Mark Zuckerberg Just Shy of Bloomberg Billionaires Index

Mark Zuckerberg has been depicted in films and articles as a bitter little kid whose I’ll-show-you attitude drove him to create Facebook and eventually change the world because he was a loser with the ladies and struck out with Harvard’s elite final clubs.

Imagine what the enterprising young man will do when he finds out he’s not going be a member of an even more elite club once his company completes its much-hyped IPO. Facebook brain-implant chips anyone?

Bloomberg recently reported that Zuckerberg’s shares of Facebook stock could be worth just shy of $21 billion when the company’s IPO is finished. Yes, that’s a lot of bling, and should be enough for the Zuck to score an invite to any group or club, right?

All but one, it seems. He’s still short of earning a seat at the big boys table on the newly formed Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which ranks the world’s richest 20 people.

Unlike Forbes magazine’s list of billionaires, which is yearly, Bloomberg’s Index is calculated every day at 5:30 p.m. by looking at the change in the markets, the economy, and Bloomberg’s own news reports. It’s interesting to see how much money the world’s wealthiest gain and lose in a single day. In a way, the billionaires themselves become like stocks, or horses, and it would be easy to see finance jockeys across the country starting up office betting pools and wagering whether Christy, Jim, or Alice Walton will be the first to crack the top 10.

As of Tuesday, the wealthiest man alive was Mexico’s Carlos Slim Helu, who’s got his tentacles in telecommunications, banking, and mining. With an estimated $67.5.billion, he lost a staggering $888 million in a day. To no surprise, the richest American was Bill Gates, whose net worth also took a whopping $805 million hit over the past 24 hours. On a day when the Dow Jones plunged 203 points, even the savvy Warren Buffet, No. 3 on the list, took a loss of $407 million, bringing his net worth down to $43.9 billion.

But it’s the end of the list that concerns our rusty-haired Harvard dropout. Snagging the coveted final spot on the Index with an estimated net worth of $22.3 billion is David K.R. Thomson, head of the media conglomerate Thomson Reuters and part-owner of the Winnipeg Jets pro hockey team.

By our calculations, this puts Zuckerberg a good $1.3 billion or more away from joining the crème de la crème in The Land of the One Percenters. Luckily, poor ol’ Zuckerberg still has a fighting chance. “For every dollar the [Facebook] stock gains, Zuckerberg will increase his fortune by half a billion dollars,” according to Bloomberg.

So there you have it: All Facebook has got to do is get its stock up about 3 bucks, and our man Zuckerberg will finally be a member of the most elite club on the globe.

That’ll show ’em, Zuck. That’ll show ’em.