Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as drops in SpaceX and Tesla’s shares eat into Musk’s wealth
Musk loses trillionaire status
Elon Musk has lost his trillionaire status on two rich lists, after shares in his SpaceX company fell back from their record highs.
According to Forbes’s Real-Time Billionaires list, Musk’s net worth has fallen to $956.5bn today, down from $1.1tn earlier this week.
Musk’s fall back into the ranks of the billionaires follows a fall in SpaceX’s shares over the last week, after the initial jump in its value when it floated on the stock market two weeks ago faded.
SpaceX sold shares to investors at $135 each in its initial public offering.
They jumped as high as $176 on 12 June, the first day of trading – making Musk the world’s first trillionaire – and hit a peak of $225 on 16 June.
But they then slipped back to $156 last night, after a 16% plunge on Monday.
Today, SpaceX’s shares are down 1.35% in early trading at $154.00.
Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist at Wealth Club, says:
SpaceX has come down to earth with a bump, burning off most of its post-launch steam.
The sell-off may have been partly triggered by the confirmation that it was planning a bond sale, expected to be around $20 billion.
Issuing debt at such a heady valuation raises questions about cash flow for this hugely capital-intensive venture.
As well as his roughly 40% stake in SpaceX, Musk also owns around 12% of Tesla.
Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index puts Musk’s wealth at $957bn, making him the world’s richest person.
London stock market closes higher
And finally….Britain’s stock market has closed higher tonight, after a sweltering day’s trading in London.
The FTSE 100 share index has ended the day 33 points higher at 10,461 points, up 0.31%.
Segro ended the day as the top riser, jumping by 17.5% after rejecting a takeover bid.
Model company Games Workshop gained 7.1%, while housebuilders also jumped on hopes that the fall in the oil price today will dampen borrowing cosTS.
And on that note, goodbye until tomorrow. GW
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After a wobbly start, Wall Street is now firmly higher in morning trading.
The S&P 500 share index has gained 0.75%, up 56 points at 7,421 poinTS.
The narrower Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 1.1%, led by DIY chain Home Depot (+5%).
US crude oil below $70 a barrel
The oil price is continuing to slide, on hopes of a pick-up in supplies from the Middle East.
As reports of ships traversing the strait of Hormuz come in (see earlier post), Brent crude has now fallen by 4.2% to $73.83 a barrel, the lowest since just before the Iran war began at the end of February.
US crude has dropped below the $70 a barrel mark, for the first time since 2 March, the first day of trading after the conflict began.
Elon Musk’s loss of his trillionaire status (for the moment, at least) is unlikely to be widely mourned.
As Gabriel Zucman, professor of economics at the Paris School of Economics, wrote last week, many of the world’s problems are caused by the booming influence of the super-rich on policymaking.
Prof Zucman wrote:
The first trillionaire himself couldn’t illustrate it better.
Tesla, the company Musk founded in 2003, didn’t turn a profit until 2020.
This didn’t prevent him from buying Twitter, and turning the social network into a platform for a variety of political and ideological causes, including getting Donald Trump re-elected.
His fealty earned him a quasi-cabinet position, the direction of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), with total freedom to slash government spending not to his liking.
During his tenure, Doge shut down the US Agency for International Development (USAID), leading to the termination of numerous programs tackling malnutrition, HIV and preventable diseases around the world.
A study published in the Lancet found that these funding cuts could result in more than 14m deaths, including 4.5m in children younger than age five, by 2030.
Great wealth is never “virtual”.
Musk loses trillionaire status
Elon Musk has lost his trillionaire status on two rich lists, after shares in his SpaceX company fell back from their record highs.
According to Forbes’s Real-Time Billionaires list, Musk’s net worth has fallen to $956.5bn today, down from $1.1tn earlier this week.
Musk’s fall back into the ranks of the billionaires follows a fall in SpaceX’s shares over the last week, after the initial jump in its value when it floated on the stock market two weeks ago faded.
SpaceX sold shares to investors at $135 each in its initial public offering.
They jumped as high as $176 on 12 June, the first day of trading – making Musk the world’s first trillionaire – and hit a peak of $225 on 16 June.
But they then slipped back to $156 last night, after a 16% plunge on Monday.
Today, SpaceX’s shares are down 1.35% in early trading at $154.00.
Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist at Wealth Club, says:
SpaceX has come down to earth with a bump, burning off most of its post-launch steam.
The sell-off may have been partly triggered by the confirmation that it was planning a bond sale, expected to be around $20 billion.
Issuing debt at such a heady valuation raises questions about cash flow for this hugely capital-intensive venture.
As well as his roughly 40% stake in SpaceX, Musk also owns around 12% of Tesla.
Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index puts Musk’s wealth at $957bn, making him the world’s richest person.
Housebuilder Berkeley rails against red tape and taxes
One of Britain’s biggest housebuilders has called on the government to reduce red tape, warning that a “high tax and regulatory burden” has resulted in London building less than 10% of the homes it needs.
Berkeley Group reported a 14.7% drop in profits before tax to £451m for the year to 30 April, with sales reservations down 15%.
Expressing his frustration, the company’s boss Rob Perrins said it takes at least eight years to build an apartment block in London, compared with five years a decade ago.
Perrins said:
“Every part of the system needs to work to reduce the time taken to get buildings into development and allow homebuilders to make a return commensurate with the risk that can attract the necessary investment capital.
Currently more homes are being lost to other uses than being built.
