Richest Person on Dec 31, 2026: Odds & Probability

The market on who will be the richest person on December 31, 2026, has drawn more than $1.8m in trading volume. It resolves to the individual ranked first on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index at 5:30 pm ET on that date, with the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List as a backup and a final fallback to the latest available Bloomberg data. Traders assign a 96.4% probability to Elon Musk retaining the top spot. Warren Buffett sits in second place at 1.2%, followed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at 0.5% apiece. Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang, Steve Ballmer, and Bernard Arnault each hold 0.4%, while Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison come in at 0.3%. Another 20 individuals—listed under generic labels such as Person Z or Person Q—are priced at 0.0%. A 96.4% probability does not guarantee the outcome—markets have been wrong before—but reflects a near-consensus among participants. To put the gap in perspective, Musk’s implied odds are roughly 27-to-1; every other candidate is a long shot by a wide margin. The second-place probability of 1.2% implies odds of about 82-to-1. The steep drop-off from Musk to the rest indicates a market with little doubt about the outcome. Even among the next names, no single challenger reaches 2%. The resolution mechanism relies on a specific timestamp and index, avoiding disputes about daily fluctuations. If Bloomberg fails to publish on schedule, the market falls back to Forbes, and then to the last available Bloomberg reading.