Krugerrand
Meow
I’m enjoying the stories if only for the serendipities present. This simulation is pretty cool.
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What started you investing in Tesla (@Jackl1956 thread)
- Thread starter Jack6591
- Start date
I’m enjoying the stories if only for the serendipities present. This simulation is pretty cool.
At a 4th of July party in 2016, a friend told me about Fiat e500 leases that practically made it free. Come home and discovered I left the freezer drawer open, thawing about a weeks worth of breast milk. Wife makes me take day off work the next day to cycle/use the milk while pumping at the same time. "hey let's check out that fiat deal" while we're home. Leased a Nissan leaf that day (just as good lease but 4 doors for kids). Queue 80's montage: Solar City panels on house, Model 3, TSLA, TMC forums...
I can safely bring up the breast milk incident now whenever I talk about our stock.
I started buying shares as a virtual car payment/savings plan on the day I pre-ordered my Model 3.
By the time the first Model 3s were available, I had saved up $50k worth of shares, which I planned to trade for a shiny new Model 3.
Plot twist: At the Nashville service center, my wife insisted on a Model X, which we couldn’t afford. It was a big and complicated fight, which resulted in no purchase.
At the time, I very distinctly remember telling her that there was NO WAY the stock would appreciate enough, in the short term, to overcome the incoming loss of the $7,500 tax credit.
After cooling down, I comforted myself with stories of how much Apple stock would have been worth, if folks had simply bought the stock instead of the first iPhone. So, I let the shares ride, and I kept buying additional shares with my virtual car payment.
During the dark days from May-Oct 2019, I converted the initial shares, plus my 401k funds to 100% LEAPS. (edit: 401k funds weren't added until Jan 2020, but still up 3.5x)
I have since apologized several times to my wife, sometimes even when she's around to hear it!
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Thanks. I have no idea. It was probably wanderlust, inherited from family members who never stayed too long in the same place. Genealogies on both sides of my family show a pattern of constant movement since long, long ago. A handful of them did some fascinating things. I was just rebellious. I actually was denied a degree after earning it due to my stubbornness. When later I gave the true explanation while applying to the graduate school of my dreams the admissions person laughed and accepted me. Some rebellions work better than others.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?
It seems to me we have very many interesting stories among those of us who frequent this forum. Perhaps early adopters of any technology must be, by definition, outliers.
First two key points about my background: (1) My father owned his own one-man European auto repair shop for 40+ years in Minnesota. After high school I went on to a two-year auto mechanic program at my local technical college. So I've always had some interest/experience/knowledge about autos. (2) I've been a competitive endurance athlete most of my life, started cross-country ski racing at 8, and was a professional cross-country mountain biker for a few years. Needless to say, health and wellness have been central fixations/obsessions for a long time, so much so that when I finally went to university in my late-20s I got a degree in biology with the intention to work on environmental sustainability.
In 2016 I got my first healthcare travel assignment in California, near Monterey (I live in Arizona). Long story short, there were 3 lab techs that greatly influenced me to buying TSLA: one who owned a Nissan Leaf, one who bought a house trading on margin, and another who was an investor who followed Warren Buffet's investing philosophy.
Understand, I had never bought a share of anything up to this point. In fact, after living through the dot-com bubble, and 2008 financial crisis, I swore I'd never put my money in the smoke-and-mirrors that is the stock market. I've always had a strong conviction the whole thing was rigged and fake. Anyway, so the guy with the Leaf taught me about EVs in general, and I was immediately intrigued, since I had never heard of EVs at all up to this point. He put me on to Electrek, and I got most of my knowledge about Tesla and other EVs from that one website. The other two techs got me into investing. So in 2016 I bought my first stock ever: TSLA. I rolled over a 401k from a previous employer, and opened a Roth so I could better keep track of my money. But I never invested much, had a "diversified" portfolio as they say, and only held long in my Roth that I paid the maximum into each year.
