FWIW, for years the most popular car for holders of ATP in the US was Porsche. I wonder where Tesla is on that today. Most of the airplane owners I know have Tesla, but then again most of them have Porsche too. I no longer have access to the data to find out. Admittedly this is not really an easily typecast group, since all the ATP's I know do not fly for a living.
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What started you investing in Tesla (@Jackl1956 thread)
- Thread starter Jack6591
- Start date
Used to drive by the old Tesla shop in Menlo Park back in 2010, intrigued. Electric cars? Cool.
Happened to see Revenge of the Electric Car on PBS, watching Elon begged reservation holders not to pull out. He seemed so dedicated.
Worked in Los Altos in 2012 - 2014. I started seeing these incredibly beautiful sedans, and they were dead quiet! This area probably had the highest density of Tesla's anywhere at the time (well off part of Bay Area).
Wait, could you imagine powering your car from the sun?! I was enamored with the idea. I still am. At this time I knew my next car would be electric. I even though if I could try to work a used Model S, but I wanted to wait for the next generation car.
2014-2015 I happened to work in Fremont. Would drive by the factory to go to the gym, so I was constantly reminded of the company.
2016 In person deposit for the Model 3 before the car was revealed. I started following Tesla more closely, coming to TMC forum.
After the Speigal bottom in late 2016, the stock climbs to near 300 but then dips to 245. That was my first buy in. Over the next year and a half, I start buying in more and more. Not too much, but maybe 20% of my investment money. I
I start following this thread in early late 2017 probably. Followed all the volatility and drama of ramping Model 3, Musk tweets, massive changes in my investment. But so much is learnt about Tesla's technological advantages.
2019 Q1 debacle happens and stock tanks. I sell all my other stocks in my standard investing account and move it all into TSLA at like $280.
Stock keeps going lower. I am so confident in the company based on all the intel here that I begin transferring all my stranded 401ks into a self directed IRA, with the sole purpose to buy TSLA.
From May until September I get various transfers accomplished and make buys. I remember making buys at $240, $179, and $220. If only all purchases were at $179, but I did get the bottom on some!
I would have never thought when I saw Musk begging early reservationists not to pull their money out, that 9 years later I would have so much money put in.
humbaba
sleeping until $7000
I've always liked cars, but was never a gearhead being more on the tech/geek end of things. Whether it was using fans to reduce pressure below the car [1] or electric vehicles. But this was pre-Internet and it was trickier to get good information and I remember reading about a van being required to house the requisite batteries in order to avoid being a golf cart [2].
I heard about the roadster when it was announced and was impressed. Battery electric was what had always appealed to me, but no matter how cool it was out of reach. Although I knew about Tesla I mostly ignored them (it was just high performance vehicles for the rich after all, and I was definitely not rich). But then the Model 3 was announced. I looked at it and it just wouldn't work for me: I always bought outright and thus always bought used. Find the right seller and you can get a good car for quite a bit less than blue book. Anyway, the model 3 was priced way out of my reach to purchase.
Time went by and the 420 tweet was published. That got my attention and I started reading up on the company which naturally led me here. I started following the investor thread and reading back for the couple of years prior. What I found was an extensively documented campaign of FUD against the company which, combined with short selling, was keeping the stock price depressed. It couldn't have been more obvious that $TSLA was undervalued and that -- eventually -- it would break out. So I bought stock for the first time in my life.*
In a few short months I had also convinced myself that buying a model 3 via loan was okay. We (my family) changed our lives in order to make payments and I keep picking up shares as I can. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to the shorts for bringing the stock down in 2019. While I wasn't crazy enough to take out a mortgage I did spend every penny I could picking up more shares, mostly near the bottom. What little I have for retirement I credit to their tireless efforts to give investors discounted shares.
1) such as this Lotus 79 - Wikipedia
2) some people still think this is the EV limit Citicar - Wikipedia
* my wife had a small investment from a previous employer. Against stringent investment advisor advice she'd insisted on some of it being in the stock of a company she believed in. She then ignored the account so we missed the parabolic rise and the subsequent gradual fall -- but when I sold it to buy more $TSLA it had still appreciated more than the rest of the account (even after the fall I think it still outperformed the market while the instruments the advisor had insisted on underperformed).
A lot of the airline guys I know are...um...grumpy and set in their way's. When I talk Tesla they are less than accepting.
