On Wednesday, the world’s richest people saw their combined wealth increase by $304 billion, the largest increase in wealth in Bloomberg’s billionaire index’s history.

Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and others benefited from yesterday’s rebound in stock prices after US President Donald Trump promised to pause introducing new import tariffs for some trading partners. Since Trump imposed his import duties earlier this month, stock markets worldwide have been on a roller coaster, with significant daily profits and losses alternating.

This was also the case on Wednesday. After Trump’s announcement, the broadly composed American stock market index, the S&P 500, recorded the most significant gain since 2008 and thus (partly) erased losses. On average, the 500 members of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index gained 3.5 percent.

The biggest winner was Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who gained $36 billion from Tesla’s share price jump. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg gained almost $26 billion.

The previous daily record for the billionaire index was in March 2022, when it added $233 billion as the US central bank implemented its first interest rate hike in years.

On Thursday, most billionaires had to give up some profits after the American stock markets lost a few percent.