2017 has been a banner year for the world's richest individuals.

Pumped by a tidal wave of central-bank driven liquidity and corporate buybacks, equity indexes around the world climbed to all-time highs this year – a phenomenon that has disproportionately benefited the world's wealthiest, particularly the 500 individuals included in Bloomberg's billionaires' index.

By the end of trading Tuesday, Dec. 26, the 500 billionaires controlled an aggregate $5.3 trillion, a $1.1 trillion increase from their holdings on Dec. 27, 2016.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest beneficiary of this Federal Reserve-inspired rally was Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, who added a staggering $34.2 billion to his net worth in 2017 as Amazon shares soared above $1,000.

After announcing in October that his family office had given $18 billion to his Open Society Foundations over the past several years (Masking an elaborate tax dodge under the guise of altruism), Soros slipped to No. 195 on Bloomberg's ranking, with a net worth of $8 billion.

Bezos, whose net worth topped $100 billion at the end of November, currently has a net worth of $99.6 billion compared with $91.3 billion for Gates.

While China topped the US in terms of the number of billionaires last year, the tax bill that Trump signed into law last week will certainly go a long way toward helping the US reclaim the top spot.

As the chart below shows, the wealthiest Americans will receive an overwhelming share of the benefits from the Trump tax cut plan.

Meanwhile, corporations, which received a massive tax cut, will have even more money to continue buying back their shares, driving benchmark indexes ever higher and minting, even more, billionaires and millionaires in the process.