In the last week or two, technology stocks have dominated headlines. Most recently, technology stocks saw substantial gains in price on Thursday with a renewed confidence in the industry. On Thursday, Apple stock prices rose to a new high and increased the market value of the company over $1 trillion. Possibly the biggest news from the tech front is the large dive (of more than 20%) in Facebook’s stock prices. While many everyday investors were hit by the drop, the biggest loser was Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Zuckerberg owns more than 14 million Class A Facebook shares and more than 441 million Class B shares as of July 25th. Doing some quick math, the 20% drop in the price depleted his net worth by nearly $17 billion in just one day. To add to that, trading early in this week left Facebook’s stock value even lower. The fluctuations in stock price since the Thursday 20% drop has seen his net worth drop an additional $660 million.
While millions or billions of dollars is clearly a huge quantity of money to lose, especially in just one day, it has not had a significant impact of the wealth of Zuckerberg in general. Before July 25th, Zuckerberg was ranked the third richest person in the world. After the stock fluctuation, he now sits in the sixth position. In this current position, he is still $7 billion ahead of seventh-placed Carlos Slim. According to recent estimates, Zuckerberg’s net worth is still over $60 billion.
Similar to Zuckerberg’s personal experience, the stock fluctuations, though condemning by nature, did not have as large an effect as the percent may suggest. The stock fluctuations led to a $27.7 billion loss in market value for Facebook as a whole. The company had a valuation on July 24th of about $512 billion, so while stock prices fell more than 20%, the loss in market value only equates to about 6% of Facebook’s total market value.
At market close on both Thursday and Friday, Facebook did see some positive green numbers. While many investors have not bought into the dip of Facebook at this point, it is likely that a few days of positive stock growth and green numbers, no matter how large, will pressure investors who buy low and sell high to buy back into Facebook in the next few weeks.