tech stocks suffered their widest losses in months wednesday as a debt downgrade spooked investors out of riskier assets causing the fortunes of numerous ultrarich tech billionaires to take a major hit the nasdaq composite tanked 23 by 340 pm et its worst day since february 21 the highergrowth grouping faltered as concerns about the us’ macro conditions mounted driving the losses were the seven megacap tech stocks which largely contributed to the market’s blockbuster gains throughout 2023 as apple down 16 microsoft down 27 alphabet down 25 amazon down 27 nvidia down 49 meta down 29 and tesla down 28 each fell thanks to the slide the 10 richest people on the planet lost 267 billion collectively with each top10 magnate in the red on the day according to forbes’ realtime net worth tracker tesla ceo elon musk the world’s richest man became nearly 5 billion poorer suffering the biggest hit to his fortune of anyone wednesday amazon founder jeff bezos meta ceo mark zuckerberg alphabet cofounders larry page and sergey brin and oracle chairman larry ellison also grew billions of dollars less wealthy wednesday but still rank among the 10 richest people on the planet the stock slump came after fitch downgraded its rating for some of the us’s longterm debt offerings from aaa to aa one of the only such debt rating revisions in recent history the dow jones industrial average and sp 500 each fell about 1 in wednesday trading in response but various economists and analysts stated fitch’s update should not significantly impact equity performance the slip in confidence in the federal government’s ability to pay back its debt comes amid a turbulent political and economic climate in the us following an initial hiccup after the sp ratings agency downgraded its credit grade for the us in 2011 stocks continued to gain lpl financial’s chief fixed income strategist lawrence gillum noted wednesday the dow fell 3 in the month after the sp’s august 2011 announcement but recovered to a 7 gain compared to its predowngrade level by year’s end “the us remains the safe haven during times of market stress and the downgrade will likely not change that” according to gillum