Don’t get too worried/excited when you see articles like these:

“Jeff Bezos just made $30 billion in 1 day”
“Elon Musk just lost $16.3 billion”

It doesn’t mean that $30bn just entered Bezos’ bank account or $16.3bn just left Musk’s account. That is not what has happened.

Those figures don’t have real life tangible impact. Those gains/losses would only materialize if they sell the stocks they own in those companies at that exact moment. And that’s quite unlikely to happen.

Think of it like this: it’s like someone telling you, you failed the exam

coming next year because you didn’t read today. While it could be true that not reading today may reduce the amount of books you’d have read before the exam next year, we don’t know that for sure. Even if we knew, it has no consequence because until you take the exam next year,

you cannot be graded a pass or fail so that statement has zero material impact until you’ve taken the exam and passed/failed.

Till they sell those shares, the daily increase/decreases have no real life impact because they don’t hold the cash anywhere. It’s not tangible.