Fast forward to 2019. Lots of bad news on Tesla (I didn't know then it was all engineered FUD, didn't learn about these sorts of things until stumbling on to this forum). I felt really sad for Tesla. I felt, and still do, that Tesla is one of the rare pro-environment companies in a world collapsing into an environmental abyss. So I pulled the trigger and bought a SR+ M3, just to help the company out, nothing more (up to that point I had never spent more on a car than I have for a quality racing bicycle and had a personal rule never to do so). In Dec. of last year when the stock popped, I could see Tesla was finally gaining significant traction, so I sold all my other holdings and dumped it into TSLA. In February of this year, after my Roth more than doubled, I dumped my entire life's savings (down payment for a home) into TSLA because of what I've learned mainly through this investor forum and my own reading.
It's crazy what a difference a few months make. Never thought I'd be this close to retirement at 41. Even if the stock dropped by 75% now it wouldn't matter, I'm sitting very very well.
Thank you to so many on this forum, I'd never be where I am today without you guys/gals and a ton of luck. I've been homeless and lived intermittently in my vehicles chasing my dreams for more years than I'd care to admit, so this new chapter in my life feels especially sweet.
Retirement at 41...ahhhh.....too bad ill be 47 in 17 days
In all reality, TSLA has made a lot of us comfortable and closer to our goal of retiring comortably. More importantly, preserving the future for our next generation. I hope to get to retirement status one day, however....mortgage, private school, caring for elderly parents all take a big chunk of the finances right now.
StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
Great story but this one sentence makes you my hero of TMC. Obviously, you get it!
It makes much more sense to sell an island to buy TSLA than it does to sell TSLA to buy an island.
Ended up way more on the upside for me.
Free parking and free charging at work.
Free use of fast track which at peak rush hour to downtown LA was $9-12 one way, 5days a week! I miss that.
CyberDutchie
Active Member
While we’re waiting for breaking news, here’s my story. Founder of my employer Dave Hitz was an early Tesla supporter and owned a Roadster which he had painted in the company’s color blue. Dave would come to work in his Roadster and he’d talked about Tesla engineering during company all-hands meetings (Tesla at that time was our customer). I got interested and put in a reservation for Model S early on. There was no way I could afford such an expensive car, so my plan was to buy the stock and hoping the shares would gain enough to be able to pay for the car. This played out exactly like I hoped.
I sold my stock to pay for the Model S, but then when I took delivery I realized I made a mistake. This car will revolutionize the industry, and I wanted to be part of that movement. I had joined TMC a year before delivery and met a few fellow TMC members during the club events in Fremont and Monterey, and at the company’s share holder meetings. Big shout-out to David Lee who really inspired me to go all in. I invested all of my savings in Tesla, including cash-out from refi’s on my home a couple of times.
Was told many times to sell (because “you should take profits”, or ”TSLA is over-valued”) by friends, colleagues, family, including Morgan Stanley. My Morgan Stanley advisor told me to sell TSLA at $60, at $90, at $130, which I ignored. By the time my portfolio reached 90% TSLA, they said if I didn’t diversify I could no longer be their client. So I left.
I grew my portfolio primarily through leaps, but in 2019 that strategy back-fired after the Tesla Q1 debacle and I was mocked by TSLAQ on Twitter as the poor guy who blew his entire retirement savings. (My IRA portfolio had gone down to $22K with only leaps expiring Jan ‘20 and ’21 that were so far out of the money they were practically worthless.) I got so insulted on Twitter that I had to delete my account. But, I held on to my leaps and today that same IRA account is worth $2 million! Who’s laughing now...
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In the weekend of 27-28 juli 2013 I was researching what to buy for my next car (to replace my 2010 Prius company car around 2015). The car had to be more ecological than that Prius, so at least plug-in hybrid, with the largest electrical range possible. The Prius already had made me hooked on electric driving. I couldn’t find anything reasonable, so I did something crazy that day and investigated the full EV options. Only Tesla had a car that made my daily commute possible wrt range.
