company, Amazon Inc.

In the biggest ever one day market value wipe-out for a U.S. company, the stock of Meta Inc fell by 26 percent, losing more than $200 billion, and according to Forbes, the net worth of Mark Zuckerberg took a nosedive to $85 billion, with the Meta Inc helmsman owning about 12.8 percent of the social media giant.

According to Refinitiv data, Jezz Bezos, owns close to 10 percent of Amazon Inc, the company he founded and chairs, with Forbes placing him as the world’s third richest man.

The holiday-quarter profit of the e-commerce retailer rose as a result of Amazon’s investments in Rivian, an electric vehicle company. The company also announced the increment in annual prices of Prime subscriptions in the U.S., prompting its shares to go up by 15 percent in extended trading, its biggest percentage gain in 5 years.

Forbes placed Bezos’ net worth in 2021 to $177 billion, a 57 percent rise of his worth in 2020 and this can be explained with Amazon’s relative boom during the COVID-19 pandemic that forced citizens dependence on online shopping.

The 24-hour wealth decline of Mark Zuckerberg is the second biggest ever, coming after Elon Musk’s $35 billion single day paper loss in November 2021. The Tesla Inc CEO had infamously polled Twitter users, asking them if he should sell about 10 percent of his stake in Tesla. The announcement affected Tesla so badly that the electric car maker is yet to recover from the resulting selloff.

The $29 billion loss has now placed Zuckerberg  in the twelfth spot on Forbes’ list of real-time billionaires, below Indian business moguls Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani.

There is a possibility though that Zuckerberg’s net worth would rise as soon as possible, as the volatility of trading in technology stocks could well be of advantage especially with investors having to struggle price in the impact of high inflation and an expected rise in interest rates.

The Facebook Inc now Meta Inc CEO had last year sold about $4.47 billion worth of Meta shares, just before the 2021 tech rout, with the stock sales being carried out as part of a pre-set 10b5-1 trading plan.

One thing is for sure, his net worth won’t ever be static.