The report issued by the US inflation data, yesterday, Tuesday, cast a negative shadow on the US and global stock markets and the digital currency market, in addition to the impact of the world's wealthy on these data.
According to the report, consumer prices in the United States recorded a sudden rise last August on a monthly basis, as the decline in gasoline prices was offset by a rise in rental and food costs, giving cover to the Federal Reserve to announce another significant increase in interest rates next Wednesday.
The US Labor Department said yesterday that the consumer price index rose 0.1% last month, after remaining unchanged in July 2022.
With the release of these negative data, about half a trillion dollars evaporated from the market value of only five companies on Wall Street during trading yesterday only, as a result of the sharp losses that American markets suffered in the wake of the report's release.
The US markets incurred severe losses yesterday, when investors rushed to sell their shares for fear of the stage after raising interest rates on the US dollar, while major companies incurred record losses in the billions in their market values.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1276 points (or 3.9%). The benchmark (S&P 500) index fell 4.3%, with all but six of its constituent stocks declining.
The Nasdaq Composite did worse with a 5.2% drop, reflecting the sell-off of technology-oriented stocks. The Nasdaq 100* was down 5.5% with all of its stocks closing in the red.
The five largest companies in the (S & P 500) by market value lost 477 billion dollars, or about half a trillion dollars, during Tuesday's trading, according to Market Watch.
The losses affected the cryptocurrency market as well, as the digital market plunged below one trillion dollars with a sharp decline recorded by the major cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC).
Bitcoin fell to critical levels just above $20,000, posting a loss of about 9% after a severe sell-off following expectations of a further rise in interest rates on the dollar.
Yesterday, Tuesday, the total market value of the cryptocurrency market decreased by nearly 7% to $998 billion from $1.07 trillion, CoinMarketCap announced in a report seen by Al Arabiya.net.
The wealthy of the United States also took a big hit after the inflation report was released yesterday, as the wealth of the richest American billionaires fell within one day by $93 billion, the ninth worst daily loss ever.
Jeff Bezos' fortune fell by $9.8 billion, the largest among those tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Elon Musk's net worth decreased by $8.4 billion.
The fortunes of Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Steve Ballmer each fell by more than 4 billion dollars, while Warren Buffett lost 3.4 billion dollars, and Bill Gates incurred losses of about 2.8 billion dollars.
In general, the wealth of the 500 richest people in the world has decreased by about $1.2 trillion from what it was at the beginning of this year.
Bloomberg said the big losses for billionaires reflect the broad sell-off in the US stock market, as investors are betting that higher-than-expected CPI data will lead to a more aggressive rate hike by the Federal Reserve.