So I started googling about user experiences with Tesla Model S. First on the Tesla forums, and then I found TMC, and read the entire weekend. By Sunday evening I was convinced Tesla was about to become the next Apple, and decided to buy shares the next day, at whatever price available. Never mind that Tesla had already tripled the 3 months before, I had to have shares (sounds familiar?). I added shares later as I got more money available to invest, but never bought again at a lower price than that day. I bought a Model S 3 years later (the rising stock price had something to do with that), and reserved a Model 3 4 weeks later sight unseen the first 10 minutes the reservations were open in Belgium.
So I started googling about user experiences with Tesla Model S. First on the Tesla forums, and then I found TMC, and read the entire weekend. By Sunday evening I was convinced Tesla was about to become the next Apple, and decided to buy shares the next day, at whatever price available. Never mind that Tesla had already tripled the 3 months before, I had to have shares (sounds familiar?). I added shares later as I got more money available to invest, but never bought again at a lower price than that day. I bought a Model S 3 years later (the rising stock price had something to do with that), and reserved a Model 3 4 weeks later sight unseen the first 10 minutes the reservations were open in Belgium.
While we’re waiting for breaking news, here’s my story. Founder of my employer Dave Hitz was an early Tesla supporter and owned a Roadster which he had painted in the company’s color blue. Dave would come to work in his Roadster and he’d talked about Tesla engineering during company all-hands meetings (Tesla at that time was our customer). I got interested and put in a reservation for Model S early on. There was no way I could afford such an expensive car, so my plan was to buy the stock and hoping the shares would gain enough to be able to pay for the car. This played out exactly like I hoped.
I sold my stock to pay for the Model S, but then when I took delivery I realized I made a mistake. This car will revolutionize the industry, and I wanted to be part of that movement. I had joined TMC a year before delivery and met a few fellow TMC members during the club events in Fremont and Monterey, and at the company’s share holder meetings. Big shout-out to David Lee who really inspired me to go all in. I invested all of my savings in Tesla, including cash-out from refi’s on my home a couple of times.
Was told many times to sell (because “you should take profits”, or ”TSLA is over-valued”) by friends, family, including Morgan Stanley. My Morgan Stanley advisor told me to sell TSLA at $60, at $90, at $130, which I ignored. By the time my portfolio reached 90% TSLA, they said if I didn’t diversify I could no longer be their client. So I left.
I grew my portfolio primarily through leaps, but in 2019 that strategy back-fired after the Tesla Q1 debacle and I was mocked by TSLAQ on Twitter as the poor guy who blew his entire retirement savings. (My IRA portfolio had gone down to $22K with only leaps expiring Jan ‘20 and ’21 that were so far out of the money they were practically worthless.) I got so insulted on Twitter that I had to delete my account. But, I held on to my leaps and today that same IRA account is worth $2 million! Who’s laughing now...
Everybody talked me against investing in TSLA since the beginning.
Bought at $170, $305, $805.
Every time I bought it dropped 30%-50% after I invested and people were laughing at me.
Now bought at $1500
History will probably repeat itself
I’d love to hear your stories. What led you to invest in tsla?
First post, have been reading each and every comment on this thread since the Neroden Era and have not found the opportunity to post anything useful before this challenge so thank you Jack!
Have been following Tesla since 2015 and became a fanboy after reading Elons Bio. Went all in in Januari 2019 with 70k, great timing .
This thread gave me the courage to hold on and even increase my chairs during the way down ( to 12k) and got my payback ,like most of you , on the way up.
After the initial runup after q3 ‘19 I converted most of my shares to Leaps and have been able to secure my retirement at age 45 in the last 6 months.
I want to thank all of you for all the invaluable information and advice and although some posts insinuate that the value of this thread has gone down I strongly object to this. Yes there is much noise compared to a year ago but the valuable info is still here. The nr of people investing in Tesla has increased and so has the nr of people who have joined this thread so this noise was to be expected.
A special thanks (there’s so much thanks to give, I’m sure I’m forgetting half of you) to Fred and GGR who have kept moderating and people like Dodger,Krugerand,Unpilot,etc who have kept this thread together after Karen and FC left.
