Are You Financially Literate?
If you’ve ever paid attention to any report on financial literacy from around the world, you’ll likely know that the results aren’t exactly awe-inspiring. For example, according to one global survey, only about 33% of adults are financially literate. Americans tend to fare better on average, but not as much as you might imagine. In fact, as we showed in our infographic on the Financial Literacy Problem, one ongoing survey actually sees average U.S. performance slowly dropping over time. It raises the question: what do people actually know about money, investing, and wealth?
Investment Literacy
A recent poll by Lexington Law aimed to get a sense of U.S. financial literacy, with a focus on basic investment knowledge on stocks, bonds, and building a safe portfolio. Specifically, it asked 4,000 Americans four different multiple choice questions: If you think you know the answers to even two of these questions, you are off to a good start! The survey ultimately found that the average score on this test was 48.8% – meaning that Americans get slightly fewer than two questions correct on average.
Cheat Sheet
Question #1: Safest Investment Based on the options provided on the multiple choice, the correct answer was Treasury Bonds. Roughly 53% of Americans would get this right, if asked. Question #2: Bond Prices Only 25% of respondents said that bond prices would decrease if interest rates rise, which is the correct answer. To be fair, this relationship is somewhat counterintuitive. Question #3: Bull Market With the current bull market becoming the longest in history this month, this terminology has been all over the news. That said, just 53% of respondents understood a bull market to be a period in which stock prices are expected to rise. Question #4: Bankruptcy If you own a stock and the company goes bankrupt, what happens? Interestingly, people fared best on this question, with 64% realizing that the stock becomes “virtually worthless”. It’s worth noting, however, that a 64% success rate is still the grading equivalent of a “D”. How did you do on this test – are you financially literate about investments? Where did you go wrong? If you need to brush up on investing knowledge, don’t forget to visit our Wealth 101 project that features easy-to-use infographics about personal finance topics.
on A lagging stock market dented these fortunes against high interest rates, energy shocks, and economic uncertainty. But some of the world’s billionaires have flourished in this environment, posting sky-high revenues in spite of inflationary pressures. With data from Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List, we feature a snapshot of the richest people in the world in 2023.
Luxury Mogul Takes Top Spot
The world’s richest person is France’s Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of LVMH.
With 75 brands, the luxury conglomerate owns Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, and Tiffany. LVMH traces back to 1985, when Arnault cut his first major deal with the company by acquiring Christian Dior, a firm that was struggling with bankruptcy.
Fast-forward to today, and the company is seeing record profits despite challenging market conditions. Louis Vuitton, for instance, has doubled its sales in four years.
In the table below, we show the world’s 10 richest people with data as of February 27, 2023:
Elon Musk, the second-wealthiest person in the world has a net worth of $191 billion. In October, Musk took over Twitter in a $44 billion dollar deal, which has drawn criticism from investors. Many say it’s a distraction from Musk’s work with Tesla.
While Tesla shares have rebounded—after falling roughly 70% in 2022—Musk’s wealth still sits about 13% lower than in March of last year.
Third on the list is Jeff Bezos, followed by Larry Ellison. The latter of the two, who founded Oracle, owns 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai which he bought in 2012 for $300 million.
Fifth on the list is Warren Buffett. In his annual letter to shareholders, he discussed how Berkshire Hathaway reported record operating profits despite economic headwinds. The company outperformed the S&P 500 Index by about 22% in 2022.
How Fortunes Have Changed
Given multiple economic crosscurrents, billionaire wealth has diverged over the last year. Since March 2022, just four of the top 10 richest in the world have seen their wealth increase. Two of these are European magnates, while Carlos Slim Helu runs the largest telecom firm in Latin America. In fact, a decade ago Slim was the richest person on the planet. Overall, as the tech sector saw dismal returns over the year, the top 10 tech billionaires lost almost $500 billion in combined wealth.
Recent Shakeups in Asia
Perhaps the most striking news for the world’s richest centers around Gautam Adani, formerly the richest person in Asia. In January, Hindenburg Research, a short-selling firm, released a report claiming that the Adani Group engaged in stock manipulation and fraud. Specifically, the alleged the firm used offshore accounts to launder money, artificially boost share prices, and hide losses. The Adani Group, which owns India’s largest ports—along with ports in Australia, Sri Lanka, and Israel—lost $100 billion in value in the span of a few weeks. Interestingly, very few Indian mutual funds hold significant shares in Adani Group, signaling a lack of confidence across India’s market, which was also cited in Hindenburg’s report. As a result, Mukesh Ambani has climbed to Asia’s top spot, controlling a $84 billion empire that spans from oil and gas and renewable energy to telecom. His conglomerate, Reliance Industries is the largest company by market cap in India.
