Bloomberg reports:

As Donald Trump took the oath of office on Jan. 20, he was flanked by some of the world’s wealthiest people. The billionaires present that day — including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg — had never been richer, flush with big gains from frothy stock markets.

Seven weeks later, it’s a different story. The start of Trump’s second term has delivered a stunning reversal for many of those billionaires sitting behind Trump in the Capitol Rotunda, with five having lost a combined $209 billion in wealth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The period between Trump’s election and his inauguration was a boon for the world’s wealthiest, with the S&P 500 Index hitting several all-time highs. Investors piled into equity and crypto markets, expecting that Trump’s policies would be advantageous to business.

Musk’s Tesla Inc. gained 98% in the weeks after the election, hitting a record high. Arnault’s LVMH added 7% in the week before Inauguration Day, making the French magnate $12 billion richer. Even Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms Inc., which banned Trump from the social-media platform in 2021, gained 9% before the beginning of the new term and an additional 20% in his first four weeks in office.

But any expectations that the start of Trump’s new term would continue to fuel market returns have been upended. The S&P 500 has lost 6.4% since he took office, as mass layoffs of government employees and the president’s back-and-forth on tariffs have roiled equities, with the benchmark index tumbling 2.7% on Monday. [Continue reading…]