This can be addressed with the necessary policy changes and strong political leadership.”
He called for stamp duty to be reduced on all new homes to a maximum of 3% – zero for first-time buyers.
Berkeley is also pushing into build to rent, letting 120 homes so far through its new Berkeley Living arm.
It welcome its first residents to Foundry Yard at Alexandra Gate in April.
Gold falls below $4,000 an ounce
The strength of the US dollar has pulled the gold price down to its lowest level of the year too.
Gold has fallen by over 3% today to $3,973 an ounce, below $4,000 an ounce for the first time since November 2025.
Expectations of higher US interest rates are hurting the gold price, as gold doesn’t provide dividends or a yield (the traditional attraction is that it’s seen as a safe-haven asset, although trading has looking increasingly speculative this year).
In January, gold hit a record high of $5,400 an ounce, amid talk that investors were fearing currency debasement.
Oil lowest since Iran war began as more ships start sailing through Hormuz
The oil price is continuing to fall, as more vessels traverse the strait of Hormuz.
Brent crude is now down 3% at $74.73 a barrel, the lowest since the Iran war began, and approaching the pre-conflict level of $72.48/barrel.
Crude prices weakened after a International Maritime Organization spokesperson said that ships have begun sailing through the Strait of Hormuz under a new scheme by the U.N.’s shipping agency to evacuate vessels trapped there by the conflict.
The IMO spokesperson said:
“Ships have already begun to pass under the plan”
As flagged earlier, at least two dry bulk ships and one cargo ship have sailed through Hormuz under the scheme in the past 12 hours, shipping data shows.
Pound hits lowest since November against stronger dollar
The pound has hit its lowest level against the US dollar since last November, as the falling oil price eases fears of interest rate rises.
Sterling has weakened by half a cent against the dollar today to as low as $1.3145, its weakest level since late November 2025.
In truth, it’s a story about dollar strength – the greenback has hit a 13-month high against a basket of major currencies today, and is a one-year high against the euro too (see earlier post).
With the oil price falling back towards pre-Iran war levels, there’s less pressure on central bankers in the UK and the eurozone to raise interest rates.
Today, the City of London money markets are fully pricing in a Bank of England interest rate rise by February 2027.
Back in March, three rate rises this year were fully priced in.
The US Federal Reserve, though, is expected to raise rates at least once this year, after around half its policymakers predicted a rate rise before the end of 2026.
The pound is also vulnerable to political uncertainty, following Keir Starmer’s decision on Monday to step down as prime minister.
Joel Kruger, markets strategist at LMAX Group, explains:
“The Pound remains under pressure, with GBPUSD weighed down by a combination of growing UK political uncertainty and a stronger US Dollar backdrop.
Keir Starmer’s resignation as Prime Minister has injected fresh uncertainty into the UK outlook, with markets now focused on the Labour leadership transition and the potential implications for fiscal policy under a new government.
Concerns that a future administration could loosen fiscal rules have added pressure to UK assets, particularly after recent volatility in gilt markeTS. At the same time, weaker UK economic data has reinforced concerns about slowing growth, with June’s flash Composite PMI falling deeper into contraction territory at a 14-month low, highlighting softening momentum across the private sector.
Despite these domestic headwinds, sterling has generally held up better than many peers in recent sessions, suggesting some of the political risk may already have been partially priced in.
Nevertheless, the broader driver remains the widening policy divergence between the Bank of England and a more hawkish Federal Reserve, with markets significantly increasing expectations for a Fed rate hike later this year following last week’s FOMC meeting.
That shift in rate expectations, alongside resilient US data and lingering demand for the Dollar, continues to act as the main headwind for the pound.”
Three stranded tankers carrying 5 million barrels of crude oil are exiting the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, with two heading to Asia, shipping data today shows.
It’s a sign that the peace deal between the US and Iran is helping to lift oil supplies from the Gulf, putting downward pressure on prices.
Reuters has the details:
South Korean-flagged VL Breeze, a Very Large Crude Carrier carrying 2 million barrels of Qatari condensate and Abu Dhabi crude, passed the strait and is heading to Daesan, data from LSEG and Kpler showed.
The supertanker is chartered by South Korean refiner Hyundai Oilbank.
VLCC Plata Carrier, chartered by Indian Oil Corp IOC.NS, is heading out of the strait with 2 million barrels of Saudi crude, alongside Suezmax tanker Prudent Warrior, which is heading for Sohar, Oman, with 1 million barrels of Iraqi Basrah crude, the data showed.
Both are sailing under the Liberian flag.
Euro hits one-year low
The euro has hit its lowest level in over a year, as the falling oil price reduces the possibility of interest rate hikes in the eurozone.
The European single currency has dropped by 0.4 of a cent today to $1.134, the lowest since 2 June 2025.
Over the last week it has fallen by almost three cents against the US dollar, as the US-Iran peace deal has eased inflation worries.
Two weeks ago, the European Central Bank raised its key interest rates, warning that prolonged disruption of energy supplies could increase energy prices further and for longer than currently expected.
Higher energy prices have already pushed inflation to 3.2% across the eurozone, over the ECB’s 2% target.
Analysts at Unicredit predict price increases will gradually normalise, as the easing in energy prices provides some relief to euro area inflation.
They told clients:
The recent decline in oil prices is likely to feed through quickly to transport fuel prices, which have been a key driver of the inflation surge observed so far.
