There Are Now a Record Number of Billionaires—With Taylor Swift and 19-Year-Old Brazilian Heiress Livia Voigt Joining the List

For celebrities like Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Tiger Woods, and Steven Spielberg, fame is bringing fortune.

They’re among 14 performers, athletes, and entertainment moguls―along with Oprah Winfrey, Tyler Perry, and Michael Jordan― on the 2024 Forbes World’s Billionaires List, which the media company released this week. The annual ranking “has seen an explosion in celebrity billionaires in recent years,” Forbes said in a statement.

Topping the roster of fortunes: LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault , with an estimated net worth of US$233 billion―up from US$211 billion last year. Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk ranked second, with a US$195 billion war chest, up from US$180 billion in 2023. Just a billion dollars short of second place, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos placed third with US$194 billion, or $80 billion more than a year ago.

LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault topped the list with an estimated net worth of US$233 billion.
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Tech titans dominate the rest of the top 10, which includes Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (US$177 billion), Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison (US$141 billion), Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett (US$133 billion), Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates (US$128 billion), former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (US$121 billion), Reliance Industries honcho Mukesh Ambani (US$116 billion), and Google co-founder Larry Page (US$114 billion.)

Swift made her debut on the list this year, along with 262 other “new billionaires” including shoe mogul Christian Louboutin, 19-year-old Brazilian heiress Livia Voigt, and NBA legend and entrepreneur Earvin “Magic” Johnson.

For Swift, worth an estimated US$1.2 billion, it’s the second star turn on a rich list this month. Last week, Swift made her first appearance on the 13th Hurun Global Rich Report, an annual survey from China-based media and research firm Hurun.

But the ultra wealthy had a very good year regardless of name recognition. The world now has more billionaires than ever, Forbes reported, with 2,781 in all. That adds up to 141 more than last year’s list, and 26 more than a record 2,755 billionaires set in 2021.

The richer are also richer, according to the list. Billionaires’ aggregate worth is now US$14.2 trillion, up US$2 trillion from 2023―and US$1.1 trillion above the previous record, also set in 2021, Forbes said.

Taylor Swift made her debut on the list this year with an estimated US$1.2 billion.
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A “flurry” of billionaires are getting rich through the AI “gold rush,” according to Forbes.

“The poster child for all this is Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang ,” whose company’s stock surged 300% over the past year. Open AI CEO Sam Altman , who briefly lost control of his company last year, also made the list, owing to canny investments in his former role as head of VC firm Y Combinator.

The U.S. leads in billionaires, with a record 813 worth a total US$5.7 trillion. China ranked second, with 473 billionaires whose combined net worth is US$1.7 trillion. India set a record with 200 billionaires this year. Forbes said it calculated wealth using stock prices and currency exchange rates as of March 8. Two-thirds of the billionaires on the list emerged wealthier than a year ago; one-third have lost money.

Forbes’ list diverged from the Hurun rich list, where Musk reigned as the world’s wealthiest and Bezos and Arnault ranked second and third, respectively. The Hurun list was even richer, ranking 3,279 billionaires, up from 3,112 the previous year. The number of billionaires increased by 5% and their total wealth was up 9%, Hurun said.

Gold is one of the market’s go-to hedges in rocky times. Don’t forget that gold miners’ stocks are too.

The stock market’s gains in 2026 belie the rocky macroeconomic picture: elevated inflation, heightened geopolitical tensions, and jitters about the artificial-intelligence trade. That backdrop, in theory, should be the time for gold to shine. Instead, the price of the yellow metal has tumbled more than 5% so far, after last year’s blistering 65% rally. In part, the U.S. dollar’s recovery has stymied gold, which benefited from the greenback’s weakness in 2025.

Even with the precious metal’s recent weakness, gold mining stocks could be the best way to profit from this year’s uncertainty.

Gold miners “are a valuable hedge against macro risks that would likely be damaging for equities,” BCA Research’s Noah Weisberger and Rishabh Shah wrote this week.

Concerns about the Federal Reserve’s next moves to tackle inflation, the increasingly crowded AI trade, and steep valuations for tech stocks are just some of the drivers that could help gold’s price get on even footing— and lead to even bigger gains for miner stocks.

These stocks’ prices tend to outpace gold’s moves, because the companies have fixed operational costs. So when gold’s price rallies, their profit margins soar, and vice versa. For instance, the VanEck Gold Miners GDX +7.39% exchange-traded fund has fallen 11% this year as the metal has slumped.

Now, gold’s price just needs to stabilize to help miners’ stocks take off, and that seems to be happening. The precious metal has recently found support above the $4,000 level, and has stuck in a narrow range since the end of June. But its price rose ever so slightly in July, ending a four-month losing streak for the metal. Technical analysis also suggests that gold is due for a comeback.

Barron’s recently wrote that the pullbacks for both gold miners and the metal itself are overdone. Senior technical analyst Doug Busch noted that the VanEck ETF is on the “verge of a breakout” and has the potential to hit $11o in early 2027, up more than 40% from its current price.

Gold miners also have more than their role as a market hedge going for them. Their fundamentals are solid, too, says Chris Mancini, portfolio co-manager of the Gabelli Gold Fund.

“Precious metals miners are generating substantial amounts of free cash flow given profit margins of over $2,000 per ounce, and are returning this cash to shareholders through buybacks and dividends,” he said in an email.

“Buying the miners is a cheap way to get exposure to the price of gold,” he added. His fund owns Newmont NEM +6.71%, a Barron’s stock pick last year, and Agnico Eagle Mines as top holdings, as well as miners Northern Star Resources, Endeavour Mining, and Kinross Gold K+8.59%.

Miners are better businesses than they used to be, the BCA team added.

“Capex is more disciplined, margins are high and rising…and they are largely independent of the AI story,” Weisberger, BCA’s head of equities, and Shah, a senior analyst, wrote.

That last part is key. AI is disrupting the software industry and many other services and information-oriented businesses, and investors have piled into AI stocks. But ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and other large-language models aren’t going to replace the need to mine for metals.

“Equity portfolios can benefit from exposure to quality that is uncorrelated to AI risk, and gold miners fit the bill,” the BCA team said.

They recommend that investors buy the VanEck Gold Miners ETF, which owns top miners such as Agnico, Barrick Mining ABX +7.24%, and Newmont.

An important bonus for big gold miners’ stocks is that their valuations are attractive after the gold’s pullback, too. The VanEck ETF is now trading at just a little more than nine times next year’s earnings estimates. That’s a big discount to its five-year average price-to-earnings ratio of 14, according to FactSet.

What’s more, the ETF is currently valued at a more than 50% discount to the S&P 500 SPX -0.17%, which is trading for about 19 times earnings estimates for 2027. Mining stocks have typically traded at just a 25% discount to the broader market over the past five years. So there is significant upside for the group if valuations move back toward normal levels.

One factor that complicates mining stocks as a market hedge, of course, is if stocks bounce back, which has been the case so far in August.

But both the market and economic outlooks remain cloudy, and investors remain nervous about the Fed’s next moves and AI stocks. Gold miners should do just fine, even if the anxious mood on Wall Street persists.