Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[MC3OZ]

Tesla secures tax break for Cybertruck Gigafactory in Austin - Electrek

Electrek’s Take - I know you all love it...

 

[UkNorthampton]

Don't laugh! I forgot some things on my initial list.

Tesla Pay will be like a bank account. You can spend money from it to buy Tesla stuff or services, etc. and you can transfer money into it from other banks. What's another place where money can be created from and end up in your Tesla account? Tesla Network ride revenue. Non-Tesla owners pay for rides in Tesla Network cars, and their payment goes directly into your Tesla bank account - minus the dollar that Tesla takes (or whatever it is). You can pay for Supercharger fees, if you like to eat in the car you can order meals from restaurants, and if your Tesla bank account runs out it can be topped up from a conventional bank account of your choice, just like a toll tag account. After money builds up, you can make your car payments for your fleet of 10 Model 3's that you've got parked in the street outside your house LOL, automatically make the insurance payments back to Tesla, and so on. (maybe there aren't any insurance payments for Tesla Network itself... perhaps the insurance is paid by the rider on a per-ride basis?)

Sorry for the OT but it's fun to speculate. Imagine the kind of discussions the former boss/creator of Apple Pay would have with a banking disruptor like Elon Musk.

I think Elon has unfinished business and a few 'first principle' disruptive ideas.

 

[Mo City]

Tesla secures tax break for Cybertruck Gigafactory in Austin - Electrek

Electrek’s Take - I know you all love it...

County commissioners vote will be a slam dunk.

Just remember, these commissioners are elected officials that govern Travis County and even though their minds are made up, they must cover themselves by giving pause and displaying thoughtful deliberation.

 

[ADP]

This highlights the risk of trying to trade a high-growth stock! That was a valuable lesson you learned because it's not like there were not tempting times to sell between then and now! I'm curious what was going through your head last June when TSLA went down to $180?

The first time I heard about Tesla was after Elon Musk's 60 Minutes interview in 2014. I immediately drank the kool-aid on Tesla and started buying TSLA shortly after. TSLA is the only stock I own (I have pension money that can't be invested in individual stocks). I guess I listen to Mark Cuban too much and heard his "diversification is for idiots" quote, lol. As for June 2019, I was prepared to lose everything but I did not really believe Tesla would go bankrupt. I believed Elon would somehow tie Tesla with SpaceX and save the company.

 

[UkNorthampton]

There is a clip on CNBC today (can't link) with Dean of Valuation (Damodaran) saying he sold a while back and left money on the table.
I think you really have to believe in the company enough to stay invested. This is even more true for Tesla. I got out of NFLX(1 day before 1:7) split, AMZN at 300 etc etc. No regrets.
Looking back I think I did not have the foresight on seeing the long term potential in the other companies, and there was nothing in the product or it's CEO that made me excited at that time.
Cheers!!

Tesla's mission, products, ideas and Elon lead to hope and commitment by me and others. I get the impression that there is a core set of people who will 'never' sell (at least avoid) in a way that amazon, netflix or others don't have. Maybe apple (but that's not my passion).

 

[EV forever]

That's easy. 300 AAPL shares from 13 years ago would be 2100 current shares with a value of $803,733.00 at the close of the regular session today. In the afterhours market they would be up slightly (0.20% or $1,596.00) to $805,329.00.

That's not counting dividends which would have been approximately $30-$40K (probably more than your initial investment in the original 300 shares).

I'm glad you finally took charge of the situation!

You do realize that was a rhetorical question - I didn't really want to know how much money we missed out by selling those shares. Hadn't quite realized it was that much and you had to point out the dividend too, which I had forgotten. Oh well, live and learn.

It took many years in our marriage for me to realize that I am far better at grasping financial/investing concepts than him. In most cultures, it is often assumed that the men take care of money stuff - took almost 15 years for that dynamic to flip. His idea of investing for retirement - he pays Fidelity 1.5% to manage his account. But his conservative portfolio balances my risky one - so it is all good.

It was that bad decision on AAPL that taught me to be smarter with TSLA - if you believe in the product then you hold. Initially, when I started buying TSLA in 2014, it was simply as my small contribution to promote the clean alternative cars and also because the FUD was so ridiculous! I used to read Seeking Alpha - the articles and the comments were just plain toxic. That's when I discovered TMC forums which was a wealth of good information and became a member of the Tesla 'cult'. Even then, I had only about 200 shares till early 2018 when we brought home our Model 3. If we had thought that the iPhone was an awesome product, the Model 3 was out of this world. I read someone here mention that all of us who drive a Tesla have insider information on the company - this is absolutely true. We know that there is no other car that is anywhere close to a Tesla. After that it was buy as much TSLA as possible and HODL through all the dramas of '420 funding secured', the Pedo-guy trial, 1Q2019 ER disaster just to name a few.