Smallish sample size though.
lafrisbee
Active Member
I have your perspective.... looking at a large $ number in my portfolio doesn't make me feel as good as seeing a fifty and 2 twenties in my pocket.As I've moved through life, the number one lesson that keeps being reinstilled in me is that I am ALWAYS right, and would-be authority figures are ALWAYS wrong.
This is the singular repeated lesson in my life; to have faith in myself above anyone else. My choices have always been the right ones and nobody else has a damn clue what's good for me.
As a kid I always loved cars but noticed that they weren't getting any better. It was obvious to me that nobody was innovating, cars were plastics and recycled engines and stale reruns. One of my first non-minimum-wage jobs was as a salesman for a Dodge dealership right when the Challenger came out (re-released, I guess). That product was so ultra hyped; we only got one in per month and they were marked up to 70 Grand per vehicle. I did think they looked awesome back then.
Anyway in 2012 I finally got wind of what Tesla was doing and for a good few years I was a fan just based on what I was reading online, without ever driving one. I also noticed the ridiculously overblown hate campaign against them. As I am gifted with basic discernment and common sense, it was obvious to me that the sheer mass and coordination of the negative talk was an anomaly. A conspiracy. Something to be played and profited off of. If people were going to be led astray by a bunch of leeching liars and morons then I might as well profit from it (but not quietly). Then I finally test drove some S's and realized that it was the next multi-trillion dollar corporation, with a product at least 4 times superior to any existing gas car, and I've been 100% TSLA concentrated ever since then, which has pulled me from total poverty to legitimate wealth over just the last 12 months. I went from "man if I just had another hundred bucks this week I could actually eat well" to "dude, that benjamin in your wallet is literally meaningless now... Cool, lol".
Everybody's an idiot except me and I can prove it with numbers
Guys I fly with seem way more interested in talking with me about Tesla now that the stock has taken off. Congrats on retire by the way, I will be taking a 4 year extended time off myself.
I'm one of the few here who don't drive a Tesla, not yet. Our current ICE cars are pretty new, purchased right before I jumped with both feet into TSLA. As soon as the Cybertruck comes out, we'll probably trade one in. However, I was lucky enough to be a direct beneficiary of Elon Musk's work pretty early on. As an international student, I had to drop out of college because my family became broke in 2008. With nothing to lose, I began an e-commerce business, selling textbooks on Amazon (hah!) and Ebay. Even before that, I was using Paypal extensively; this was way before dropshipping became cool. I made over $200k the first year. You see, as a 20 year old kid who was borderline homeless just months ago, with zero mentorship, of course I let that go to my head. I put $100k into a business I was not supposed to be in and another $100k to keep it afloat before losing it all. Took me 8 years to recover from that fiasco and save up some money.
During those 8 years, I heard about Tesla and always thought it's a cool company. However, it's not until I learned that the valuation in 2019 was only $40B, that I was intrigued as an investor. I looked around at these companies like Uber at $45B or Neflix at $150B; Tesla most definitely could not be worth only 1/3 of Netflix. Mind you, I knew almost nothing about its financials or growth rate. I guess I was lucky; my hunch was telling me TSLA was way undervalued. The final nail in the coffin was me learning Elon Musk created Paypal. I was instantly sold. Now my plan is to go work for Tesla in Austin. Circle of life, huh?
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Used to have some nice ICE cars in the stable, BMW M3, Porsche 911 turbo. Then, got married and reality and kids started to kick in. In early 2014, i was driving a BMW i3 and thought i was one of the coolest people driving an 100% EV. I never really paid attention to other EV's, until i saw a Model S on the freeway. I thought to myself 'Holy sh**, that is one good looking car!' Went home and did some research and read countless hours on TSLA and Musk. Started off with 100 shares an then slowly accumulated over the years to where i am at today.
Based on lots of research on the subject decades ago, it seems there are quite dramatic differences based on occupational status, geography and type of ab initio training. It would go hugely off topic here. If you're curious about more data, I have access to far too much data on this subject. PM me if you care.
FWIW, owner-pilots of turbine-powered aircraft are a wildly divergent subset. I have that for some models, but it is aircraft specific.
