I think you're confusing long term investing, and trading. As a long term investor, it is absolutely the case that I missed out on the trading opportunity afforded by selling in the 380's and buying back in at the 250's. I also missed out on the tax ramifications of selling, the incremental work on next year's taxes of reporting the sales, paying the appropriate taxes. I also missed out on the daily / weekly / monthly worry / energy that goes into evaluating whether now is the time to trade or not.
And all of this is a backwards looking view that presumes that I knew at 380 that it was a time to sell because the next big move would be down (rather than up) AND that I knew at 250 that it was time to buy because the next big move would be up (rather than down).
As a long term investor in Tesla, my time scale is about 10 years today (it was 10+years when I started, and the intervening years have served to keep the range constant at 10+).
I have an intermediate check point that I currently expect to arrive sometime in 2019 and will be marked by M3 achieving strong production volumes, and will be marked by US consumers being able to order and receive an M3 without already being on the reservation list in say 3 months or less (so still a big backlog - just that we'll start seeing signs the backlog is kind of clearing). The current ramp noise, for me, is noise - M3 is ramping (fast or slow can be argued), and what I was looking for in the most recent quarterly production #'s, fast enough to probably avoid a cap raise to fund the ramp. The long term thesis is right on track.
I do follow the company closely, looking for evidence that my fundamental investment thesis has become invalidated. The M3 ramp hasn't changed anything for me and the long term thesis.
My time scale isn't necessarily that of other long term investors. I do figure that the bare minimum time scale for a long term investor is around 1-2 years (the furthest out LEAP is just barely far enough out to be minimally usable for a long term investor). But that's my view of time, and I don't trade in LEAPs (I've thought about it).
Along the way, I've ridden the stock price from the 20's to the high 100's, back down to the low 100's, up to the 200's, back down, up into the 300's, back down, and sideways for long stretches. If I'd been able to call all of those local highs and lows, and traded them, wow. All that's happened along the way is two additional situations where we had available cash, and a local thought that the company was unrealistically cheap, so it was time to buy more. We bought more in the 160's while the stock was in the middle of sliding from 180/90's to 130's (ouch!). We bought more in the 330's that subsequently went into the 310's, the 380's, and now the 250's. Never a bad night's sleep from excitement about highs or lows, because I don't have evidence of the long term investment thesis changing.
Trading on the 380 to 250 drop would have required knowledge I didn't have at any time along the way, energy invested in following daily movements REALLY closely, etc..
I don't know when Tesla will trade at 3k+ - only that I see a company with access to big enough markets, good enough technology, and the right culture (mostly), to take big share in those markets, at big margins (for those markets), that can expand by another 10 bagger from here. For a 10 bagger, I only need to be kind of right on the timing and scale - if it takes 10 years and grows 5x, I'm ok with that.
My read on the current quarterly hyperventilation is that it won't matter even in a year to the long term trend. It matters deeply to the traders. (Side bar - there's a reason I don't read the Market Action thread). Tesla is expanding the number of produced and delivered units by a lot this quarter. And will expand them further by a lot in Q2.
My really unrealistic, far out there expectation, is that Tesla might not be the first company to $1T market cap, but we WILL see it become the largest publicly traded company in the world by market cap. My guess is 5-10 years, but being "conservative", 2 decades. Oh, and it'll clear $1T. The markets are too big, the technology is too good, the company is too aggressive, and the incumbents are too passive. I'm happy to hang around for 3 years or 30 for a 20-30 bagger from here.