Now there is a comma in the number of TSLA shares in my retirement account (which is 4X in value of my husband's account - well a girl has to gloat sometime). We were planning to continue working for 10-15 more years, and we most likely will continue to do so - but having this financial cushion gives us so much flexibility. This forum has taught me more about investing than I even imagined could exist. For that I am truly grateful.

Okay, enough sentimentality. Now the question is - will there be a good enough MMD tomorrow for me to pick up a few shares?

 

[StealthP3D]

Point is:- check your thoughts often, but if you DO KNOW better than others, you have an advantage. Past is gone, can you use your knowledge to make money today or in the future?

That's a great post! I just wanted to elaborate on using this advantage to make money. Most of us who "get" the dynamics at play here have a long-term advantage, not a short-term advantage. Because the short-term movements of a stock like Tesla are whip-sawed in all different directions and for all kinds of different reasons, some of which may not even be fully understood after the fact and most often for reasons that are not even relevant to the company's actual business. There is no doubt that Wall Street insiders, even those who know nothing about the business of Tesla, have a considerable trading advantage.

So our advantage is mostly in the conviction to stay the course, or to be able to seperate the wheat from the chaff. The more familiar one is with the subject matter, the better one can seperate fact from fiction. And that is largely a long-term advantage, even as the market prices bounce wildly around based on market sentiment, supply and demand of shares, and other factors often unrelated to the company itself.

 

[hobbes]

So now we're faced with a decision: I want to just get back in now at market price and forget about the mistakes of the past and she wants to wait for a dip that may never happen before getting back in.

Take half of the money at question and buy now. And the other half for whenever your wife feels comfortable.

I went through exactly the same pattern with corona, but with better timing/luck - only sold a part and bought back earlier. Hindsight is 20/20 - learn from it for the future. If you still believe in the long term success of Tesla, reinvest. Missing one run should not be a reason to miss the (likely/possible) next. (Disclaimer: don´t invest money you need short/mid term)

 

[CorneliusXX]

It's been a good year. TSLA is now ranked #18 #17 (sorry, NVDA) in Mkt Cap w. a 12-mth growth rate that is 3x the next-best Top-50 Equity:

View attachment 562704

... and the best is yet to come for TSLA.

Cheers!

What's nice about seeing the field all laid out like this (besides the 500% gain) is that it shows three other companies that are well north of $1T. It's easy to round those numbers off in your head to saying AAPL, MSFT, AMZN are trillion dollar companies - but they're actually closer to being multi-trillion dollar companies. That makes the super bull Tesla valuations seem more plausible.

 

[CorneliusXX]

That's your confession? Please. Half the people here have f'ed up worse than that, I know I have.

I would put it at 50/50 you get an opportunity to buy back in around $850-1050 at some point in the next 18 months. I don't know if you've noticed, but we're "riding a psychotic horse towards a burning stable". Market-wide macro drop of 25% isn't out of the question with TSLA dropping more.

The key is to be ready and have a plan. The very lowest TSLA dips only last a moment. Buy moderately all the way down and then pounce. Leave what's in the past where it belongs.

Look - this was initially a dog thread. Then the cats moved in. A talking mule was also a fine addition for novelty value if nothing else, but we can't start bring in psychotic horses in here too. no-one is going to take this menagerie seriously.

 

[CorneliusXX]

I was raised in a similar way to be extremely risk averse and conservative. My dad used to work for Capgemini, and had a load of stock options that were worth a lot of money around the year 2000. I was ~11 years old at the time, and I even remember a financial advisor coming over at some point, because my dad had no idea whether he should hold them or sell them. The advisor told him to hold, and then this happened:

View attachment 562661

The dot com bubble burst, and my parents went from being temporarily very wealthy, back to being (upper) middle class. Probably as a result of this, I ended up growing up with the idea that stocks were inherently very risky and pretty much like a casino, and that I should stay away because I can lose all my money.

