How Elon Musk lost over $48bn in just two months

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk lost $48.4 billion since the start of 2022, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His wealth is now valued at $222 billion.

Tesla shares reached a record high on Nov. 4, when Musk’s wealth peaked at $340.4 billion. After he asked his Twitter followers if he should sell part of his stake, the stock of the company dropped sharply, wiping off $35 billion from his fortune in one day — an almost unprecedented loss.

In the end, he completed a series of stock sales worth over $16 billion and gave away shares valued at $5.7 billion.

Musk-run electric car maker, Tesla lost its previous $1 trillion market value despite delivering a record number of cars in 2021. Tesla’s fourth-quarter earnings and outlook failed to impress investors.

READ ALSO: Elon Musk sells $5bn of Tesla shares after asking Twitter followers

Recall Tesla’s meteoric rise to trillion-dollar status and its issuance into the S&P 500 in 2021 made it one of the most rewarding investments in financial markets.

By selling new shares and repurchasing options, the company raised capital using this huge valuation earlier. In addition, the company may also have paved the way for its capital-intensive stores in Austin and Berlin.

Experts think that Tesla’s future growth could be based on its fundamentals, including what it can do about supply chain problems, fixing affordability issues in the EV market, and maintaining its lead as the competition heats up.

Despite the geopolitical tensions caused by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, some analysts predict Tesla will benefit from those disruptions as oil prices spike and electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers emerge as an alternative to traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) makers.

Meanwhile, a few hours after Elon Musk announced he would send Starlink terminals into war zones so Ukraine could link up to SpaceX’s satellite-based internet network, Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has apparently received the promise from Musk.

In order to communicate with Low Earth Orbit satellites, Starlink users need terminals that are satellite dishes.

A satellite dish intercepts the return signal from the satellites after sending signals from ground towers into space, bouncing them off the satellites, and then transmitting them to users.