The past few days have been quite a rollercoaster ride for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. On Friday, Bezos briefly lost his position as the world's richest man to Bill Gates after he lost close to $7 billion due to the massive drop in Amazon stock prices.
Bezos, fortunately, regained his position once the stock rebounded by the day's end.
The drop in Amazon's stock prices was mainly caused by its less-than-stellar performance for the third quarter.
Following the release of the company's earnings report, Amazon's stock price dropped by as much as 7 percent in after-hours trading on Thursday.
The report saw the company's first quarterly drop in profits since 2017. The report spooked some investors who immediately made big moves after its release. The drop in Amazon's stocks lowered Bezos' net worth to $103.9 billion.
During the late hours of trading on Friday, Amazon stocks rebounded with Bezos ending the day with a net worth of $111.1 billion. This allowed him to overtake Gates, who has a standing net worth of $103.9 billion.
Amazon shares finished the trading day on Friday with a 1.1 percent drop to $1,761.33. This was a significant rebound from the 4.8 percent drop in the stock during the opening of the trading day and the 7 percent drop in the previous day.
The 55-year old founder of the US e-commerce giant originally took the top spot in 2018, when he had a net worth of around $160 billion. Bezos lost a significant portion of his wealth after he split with his former wife Mackenzie Bezos in January.
Even with the drop in Amazon's share prices, Bezos would have never lost the top spot were it not for his divorce with Mackenzie. After their divorce, Bezos gave a quarter of their Amazon holdings to Mackenzie, driving up her net worth to $32.7 billion. Mackenzie is currently included in the top 20 richest people in the world.
Bezos is currently holding onto 59.1 million shares of Amazon, while his former wife is holding 19.7 million shares. Together, the couple held 78.8 million shares or roughly around 16 percent of the company.
Bezos entry ended Gates' run as the undefeated richest man in the world for 24 years. Bezos first appeared on The Forbes richest list in 1998, when Amazon went public, with a net worth of $1.6 billion. Gates first appeared on The Forbes list in 1987 with a net worth of $1.25 billion.
Gates stepped down as the chairman of the company he founded in 2014 but still remained on the top of the list in the years that followed.
