In a single day of trading, the Walton clan, heirs to the Walmart fortune, lost a whopping $6.3 billion in paper riches, after Walmart’s share price plummeted on Tuesday.Â
The decline affected the world’s richest woman, Alice Walton, and her two brothers, Rob and Jim Walton, who all have enormous stakes in the retail giant.
Walmart shares closed at $97.09, falling $2.26 or about 2.27 percent for the day. The drop in the stock price cost Waltons a lot of money, as together they hold about 45 percent of all the stock at Walmart.
Sam Walton’s daughter, Alice Walton, had her wealth decrease by $2.1 billion to an estimated net value of $106.1 billion. Both Jim and Rob Walton, who are brothers, lost wealth, with the former now having a net value of $115.2 billion and the latter $113.9 billion, as indicated by Forbes’ real-time billionaire tracker. The three are still among the richest people on earth despite incurring the humongous one-day loss.
Value loss was triggered by a broader fall in retail equities, in the wake of fresh warnings of faltering consumer spending and ongoing inflation pressures. Traders think investors are hedging against softer-than-expected discretionary consumer spending in the second half of the year—a factor that immediately hurts big-box retailers such as Walmart. There was no significant news event behind the decline, but increasing fears of economic uncertainty and consumer sentiment triggered sharp sell-offs among retail stocks.
In spite of this, Walton family’s immense wealth is enduring. Apart from Walmart, its influence extends into banking, sports, health care, and philanthropy. Alice Walton has forever been absent from active corporate participation to dedicate herself to arts and health. She founded the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas and initiated an alternative medical school that seeks to integrate art with health.
Rob Walton, former chairman of Walmart, is more famous nowadays in the sports arena. He headed a group that purchased the NFL’s Denver Broncos in 2022 for $4.7 billion and then transferred responsibility for the club to his son-in-law. The youngest of the Walton brothers, Jim Walton is the chairman of regional bank Arvest Bank that has assets of $26 billion. His sons also own family businesses, and his daughter heads the Walton Family Foundation.
Although the $6.3 billion loss is staggering, it will probably not unnerve the Waltons to their core. Their combined wealth and diversified assets give them a rock-solid buffer against market volatility. The recent dive is a message that even the wealthiest clans cannot escape Wall Street’s moods. But with their rock-solid foundation in retailing and other categories, the Waltons ought to ride out the storm in style.