My TSLA investment story started in July 2018. I am a power electronics engineer by training and work for a Tier II supplier to Automotive OEMs. I had heard about Tesla long time ago but I always thought they were > $100K cars for rich people. Because of my background, I didn't need to be convinced that electrics cars are faster, cooler and come with a lot less maintenance. I was always aware of those benefits but the price tag always made me feel that Tesla would never go mainstream. I was convinced even before Model 3 that if somebody could make an affordable EV without major compromises, everyone would eventually gravitate towards it because EVs are fundamentally superior product. Model 3 reaching 5000/wk was the milestone that simply shook me to core. I could not believe what had happened and to me future was obvious. I am an engineer and I did not have the necessary financial chops but to me the moment was too powerful to ignore. I could see the product and profits but could not put a price target. I went all in with LEAPS. I was convinced because of my experience of working for a automotive supplier that the competition will simply not be able to catch up to Tesla due to vertical integration. Traditional OEMs have farmed out everything related to electronics to their suppliers. They just don't have the right DNA to compete with Tesla.
Through TSLA, I also realized how close we have come to actually having a future where we harvest from Sun instead of mining and burning. All this will happen not because its cool but because its simply better from financial, security and aesthetic views. To me Tesla and TSLA are not anymore about cool cars, solar panels, solar roofs etc., its about this idea that we can live of sun. That is my investment thesis now for next 15-20 years.
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We had ordered the Roadster <--- back in 2007(?), were still waiting for it. When Elon took over management of Tesla, he called a meeting of all the SoCal people with Roadsters on order. We sat in the workshop of the (only) Tesla showroom in Santa Monica, just off the I-405. There is footage of this meeting in "Revenge of the Electric Car", although I didn't spot myself in it, some of the other people present have become close friends. Elon calmly explained to us that the cars were late, if we wanted refunds we could have them, some of the extras that had been promised would now cost more, the price was going up. But, he said, if they didn't make a profit on the cars, Tesla would be dead, and we'd have cars we couldn't drive for fear of breaking them irreparably. My Role Model at the time was Irwin Jacobs, founder of Qualcomm, academic engineer, great businessman and manager, and philanthropist. I instantly saw that Elon was going to get it done; he had exactly the same characteristics. When the Model S was announced, we placed a reservation for the Big Gay Car <---, $40,000 for a Signature. (There's a whole story about the factory custom color, which is Lavender Mist from '68 Cadillac, or Metallic Purple from '67 Mustang. It is not pink.) When Tesla IPO'd I think anyone who had a Roadster and a Signature S on order were invited to invest as Friends & Family, I bought 3000 shares(!). All of those shares were donated to charity over time, but of course I kept investing.
I come from a family of engineers and am known as a “gadget guy”. In 2013 I owned at least one of everything Apple made. My investment portfolio was index funds and AAPL as my sole individual stock. One of my daughters was attending school in LA at the time, and she texted me that she’d just seen “my next car”. She’d walked into a Tesla gallery in a mall there and said it looked like “a car that Apple would make”. That got me researching the brand, started investing, bought a P85+ that fall, and haven't looked back.
Ironically, at the bottom of the market this March, I kinda freaked and sold a lot of equities and almost all my AAPL (but no TSLA!). Then when the market started rebounding a week later I reinvested most of it in TSLA instead.
Still don’t plan to sell any TSLA until $4K (or higher).
Oh… my daughter’s name? Sarah.
After reading the “innovators dilemma” and the “gorilla game” and the “rule breakers”
And peter Lynch’s approach sometime around 2001 and before,
I starting looking for disruptive companies to invest in.
My first major success applying those principles was with Apple in 2009.
Thereafter I came across a video on
Elon Musk where he explains how he builds rockets in detail. That was Impressive engineering
And I started paying attention.
After a few failed attempts at Tesla stock , I finally bought 1000 shares at about
$35 in the spring of 2013. The rest follows.
And peter Lynch’s approach sometime around 2001 and before,
I starting looking for disruptive companies to invest in.
My first major success applying those principles was with Apple in 2009.
Thereafter I came across a video on
Elon Musk where he explains how he builds rockets in detail. That was Impressive engineering
And I started paying attention.
After a few failed attempts at Tesla stock , I finally bought 1000 shares at about
$35 in the spring of 2013. The rest follows.
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Your postings always fascinate me. I continually wonder how you managed to fit so many experiences into just one lifetime. Now I get it - you were born in the 1800’s.
Screw investing advice. Mind sharing how you’ve lived so long and kept such a sharp mind?
I've had the same thoughts with some of our folks here when they have shared their ages. I just turned 40 and I will be ecstatic if I'm as sharp as some of you in my 70s and 80s. (heck, might be an upgrade for me now)Your postings always fascinate me. I continually wonder how you managed to fit so many experiences into just one lifetime. Now I get it - you were born in the 1800’s.
