Yeah I echo these feelings. Honestly, since everything last winter and going through all of that, I have no emotion now regarding performance of the stock. My holdings in this company are multiple thousands of shares and I really just don’t care anymore. I won’t sell, but I’ve become numb to this entire emotional drama everyday now practically.
Take heart. As I recall your situation, you are still in the accumulation phase—keep squirreling away shares. My largest early-ish buy was mostly underwater for a couple of years. I’d had an “Ah Ha!" moment and fear of missing out, but I don’t regret that buy at all. And I got better at timing my buys.
Here’s the thing:
Nobody knows how to value Tesla, nobody. Why not? Because doing so accurately—or at least in an agreed upon way—requires an accurate estimate of future earnings. The issue isn’t so much that it is difficult to estimate the future vehicle earnings of Tesla (and energy and insurance and …), which it is. The crux of the challenge lies in the rapid revolutions within the business. Elon’s thinking appears to me to have been changing, as presumably has that of many of the rest of Tesla’s, SpaceX’s, etc. executives, as his companies move along.
Tesla’s EV’s are taking the world market by storm. Yet, robotaxi’s present a greater opportunity and their advent will affect the vehicle market in perhaps somewhat but not entirely predictable ways. People snickered when Elon stressed the point in an earnings call. He doesn’t seem to push the narrative that much, but boy are they working on FSD.
Now people snicker about Optimus. Yet these people too miss the point: What matters is the general purpose ‘vision stack’ that Tesla has been creating. I have a well known friend from graduate school who insists that creating practical robots is "a perception problem"—by which he means relative to vision all else is fairly trivial. Optimus sidesteps battery cost and availability issues relative to its addressable market (certainly in comparison to automotive).
Further, not only is Optimus free of the regulatory hurtles that robotaxi’s face, Tesla can use Optimus in an environment they control, their own factories, so they can simplify things for Optimus in these early days. How does one estimate the future earnings of Optimus (cue the religious squabbling)?
What more is on the horizon? In the last few moments of the video of the shareholders’ meeting, Elon made a seemingly throw away comment to the effect that people did not grasp how "transformational" Boring tunnels would be. I’ve not seen a single summary of the meeting that mentions this. I only noticed it because I was looking for it as I have been wondering to what extent Elon himself realized it.
People cling to inadequate valuation models in the way that early Mediterranean and other sailors kept within sight of shore. It feels comfortable and safer when you lack the tools to tackle the uncertainty of ranging over the open seas. Yet, it does little good when thinking about those who do not lack those tools, e.g Elon’s armada of innovative titans-in-the-making and the synergies between them.
The profound challenge of forming a consensus valuation (among other reasons) means that Tesla’s stock is ripe for manipulation through the dissemination of conflicting narratives. This is frustrating and wearing. It is in part intended to be so, so as to separate you from your shares. Hold on to every one: Each is a golden ticket.
