Elon Musk loses trillionaire status as SpaceX stock deflates—and Wisconsin officials want him investigated for election ‘bribery’
Fortune · C · trust 45/100
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Asian markets led a global selloff in the stock markets today as the central bank of South Korea raised its interest rates and warned there would be more rate hikes to come, to fight off persistent inflation. Asia is particularly exposed to increasing oil prices caused by the Iran war because it imports much of its fuel. The tech-heavy KOSPI was down 6.37% today, sinking deeper into correction territory—it has shed 21.84% over the last month. Nasdaq 100 futures are down 0.19% this morning prior to the open in New York.
SpaceX was down 0.6% at the close yesterday and although it gained 0.37% in overnight trading the stock has lost more than $1 trillion in value since its peak price of $225 per share. The stock dipped below its IPO launch price of $135, recovering to just $135.27. The downward drift of the stock means that Elon Musk is no longer technically a trillionaire. He’s worth “only” $856 billion today, according to Bloomberg’s billionaire index.
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Disney has historically refused to describe in detail the revenues earned by its growing cruise ship business. Its CFO, Hugh Johnston, has declined to do so on previous earnings calls. “We don’t break out cruise ships,” explained Hugh Johnston on its Q3 call last year.
But Fortune’s Christian Sylt can reveal that a Disney filing in the U.K.—where its ships are based for tax reasons—reveals that cruise revenue passed the $3 billion mark last year for the first time, fuelled by the addition of a sixth ship to its fleet as part of a $12 billion expansion.
The price of oil is $84 per barrel this morning, which is bad enough (before the war with Iran started it was just over $60). Following the outbreak of the hostilities, it peaked at $114. So one question is, why is the price of oil so low? After all, the Strait of Hormuz is now in its sixth month of total or partial closure. The supply of oil is more constrained than ever, but its price is nowhere near peak pessimism.
One reason for that is that, in fact, the world still has an unusually large amount of stored oil on hand, as this chart from Bridget Payne of Oxford Economics shows. “Despite record drawdowns, total global oil inventories remain above their recent historical average, continuing to reduce the risk of an acute crude shortage. However, much of this buffer is held as crude and offers limited protection against lower refinery output, weaker middle-distillate yields, and the loss of major diesel exporters” such as Russia.
She warns that the Strait could be closed for much of the rest of the year.
President Trump is considering an escalation of the war against Iran, and has been briefed on options such an invasion of Kharg Island ( long a Trump obsession ) or bombing “Pickaxe Mountain,” a nuclear site with an underground tunnel complex, according to the Wall Street Journal . The Kharg operation would put U.S. boots on the ground in Iranian territory.
Over the last 24 hours, Iran attacked U.S. sites in Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain. The U.S. continued a wave of attacks on Iranian coastal sites to “further degrade Iran’s ability to threaten innocent mariners” in the Strait of Hormuz,” Centcom said . The U.S. also disabled an oil tanker in the Gulf.
What Iran says: “As long as the United States does not accept the Iranian legal system, this strait will remain closed,” according to the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency .
When tech bull analyst Dan Ives announced he was leaving Wedbush to start what he described as a “modern merchant bank for the age of AI,” many were puzzled by the news. Ives is possibly the most famous tech stock analyst in the U.S. and he is a regular on CNN. It was also not entirely clear why the world of AI needs a merchant bank, given that AI companies have not had difficulty finding investment capital.
The FT has shone some light on the situation . The bank will be named “Yorkville Ives.” The Yorkville name refers to Yorkville Securities or Yorkville Advisors, the New Jersey-based group that has bankrolled Trump Media & Technology Group, the company that owns Truth Social and a host of video streaming services. TMTG’s stock is down 27.72% year-to-date.
Fortune’s archive has a ton of stories on Yorkville and its dealings with the Trump empire. Here are three of them:
If you think inflation is bad in the U.S. or Europe, remember, it could be worse. Argentina and Turkey have both had the worst inflation since the pandemic. The best performers, however, are Switzerland and China, both of which have had inflation near 1% throughout.
“Switzerland remains in a league of its own,” says Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid in an email. “It's the only country globally to have seen CPI average below 2% since the end of Bretton Woods (>1971), and since Covid inflation has averaged just 1%.”
The number of terawatt hours of electricity AI data centers will need by 2030—double the amount they consume today, according to Alpine Macro’s Kelly Xu. The biggest source of that extra energy will be renewable, Xu estimates: “Renewables are expected to account for roughly 40% of additional electricity generation for data centers between 2025 and 2030 and more than one-third of the data center power mix by 2030.”
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Remember when Elon Musk handed out money to people in Wisconsin if they…
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