Screw investing advice. Mind sharing how you’ve lived so long and kept such a sharp mind?
Ouch. Mr. Unicorn provided a 1% return vs 20% for the S&P500. Why on Earth does anyone leave money with him? Oh right, some people have more money than brains. Damn I'm jealous.
Causalien
Prime 8 ball Oracle
I saw Elon's interview.
I analyzed his interview... And ironman
I called around and bought with 1/3 of my net wealth.
Freshly dumped by an ex for some rich arabian oil prince 1000th in line of the throne might have something to do with the reckless behaviour.
gabeincal
Active Member
My TSLA story:
I started tech work in Hungary and soon moved to London, UK in 2006 after graduating with AS electronics engineering. After 7 years of gloom in London, I managed to transfer over to sunny California with a techie company and over the couple years I've been working with that company and been receiving shares, I started to be interested in the stock market. Not having a lot of spare savings, I've invested in very little TSLA stocks back then and mostly focused on my career. Due to my minimalistic lifestyle and saving attitude that I got from my not-so-well-off family, we managed to stash away some money and also purchased a new house (on a jumbo mortgage) in Napa, CA. Living in that 4 bedroom and me working from home for 5 years made us realize that it was way too early for us to be this stagnant. I've notified my boss that we would move to Hawaii (my team was all over) and my boss would not be supporting the move. I told him that the move was more important than my career. I got laid off. We moved out of our house and started to panic (due to the payments and uncertainty - I didn't like uncertainty). We also had an S on a loan at this point and I was in love with it. But due to rationality, I sold it to a forum member.
Our house got rented out for twice the mortgage payment within a month, we moved to Maui with my brother-in-law, 3 dogs and of course my wife. Started a vegan food truck and soon were making $7-800 days (and working our butts off 7 days a week). Oh and we became pregnant 2 days after arriving to the island. We scrambled, worked, planned, worried Almost a year later, before the birth, we decided to sell the business (for about 3 months of profit) and fly back to California to live in an ADU in the backyard of my in-laws in San Jose. This is where we are right now and cultivate a beautiful garden. For the career part, I could not stomach going back to employment but had the guilt of not doing much - and had no time to do much because of the baby. All in all, I came to the conclusion that investments was the way to go and started to trade all sorts of stocks. Made silly moves, learnt more, made better moves (never played with options so far) and some money (about 25% up this year).
With regards to TSLA, I always had a small amount in them, and always sold on a jump. I was VERY impressed with myself when I made $17k profit this February selling all my holdings that I only purchased a couple weeks before that. Now of course that sale looks a little silly. We've recently moved everything into TSLA as I do not want to continually miss the jumps. My trading account is a little below $200k and is all in, my 401k is around 150k and is all in and we have rental income from the house. I wholeheartedly support Elon, and his mission(s) and figured if this smart guy can go all in, I can only support him with what I have.
My dream is to never have to work again and ideally never have to worry about money. $2-3M would get us there and we would be traveling and spending all our time together as a family for the foreseeable future. Don't need no house, don't need no fancy car, just the promise of being able to stay retired (I'm 36) and a low-key life. A stock price of about $10k would get us there. I don't think we need to wait too long for that.
Yesterday we test drove the Y and I like it but have no need for a new car (we have a recent Odyssey and a manual BMW Z3 for daddy, but nevertheless, due to the upcoming good stuff, I'm thinking about ordering a Y as I'd like to be part of the mission, and also put down a reservation for a CT (mostly speculation - have no need for it). Now looking into LEAPs and other strategy to supercharge my portfolio. The best thing is: the wife is on-board. Oh and that TSLA is fully vegan now!
I started tech work in Hungary and soon moved to London, UK in 2006 after graduating with AS electronics engineering. After 7 years of gloom in London, I managed to transfer over to sunny California with a techie company and over the couple years I've been working with that company and been receiving shares, I started to be interested in the stock market. Not having a lot of spare savings, I've invested in very little TSLA stocks back then and mostly focused on my career. Due to my minimalistic lifestyle and saving attitude that I got from my not-so-well-off family, we managed to stash away some money and also purchased a new house (on a jumbo mortgage) in Napa, CA. Living in that 4 bedroom and me working from home for 5 years made us realize that it was way too early for us to be this stagnant. I've notified my boss that we would move to Hawaii (my team was all over) and my boss would not be supporting the move. I told him that the move was more important than my career. I got laid off. We moved out of our house and started to panic (due to the payments and uncertainty - I didn't like uncertainty). We also had an S on a loan at this point and I was in love with it. But due to rationality, I sold it to a forum member.
