Wealth of World's 5 Richest People Doubles Since 2020

[bjl584]

The wealth of the world’s five richest men more than doubled since 2020 | CNN Business

[disneysteve]

I am far from one of the richest men in the world but I can say the very same thing.

Portfolio balance 1/1/20: $1,329,432
Portfolio balance 12/31/23: $3,373,371
(Note this is investable assets, not net worth which is what the article looked at.)

That's an increase of 153.75%.

In our case, a chunk of that came from an inheritance, but I'm sure I'm not the only person to inherit money the past 4 years. And that only accounts for about half of the gain. The rest is investment gains. This also covers about 1.5 years during which I was per diem and earning a fraction of my previous salary so new contributions were very small. In fact, we drew out about $57,000 in 2023.

Once your wealth gets to a certain point, it really starts to take on a life of its own and multiply faster than you can spend it.

I get that the point of the article is to highlight income/wealth inequality but I'm not sure that's the best way to illustrate it. Plus they failed to give any comparison to others, like us, who saw similar growth.

[kork13]

Yeah, they kinda cherry-picked what they wanted to highlight to suit their desired message.

It's no surprise that wealthy folks have alot of their money invested. They're comparing data from Mar'20 (the very bottom of the COVID market crash) to Nov'23 (about when the markets hit a new record high). You know what also just about doubled between those dates? The S&P500, with about 90% growth during that specific period. So yeah, I'd be shocked if any investor (who is still adding to their investments) didn't roughly double their assets between that cherry-picked time window. I've both added & removed a bunch from my investments during that period (bought a house), but our account balances have also roughly doubled. Amazing!! -- I'm just as good as the billionaires!!!

Journalism with an agenda isn't journalism -- it's propaganda. (Okay, that's maybe a bit extreme .... But blatant bias in reporting really aggravates me.)

[disneysteve]

They're comparing data from Mar'20 (the very bottom of the COVID market crash) to Nov'23 (about when the markets hit a new record high).

If I use the post-crash figures, I'm sure our numbers are even better, but 153.75% gain is already pretty significant.

[kork13]

If I use the post-crash figures, I'm sure our numbers are even better, but 153.75% gain is already pretty significant.

Yeah, the article specifically names Mar'20 - Nov'23 ... So pretty carefully selected. Would be much more correct/less biased to say something along the lines of "Investors double their assets since COVID crash". Of course, that headline is not gonna get nearly as much attention, so obviously that's not gonna fly.

[ua_guy]

Forget any agenda or political BS for the moment. 1% of the world's population holds 43% of all financial wealth. Wealth is power. Good for them, and also, that really does say this way of transacting and rule-making doesn't serve most people on this earth.

[srblanco7]

Yeah, the article specifically names Mar'20 - Nov'23 ... So pretty carefully selected. Would be much more correct/less biased to say something along the lines of "Investors double their assets since COVID crash". Of course, that headline is not gonna get nearly as much attention, so obviously that's not gonna fly.

Yep - we’re just about (a bit short) of 2x over that same time period.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Oh I just checked and I doubled our net worth and then some. Doubled our net worth without including any increase in home equity just normal principal paydown