Mediaite71%

Elon Musk Isn’t a Trillionaire Anymore, Says Forbes  SpaceX Stock Dropped After Aborted Launch 62%

By Sarah Rumpf56%

7/18/2026, 12:58:35 AM

BS Summary: This article contains 20 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Authority, and Post Hoc (False Cause), with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 30% saturation with 133 hits. Analysis detected 982 faulty-reasoning hits from 443 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 58.2% and a BS Rank of 62% (6,824 of 17,976 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 62.00% of the article peer group.

The world’s first trillionaire is back to slumming it among the billionaires, according to a report by Forbes. 
That’s right. 
Elon Musk saw his net worth drop back to a mere twelve digits after the SpaceX stock price took a tumble after the latest failed Starship launch attempt, reported Forbes’ Ty Roush on Friday. 
Musk became the world’s first trillionaire last month after SpaceX went public in the largest initial public offering in history. 
He holds 4.8 billion shares of SpaceX, plus another 350 million stock options, and about 700 million shares of Tesla. 
The SpaceX IPO price was $135 and the stock saw a spike in the days that followed but has since been on a downward trend. 
On Monday, Forbes reported that SpaceX shares had declined 3.8% to just under $140 by the afternoon and Tesla shares saw a similar 3% drop. 
Friday, SpaceX was down to $124 at the end of the day and at the end of “a five-day losing streak for the stock,” wrote Roush. 
These stock price hits dragged Musk’s net worth down billions of dollars, Roush reported. 
Forbes calculates Musk’s peak net worth as $1.45 trillion on June 16, when SpaceX shares hit the stock’s all-time high. 
Since then, the former DOGE chief has lost nearly $700 billion and is now worth $792.8 billion. 
That’s enough to buy nearly eight million of the “Cyberbeast” model of the 2026 Tesla Cybertruck . 
(7,773,692 Cybertrucks to be precise, with a base model price of $101,985 ). 
Musk posted about the “automatic launch abort” for the latest Starship attempt on Thursday evening, posting on the X platform he owns that it was caused when “[s]ome of the engines didn’t start.” 
He added that another attempt would be made “hopefully in a few days,” and that the “most probable launch timing is early next week.” 
Some of the engines didn’t start, triggering an automatic launch abort. 
Now offloading propellant. 
Next launch attempt hopefully in a few days. 
- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 16, 2026 
To be confident of a good flight, 2 Raptors will be removed & replaced. 
Most probable launch timing is early next week. 
- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 17, 2026 
Musk may no longer be a trillionaire, but Forbes still ranks him as the richest person in the world, more than doubling his nearest competitors, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin , worth $282 billion and $260.1 billion respectively. 
The post Elon Musk Isn’t a Trillionaire Anymore, Says Forbes  SpaceX Stock Dropped After Aborted Launch first appeared on Mediaite . 
Confirmation Bias
0.5%
Anchoring Bias
10.2%
Availability Heuristic
0%
Representativeness Heuristic
0%
Hindsight Bias
0%
Overconfidence Bias
6.1%
Framing Effect
7.2%
Loss Aversion
18.7%
Status Quo Bias
9%
Sunk Cost Effect
0%
Optimism Bias
7.2%
Pessimism Bias
0%
Negativity Bias
26.6%
Self-Serving Bias
0%
Fundamental Attribution Error
0%
Actor-Observer Bias
0%
In-Group Bias
0%
Out-Group Homogeneity Bias
0%
Halo Effect
9%
Horn Effect
0%
Dunning-Kruger Effect
0%
Recency Bias
9.5%
Primacy Effect
0%
Blind-Spot Bias
0%
Ad Hominem
0%
Straw Man
0%
Appeal to Authority
21%
False Dilemma
9%
Slippery Slope
0%
Circular Reasoning
0%
Hasty Generalization
0%
Red Herring
0%
Bandwagon
5.6%
Appeal to Emotion
3.8%
Begging the Question
0%
Post Hoc (False Cause)
19.2%
Tu Quoque
0%
Burden of Proof
0%
Appeal to Nature
0%
Composition/Division
0%
Anecdotal
0%
No True Scotsman
0%
Ambiguity (Equivocation)
14.4%
Gambler’s Fallacy
0%
Middle Ground
0%
Personal Incredulity
0%
Special Pleading
3.2%
Genetic Fallacy
0%
Unattributed Quote
7.4%
Quote-first Misdirection
0%
Biased Writer Voice
30%
Indoctrination
0%
Politically Left Leaning Bias
0%
Politically Right Leaning Bias
0%
Attempt to Sell a Product or Service
3.8%

443 words analyzed.

Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.