In my early twenties I made quite a bit of money, but because of this mentality all I did was put it in savings accounts to collect ~2% interest each year. I even met with a financial advisor from my bank HSBC at the time, who showed me some ways to invest my money. It was all quite diversified, but I wasn't even comfortable putting 10% of my net worth in it, which may not have been that bad of a decision to be honest, because at the time I didn't understand well enough what stocks, bonds, etc. were and how they worked. In the end, all I did was put about 1% of my net worth into a random emerging markets ETF to take advantage of a tax free account in the UK, where I lived at the time.

It'd be easy to look back and say, I wish I put all my money in TSLA in 2011 or 2012, but I'm just glad that I eventually learned about and started following Tesla, that I read Ashley Vance's biography, and that I put a large part of my net worth in TSLA in 2015. It might've been a lot less than I could've invested in 2011/2012 at a better price, because I lost a lot of money in a failed business in the years in between, but I've somewhat made up for that by adding a lot more shares for cheap in 2019, and getting into options at the right time. Even though I was never able to buy a TSLA share for <$185, I think my cost basis is currently at ~$43 and dropping thanks to options.

I've also learned a lot about Tesla following it religiously for the past 5-6 years, which in combination with reading about Elon in Ashley Vance's biography made me comfortable enough to buy TSLA stock. And over the past ~2 years I've learned a ton about how stocks and investing work, partly thanks to some of the smart folks here on TMC. For me, I think all of this has more than undone the mindset @DaveT and @StealthP3D talk about, and I've been able to overcome the incorrect notion that all stocks are extremely risky imprinted on me during childhood.

We must be getting wealthy on this board now that philosophy is coming up for discussion.

There's no investor who does not make mistakes. I started investing in Tesla via CFDs in 2013 and rode the back half of the surge. Unfortunately it was my first time using leverage and I got stopped out on a small pullback. Luckily I was young and it was with a relatively small amount of capital, and the net impact was not life changing. From then on I have been doing the same thing but with much lower gearing (<25%) but still greater than the <3% interest rate charged on CFDs. Whether it's learning to take more or less risk to create an effective strategy, as long as the direction is right and we learn from our mistakes there's no stopping us.

 

[CanadaEV]

Thanks for being brave and sharing your story because I imagine for every brave person like yourself, there are at least 10 if not 100 that pretend like it never happened. I mean, as long as you're profitable, it's all good, right?

Just be glad you were confident and had enough conviction to buy back in at a 30% higher price. Those 244 "lost" shares represent $340,200.00 at todays prices that's not in your account but had you not bought the 854 shares back at $354, you would have missed out on an additional $888,399.00 in appreciation at today's price and who knows how much future capital appreciation!

This highlights the risk of trying to trade a high-growth stock! That was a valuable lesson you learned because it's not like there were not tempting times to sell between then and now! I'm curious what was going through your head last June when TSLA went down to $180?

It’s possible that that June was the time of my most vivid faith in Tesla. I saw the stock price low, my investment had fallen to half what it had been, but I saw Shanghai on the horizon, and it seemed like an absolute no brainer to invest more.

I’ve always felt comfortable when there has been pressure on the company. Of course it has bothered me to see the negative media, the vicious short sellers, and the unfair regulation.For some reason, them being so wrong gave me confidence in Tesla’s future.

I feel quite ambivalent now about inclusion in the index. It will enforce an artificial appreciation in the stock that I do not really care to see. Forcing big institutions to take positions against their better judgement seems to portend a true overvaluation that will gravitate towards correction.
However, it would obviously not necessarily be a bad thing. It will cement strong conventional status and widely understood legitimacy for the company. But that is really only a benefit to those who see value in conventional legitimacy, without fundamental understanding of Tesla’s mission. It will change nothing in my perception of its value.

If it does not get included in the index, I can see the stock value dropping maybe by half, and hanging around there until Berlin gets rolling. That would put it back in the condition of a seriously undervalued stock, which it has been for most of its life.

What I really care about is success for the company, not so much an artificial appreciation in my investment.
The future looks better than ever the way things are developing with the factory build-outs and the great product lineups.
I suppose I have a slight preference for Tesla to continue to be supported mostly by people who really understand it rather than by the broader financial interests that mainly see it only as so many billions of dollars.

 

[MartinAustin]

So now we're faced with a decision: I want to just get back in now at market price and forget about the mistakes of the past and she wants to wait for a dip that may never happen before getting back in.

