No one on Earth has lost more money in one day this year than Elon Musk did on Thursday, according to reports.
The Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter CEO suffered a $12.6 billion double whammy that cost him roughly 7% of his wealth.
First, Tesla shares tumbled almost 10% Thursday after the EV maker’s margin narrowed from 29.1% in the year-ago quarter to 19.3%, below the Street's expectation of 21.2%.
Then, things blew up for Musk in more ways than one.
The SpaceX Starship successfully launched on its first full test flight, but the giant interplanetary spacecraft exploded less than five minutes in.
The Starship upper stage failed to separate from the Super Heavy booster's 31 engines and the ship began to fall back to Earth much earlier than expected.
SpaceX called the launch itself a success, noting that Starship "experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation.”
Musk said the company learned a great deal from the launch, but in the short term it was costly.
Meanwhile, on Twitter, Musk’s plan to strip away legacy blue check marks went into effect on Thursday.
Contact Andrew Kessel at andrew.kessel@proactiveinvestors.com
Follow him on Twitter @andrew_kessel