Ordered my White S 2 months ago so hopefully it arrived in Zeebrugge a few days ago.
Reading of all your stories has made today very special for me, thank you, love you!
First post, have been reading each and every comment on this thread since the Neroden Era and have not found the opportunity to post anything useful before this challenge so thank you Jack!
Have been following Tesla since 2015 and became a fanboy after reading Elons Bio. Went all in in Januari 2019 with 70k, great timing .
This thread gave me the courage to hold on and even increase my chairs during the way down ( to 12k) and got my payback ,like most of you , on the way up.
After the initial runup after q3 ‘19 I converted most of my shares to Leaps and have been able to secure my retirement at age 45 in the last 6 months.
I want to thank all of you for all the invaluable information and advice and although some posts insinuate that the value of this thread has gone down I strongly object to this. Yes there is much noise compared to a year ago but the valuable info is still here. The nr of people investing in Tesla has increased and so has the nr of people who have joined this thread so this noise was to be expected.
A special thanks (there’s so much thanks to give, I’m sure I’m forgetting half of you) to Fred and GGR who have kept moderating and people like Dodger,Krugerand,Unpilot,etc who have kept this thread together after Karen and FC left.
Ordered my White S 2 months ago so hopefully it arrived in Zeebrugge a few days ago.
Reading of all your stories has made today very special for me, thank you, love you!
Mokuzai
Member
I guess it all started on Nov 18, 2009. I was the "Salesforce guy" at my job so I was attending Dreamforce, their annual conference in San Francisco. I sat down to eat one of their free boxed lunches and somebody sits down at the same table and we get to talking. He tells me he works for Tesla to which I replied "What's Tesla?" He told me about the company, their product and the mission and I was intrigued. Always been interested in cars but this seemed like the future to me. They even had a roadster there at the convention on display, pic from that day below.
Asked him if they were publicly traded and he said no...as this was about 6 months before IPO. From there I completely dropped the ball...didn't follow up on the idea, didn't research, nothing. Was living in New York at the time and didn't have or need to have a car so it sorta dropped from my radar. Fast forward to 2017 and I'm moving back to California. Tesla is now more commonly known, I've seen them driving in LA when I'd be here on business trips. Visited a store in San Jose on another business trip. I saw the stock price and figured I missed the boat as it was "way too expensive now." I knew I needed a car when I got back to LA and I knew I wanted to go electric. The Bolt was just coming out and was researching that, but then a promotion at work made the Model S doable so it was a no brainer at that point.
One week after landing in LA I was at the Tesla store test driving then ordering. Before moving to NY I've only ever had hand-me-down cars...so the Model S was technically the first car I ever purchased. After owning the car there was no way I could not invest in this company. First shares purchased in August 2017 @$315. I was also handling my mother's investments after my father passed and her first TSLA purchase was in March 2018 @$255.
The Tesla community has been such a huge help along the way. I can't thank the posters of this thread enough. I'm also not that much of a social person but have joined various Tesla clubs and meetup groups and have made many friends that I get to see regularly. I've had many wonderful experiences over the past few years that fall under the category of "Things I never thought I'd do just because I bought a car."
Same here, endless advice to sell "now you're double", "now it's gone down", "I heard they're going bankrupt", "that Elon Musk is crazy"...
And earlier this year an actual apology from my father-in-law "good job you don't listen to me, you were right"...
Have faith tribe. Although it's a but dull for the moment, never forget that this time last year $2 movement was about 1%
In 2013, I started seeing a bunch of Teslas driving around town, so I decided to buy some shares at 30-something. It started going up quickly, so I put in a trailing stop loss at 80-something and it bounced off of that and up beyond 100. D'oh. I used the money to buy a Model S. I loved the car so much, and saw even more driving around, that I bought back in again in the high 100s and low 200s and this time won't use a trailing stop loss. I did sell a few shares a few months ago with the plan to trade in my S to get a Model Y any day now.
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