Topline
The world’s richest man got much less rich Thursday as Elon Musk and President Donald Trump traded strongly worded barbs, precipitating a drop in the share price of Musk’s electric vehicle company Tesla.
The alliance between Elon Musk, left, and Donald Trump cracked Thursday.
Musk’s net worth fell below $400 billion Thursday afternoon, sliding by $25.5 billion to $389 billion, according to Forbes’ estimates.
The plunge came as shares of Tesla cratered as Musk and Trump’s beef escalated.
Tesla stock declined 17%, or $55 per share, to $277 in an otherwise flat day for the market.
A majority of the losses came after Musk and Trump hurled insults at one another, including Musk claiming Trump would not have secured a second term without his backing and Trump accusing Musk of having “Trump derangement syndrome.”
Tesla stock fell to its lowest level in four weeks, trading more than 40% below its all-time high set in December as investors flooded into the stock on bets Musk’s support for Trump may boost the highly regulated company in its autonomous driving initiatives.
Tesla’s 17% loss would make Thursday its worst day on Wall Street since Sept. 8, 2020, placing it among the company’s five largest single-day losses since it went public in 2010.
Musk lost the equivalent of 4.5 times Trump’s $5.5 billion net worth Thursday.
The roughly $180 billion in market capitalization Tesla lost Thursday is more than the total valuations of Ford, General Motors and Rivian, the next three most valuable publicly traded American automakers, combined.
35%. That’s how much Tesla’s share price is down since Trump’s January inauguration, where Musk made a controversial appearance. The S&P 500 benchmark is down less than 1% during the period.