After selling some of my TSLA at $1122 last week, pre-P&D announcement, and crying myself to sleep, I started to buy in again and have bought at $1300 and $1388. Yes I made a mistake in hindsight. If TSLA had fallen after the P&D announcement, I would have been laughing and buying back in, but my caution didn't pay off. My advice to you is... just do it. Only thing that hurts you in the long run is waiting on the sidelines.

 

[Quesder]

Confession time...

It's either write this post or perch myself on the window ledge. (Ground floor. Not much good there.) This is the only audience to whom I can bare my tortured soul.

Some years ago, I bought a bunch of TSLA at $200. (I'm not savvy enough to trade options. I'm more comfortable buying and holding long-term when I believe in the strength and vision of a company.)

Through it all I held fast and didn't sell. When TSLA went down to $150 and cries of 'bankrupt' were coming from every talking head on Wall Street, I just smiled and sat tight. I watched the reversal and held on, all smiles, until the pandemic hit. Until it was apparent that the pandemic was going to have a significant impact on the world and the Tesla factory closed.

At that point, I made the dumbest financial mistake of my life to date: I sold all my TSLA at around $750. Not because of any reduction in faith. I was trying to be clever. "There's going to be a dip back to $500-ish range due to the results of the plant closing and the general economic impact," my idiotic brain told myself. "I'll buy back in at that point and have even more shares."

And the downturn never happened.

My wife steadfastly shared my long-term faith in Tesla (which is still unwavering) but she, too, believed that the world's most volatile stock would dip and give us a chance to get back in. So we waited for a dip. And opportunity after opportunity passed us by as we waited for a dip that never happened.

So here we sit. Still sitting on cash that while missing every opportunity to reinvest in TSLA.

I'm absolutely tortured at the horrible decision I made by trying to be clever. My wife is far more zen about it. We locked in profit and she does a better job of focusing on that.

And, though it all, I can't stop beating myself up for exiting at $750. I'm so anguished over this that I can't let it go. I told my wife "I want to punch myself in the face until I'm unconscious, wake up, and do it again."

This is the only place who would possibly understand my pain. All of my friends and family would hear this and say "Oh, you didn't make enough on your TSLA stock and you're sad now. Boo hoo. Piss off."

So now we're faced with a decision: I want to just get back in now at market price and forget about the mistakes of the past and she wants to wait for a dip that may never happen before getting back in.

My belief is that long-term we're looking at $2500 - $3500 in the next three to five years and just jumping back in now is the best thing to do. Trying to be clever is what got us into this mess in the first place and I don't want to make that mistake again. My wife still believes that the world's most volatile stock won't disappoint and we'll see a dip again. Certainly not down to where we exited, but possibly nearer to $1000 or a tad lower.

That's my pain and our current struggle.

Thanks for listening.

Not an advice..
But if you bought NIO at $6.8 like ten days ago, you would have doubled your money. Better than Tesla during the same period. I kicked myself for not buying more with my MSFT money.
If your anticipation to TSLA is only 2500-3500 , you probably can find a better stock, if above $5000, then now is the time to buy back.

 

[Quesder]

Ford may shut U.S. plants due to lack of engines from Mexico: U.S. ambassador

That sounds like terrible news for Ford. I sure hope Tesla's engine supply is secure..

I am very sensitive to the word “secure” when it is used as a verb . Would you mind to find another word? Thanks.

 

[UkNorthampton]

I feel like this could easily be an excuse used to be able to shutdown the plant because of a lack of demand.

Is Ford's problem a demand or a supply issue?

Ford bears and short sellers would say that a small company like Ford can't possibly compete with giant companies like Tesla.

Ford may have a loyal following of their quirky F150 type vehicles but their other products don't make profits.

Ford supporters might contend that Ford's inability to produce enough drivetrains has cut sales and Ford would have sold more.

Hmm.. demand or supply?

 

[printf42]

Anyone caught the tweet Elon deleted? Something about venture capital?

 

[Runarbt]

Anyone caught the tweet Elon deleted? Something about venture capital?

Nah.. just his latest with Pronhub. Seem to be in a great mood. :-D

Can we assume everything is ready for Q2 ER - and he got some good numbers to show us?

 

[Mike Smith]

I am very sensitive to the word “secure” when it is used as a verb . Would you mind to find another word? Thanks.

'secure' is an adjective in that sentence, not a verb.

 

[EVMeister]

Anyone caught the tweet Elon deleted? Something about venture capital?

Can't remember exactly what he said (sorry), but it was a clever play on words. Nothing to do with Tesla and nothing dodgy.