Elon Musk loses R363 billion in 24 hours as Tesla shares tumble

The Nasdaq tumbled on Thursday on selloffs in Netflix and Tesla following mixed earnings, even as the Dow rose for the ninth straight session.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished at 35,225.18, up 0.5 percent, extending a rally.

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The broad-based S&P 500 fell 0.7 percent to 4,534.87, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 2.1 percent to 14,063.31.

Analysts have been cautioning that the market could be poised for a pullback after a strong second quarter and beginning to the third quarter.

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“A couple of news items, one on Netflix and one on Tesla prompted some profit-taking today in the tech arena,” said Cresset Capital’s Jack Ablin.

“This is a pretty expensive space that just really got ahead of itself.”

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Tesla, whose shares have more than doubled in 2023, fell nearly 10 percent despite topping analyst estimates for earnings per share and revenues. But the electric car maker saw profit margins erode as the result of price cuts.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk saw his net worth plummet by $20.3 billion (R363 billion) in 24 hours.

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ELON MUSK’S NET WORTH NOW $234 BILLION AFTER TESLA TUMBLE

The South Africa-born Musk, 52, saw his net worth fall to $234 billion, now ‘only’ $33 billion more than second-placed chairperson of luxury goods maker LVMH, France’s Bernard Arnault, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Shares of Austin-based Tesla slid 9.7% to $262.90 in New York.

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Similarly, Netflix, which had risen more than 60 percent on the year, sank 8.4 percent despite announcing a surprisingly robust addition of 6 million customers in the wake of its crackdown on password sharing.

But the streaming service missed revenue estimates and faced questions on the effects of a writers and actors strike that has mostly shut down Hollywood.

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Other large tech companies including Apple, Amazon and Google parent Alphabet also fell.

But Dow members Johnson & Johnson and IBM rose 6.1 percent and 2.1 percent respectively following earnings reports, propelling the blue-chip index higher.

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