Elon Musk's personal worth drops by $12 billion in a single day

Elon Musk, the 'Technoking' of electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla and hopeful of being the CEO at Twitter, lost $12 billion of his personal worth on a day he chose to speak about his political preferences on Twitter, Bloomberg reported. 

Musk spends a lot of time on Twitter jokingly tweeting. Of late, he has shared broad ideas about changes that need to be made at Twitter, a company he dearly wants to acquire. On Wednesday, though, the Tesla CEO vented out some frustration and even tweeted about his political opinions. 

As the day progressed, Tesla's stock price sank to the lowest level in 2022, wiping out $12.3 of Elon Musk's wealth, Bloomberg said in its report. 

Tesla's exclusion the trigger

Musk's ranting began with the exclusion of Tesla from the S&P 500, a list of companies ranked by their social, environmental, and governance (ESG) policies. As Reuters reported, the S&P 500 is a relatively new benchmark that investors use prior to making their investment decisions. It is then obvious that companies that make the list have made considerable decisions to protect the environment and transition society into a new era. 

Using this metric, Tesla, which has pioneered electric vehicles and is working towards building battery capacities for grids and pushing for solar power, should make the cut. And it did. However, in a recent update, the EV maker was shunted off of the list, clearly irking Musk, who tweeted. 

Exxon is rated top ten best in world for environment, social & governance (ESG) by S&P 500, while Tesla didn’t make the list!

ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 18, 2022

S&P executive Margaret Dorn told Reuters that Tesla's removal followed reports of racial discrimination at its premises and crashes linked to its autonomous vehicles.

When asked for an explainer on how Exxon topped the list, a representative at the index told Reuters that Musk may have been referring to a list of companies that made it to the index sorted by their market cap and not by their ESG score. 

Musk the target

Musk even went ahead to say that the S&P Global rating agency had lost its integrity. Musk's outspoken nature has also found him on the wrong side of the ruling dispensation. He has often lamented how the White House has sidelined his and Tesla's efforts toward making electrified transportation a near reality.

Earlier this year, President Joe Biden praised carmakers GM and Ford for making investments in electric vehicles without as much mentioning Tesla. 

Musk vented his frustration in the following tweet.  

In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party.

But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican.

Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold … ?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 18, 2022

In a separate tweet, he added that he expected political attacks against him to escalate in the coming months.