Elon Musk is no longer the world's 2nd-richest person after Tesla shares lost a quarter of their value since January

• Elon Musk fell from being the world's second-richest person to the third-richest on Monday.
• LVMH Chairman Bernard Arnault, with a fortune of $161.2 billion, overtook the Tesla billionaire.
• Tesla's stock has tumbled 24% from its January high, and its market cap has dropped.

Elon Musk on Monday lost his position in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as the world's second-richest person after Tesla's shares fell another 2.2%.

He was unseated by LVMH Chairman Bernard Arnault, the luxury-goods tycoon. The billionaires are separated by a few million dollars on the list of the world's wealthiest people.

Arnault has amassed a fortune of $161.2 billion, while Musk's fortune fell to $160.6 billion, according to Bloomberg.

Musk's drop in wealth was a direct consequence of Tesla's stock falling 24% from its January high. The electric-vehicle maker's shares spiked to an intraday high of $900 in late January but have slumped to about $580.

The company's market capitalization has dropped below $560 billion from a peak of almost $870 billion. Wedbush said public-relations issues in China had hurt Tesla's monthly sales.

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Musk nabbed the top spot on the list in January after Tesla shares skyrocketed amid a boom in technology stocks.

The Tesla boss was already having an eventful week in markets last week after his bitcoin U-turn triggered a wipeout of about $350 billion from the crypto market; bitcoin stabilized after he clarified that Tesla hadn't sold any of its crypto holdings. His suggestions on how to improve the technical efficiency of dogecoin spurred small increases in the price of the meme-inspired cryptocurrency.

"Tesla is the poster child of the low or no earnings equity movement that has worked incredibly well, as markets saw ever-increasing central bank liquidity through 2020," said Chris Weston, the head of research at the brokerage Pepperstone, adding that when Tesla moves it can become a momentum-and-trend juggernaut.

"That time is over, at least for now it seems, and in a world where market participants are debating the timing around a reduction in the Federal Reserve's bond-buying program, and other central banks are already tapering theirs, the market has moved from high growth stocks to value."

Tesla's shares closed at $576.83 on Monday but were trading 0.2% higher, at $578.29, in Tuesday premarket trading.