Elon Musk's Tesla replaces Facebook to become 5th-most-valuable company in S&P 500

Elon Musk and his electric car company Tesla have broken two records -- Musk dethroned Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos to become the world's richest man and Tesla has become fifth-most-valuable company in S&P 500.

Tesla jumped to fifth position in the S&P 500 index on Thursday's trading session after its market capitalisation touched $767 billion, surpassing social media giant Facebook's m-cap of $765 billion. Tesla share was up 15 per cent (YoY) on Thursday, thanks to Joe Biden-led Democratic party sweeping Georgia Senate run-off elections, which has raised hopes of a clean energy bill.

Tesla shares jumped to hit record high of $802.75 on Thursday after opening higher at $777.63 against the previous closing price of $755.98. It pushed Elon Musk to the world's richest man position in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index (BBI) by replacing Bezos, who had been the richest person since 2017.

Also read: Tesla CEO Elon Musk beats Amazon's Jeff Bezos to become world's richest person

According to latest data on BBI, a ranking of the world's 500 wealthiest people, Musk's net worth stands at over $195 billion, $10 billion more than Bezos's net worth of $185 billion. On achieving the feat, Musk reacted in his unique style on Twitter, saying "how strange".

The shares of American electric vehicle companies have zoomed over 740 per cent in 2020 on the back of strong revenue growth, inclusion in the S&P 500 Index and higher enthusiasm on Wall Street.

Musk, who began 2020 with worth around $27 billion, has a major turnaround in his wealth, which has now surged to a staggering $150 billion. This is reportedly the fastest bout of wealth creation in history.

The South Africa-born engineer owns 20 per cent stake in Tesla. Besides, he also sits on around $42 billion of unrealised paper gains on vested stock options, which he received in 2012 and 2018. Musk also holds a majority stake in Space-X, which accounts for about $15 billion.

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