I’ve been a TSLA share holder since 2013, accumulating shares through 2019. When the stock exploded to $3000s and split in 2020, I was able to retire at age 46.
Was I lucky? Yes. Was it all luck? No. Did I try to explain what I saw in Tesla to others? Yes. Did they listen and act? No, not really. In this article, I’ll explain what I saw in Tesla in the early days that gave me the conviction to buy and hold from 2013 to 2020.
Early Investing Mistakes
I started investing in the stock market in 1999. At that time if you threw any money at internet stocks, you did well. I owned Exodus, Excite, RedHat, Yahoo, etc. They all went up except I didn’t really know why. They eventually lost money, or I sold early and didn’t make any significant gains. I invested blindly by listening to others and not doing my own research. The results were forgettable.
In the early 2000s, this new online book seller called Amazon.com was gaining traction on the web. The media story is always the same. Amazon showed no profit. There’s no proprietary technology, so big retail can easily enter the market and beat them. Plus, who would want to buy things on the internet?! By 2012, it was becoming clear that Amazon was the real deal, and I bought 50 shares at $192. Amazon is now at $3600, a cool 1,800% gain. My conviction was correct, but I…