Our house got rented out for twice the mortgage payment within a month, we moved to Maui with my brother-in-law, 3 dogs and of course my wife. Started a vegan food truck and soon were making $7-800 days (and working our butts off 7 days a week). Oh and we became pregnant 2 days after arriving to the island. We scrambled, worked, planned, worried
Almost a year later, before the birth, we decided to sell the business (for about 3 months of profit) and fly back to California to live in an ADU in the backyard of my in-laws in San Jose. This is where we are right now and cultivate a beautiful garden. For the career part, I could not stomach going back to employment but had the guilt of not doing much - and had no time to do much because of the baby. All in all, I came to the conclusion that investments was the way to go and started to trade all sorts of stocks. Made silly moves, learnt more, made better moves (never played with options so far) and some money (about 25% up this year).With regards to TSLA, I always had a small amount in them, and always sold on a jump. I was VERY impressed with myself when I made $17k profit this February selling all my holdings that I only purchased a couple weeks before that. Now of course that sale looks a little silly. We've recently moved everything into TSLA as I do not want to continually miss the jumps. My trading account is a little below $200k and is all in, my 401k is around 150k and is all in and we have rental income from the house. I wholeheartedly support Elon, and his mission(s) and figured if this smart guy can go all in, I can only support him with what I have.
My dream is to never have to work again and ideally never have to worry about money. $2-3M would get us there and we would be traveling and spending all our time together as a family for the foreseeable future. Don't need no house, don't need no fancy car, just the promise of being able to stay retired (I'm 36) and a low-key life. A stock price of about $10k would get us there. I don't think we need to wait too long for that.
Yesterday we test drove the Y and I like it but have no need for a new car (we have a recent Odyssey and a manual BMW Z3 for daddy
, but nevertheless, due to the upcoming good stuff, I'm thinking about ordering a Y as I'd like to be part of the mission, and also put down a reservation for a CT (mostly speculation - have no need for it). Now looking into LEAPs and other strategy to supercharge my portfolio. The best thing is: the wife is on-board. Oh and that TSLA is fully vegan now!
I was interested in electric cars out of university for green reasons and because they seemed like the technical solution to many of ICE's woes. Norwegian Think was relaunching their cars at the time but it seemed stupid that they couldn't make a more peppy version, especially considering Norwegian taxes on any cars with more than 50hp.
The brother of a collegue of mine worked at Bellona (a Norwegian enviromental/green NGO) and through him his boss Fredric Hauge and me contacting Tesla saying I'm interested I got invited to a Bellona viewing/test drive of the Roadster twice. First time it was one of the engineering test cars so like the 3 or 4th Roadster built, and considering the price I chickened out on driving it. So I was a passenger with Diarmuid O Connell driving us on 5 mile loop around in Oslo.
About a year later when the Roadster was in regular production the Danish sales manager (which covered Norway as well) had another regular production roadster on a test drive event hosted by Bellona again. This time I drove the Roadster and the sales manager was sitting as passenger.
About a year later I paid for my Model S regular reservation, by transfering about €4000 to a bank in Germany, as Tesla still didn't have a formal sales presence in Norway.
Again a little bit later I believe Tesla got the US Goverment loan and I figured they had done their due diligence and so I bought 100 shares twice while the dollar still was arond 5.5NOK to $1. This was in september 2011.
My join date on this forum is about the time I really started to focus on Tesla so that was in 2007.
I came from the dark side. I use to be an oil and gas engineer. In 2014 I travelled California to visit a friend and I saw Tesla’s everywhere. I came from a bias that electric cars didn’t have enough range, that you had to replace the batteries, and that it takes forever to charge. After I saw that Tesla addressed all those concerns and made the best cars in the world that’s when I started to invest. Reading Elon’s biography and learning more about him helped solidify my investment.
Now I’m pretty much retired but to keep myself sane I started a food review channel on YouTube and will be promoting Tesla’s brand. Funny how life changes course.
Now I’m pretty much retired but to keep myself sane I started a food review channel on YouTube and will be promoting Tesla’s brand. Funny how life changes course.
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