Elon Musk loses billions as tech stock rout triggers market crash fears
Elon Musk saw billions wiped off his fortune as the Nasdaq plunged 6.4 percent in New York.
The short version
- The drop erased £2.2trillion in value from tech giants.
- Shares in Tesla tumbled 11 percent while SpaceX fell 9 percent.
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More than £2trillion was wiped off the value of the Nasdaq as a tech rout fuelled fears of a stock market crash, leaving Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, nursing billions in losses. That slashed the value of the tech giants that make up the Nasdaq 100 by £2.2trillion and took losses since its record high on October 6 to £4.6trillion.
The Nasdaq is now in correction territory, defined as a drop of at least 10 percent, having fallen by almost 15 percent since the peak. The sell-off was echoed on other major benchmarks with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down nearly 3 percent and the S&P 500 off close to 4 percent.
Elon Musk was among the biggest losers as shares in his companies SpaceX and Tesla tumbled 9 percent and 11 percent respectively. Nvidia shares dropped 8 percent while SanDisk was down 17 percent, Advanced Micro Devices tumbled nearly 15 percent, and Micron Technology plunged 14 percent.
Wall Street's fear gauge surged to its highest level in seven months, with the Vix jumping by almost 70 percent in early trading before dropping back. Ted Parkhill, the founder and chief executive of Incline Investment Management, said the market is moving from the promise of artificial intelligence to the price of artificial intelligence.
Susannah Streeter, the chief investment strategist at Wealth Club, said fresh panic over the artificial intelligence trade has hit Wall Street hard, with a steep sell-off sending shockwaves rippling to other markets.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, edited
