Musk’s net worth plummeted by US$130 billion
For Musk, in the past week, his wealth map has encountered a violent "tectonic movement." Two of his publicly traded companies had a bad week. Tesla’s stock price fell nearly 20% this week, closing at $313.03 per share, the largest weekly decline since 2022; SpaceX closed at $115.07 per share, the lowest level since the company’s IPO last month.
For Musk, in the past week, his wealth map has encountered a violent "tectonic movement." Two of his publicly traded companies had a bad week. Tesla’s stock price fell nearly 20% this week, closing at $313.03 per share, the largest weekly decline since 2022; SpaceX closed at $115.07 per share, the lowest level since the company’s IPO last month. According to data from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Musk’s personal wealth has evaporated by approximately US$130 billion (approximately RMB 880 billion) in just five trading days, just a few weeks after he became the first rich man in human history to exceed US$1 trillion. Today, Musk himself ridiculed himself as a "(former) trillionaire" on social platforms. Tesla and SpaceX stock prices "double kill" Tesla's stock price plummeted because Tesla's second-quarter results announced late Wednesday night fell short of expectations. The company's cash flow turned negative for the first time in two years as capital spending surged on future projects such as robotaxis, humanoid robots and massive chip factories. In fact, Tesla's stock price has fallen by nearly 30% this year, the worst performance among technology giants. Meanwhile, SpaceX stock prices have continued to fall over the past month, despite experiencing a surge after going public. It has fallen in four of the past five weeks, and has fallen approximately 43% from its closing high so far. Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital.com, said the decline in SpaceX shares was the result of "profit taking, valuation re-evaluation and the fading of previously extremely optimistic positions." “De-Musk Halo” Is Becoming a Tradeable Strategy What deserves more attention than the drop in stock prices and plummeting net worth is a new trend that is quietly forming on Wall Street - the market is turning "eliminating Musk" into a tradable strategy. As Gary Black of investment advisory firm Future Fund points out, investors are increasingly tired of “hype followed by lack of follow-through.” The problem, he believes, is not that Musk lacks ambitious ideas but that investors increasingly want to see those ideas translated into measurable business results. After SpaceX went public, it was included in the Nasdaq index at the fastest speed in history. Critics argue that millions of index-tracking investors are forced to allocate to some of the market's highest valuations before the price discovery mechanism is fully operational. It is against this background that Subversive ETFs, a Wall Street alternative ETF issuer, submitted an application to U.S. regulators to launch two innovative products, tentatively coded as "QQNE" and "SPNE" - tracking the Nasdaq 100 Index and the S&P 500 Index respectively, but systematically excluding all companies founded, controlled or led by Musk. Market participants pointed out that the direct trigger for this product was SpaceX’s rapid entry into the market, making “not wanting to invest in Musk” officially a tradable strategy. Subversive ETFs stated in their investment prospectus that these products are designed for investors who believe that Musk-related companies have "potential corporate governance concerns, political risks and high stock price volatility." Currently, QQNE will exclude Tesla and SpaceX from the Nasdaq 100 Index, while SPNE will exclude Tesla, a component of the S&P 500 Index. In the future, if unlisted companies led by Musk such as xAI, Neuralink, and The Boring Company are listed, issuers may also include them in the exclusion list based on their judgment. This ETF that "excludes Musk" symbolically demonstrates the recent evolution direction of the ETF market: it no longer simply tracks the market, but further reflects investors' personal preferences and values. According to data from Bloomberg Intelligence, the total number of newly issued ETFs in the U.S. market in June reached 214, setting a record high. Market participants believe that an era has arrived in which almost every idea imaginable by investors can be turned into ETF commodities.