3 ms·

Still kicking myself for not buying the stock when it was $27 :)

by alyx 13y ago

mehrdada 13y ago
If you want to kick yourself for not buying anything, which is not a wise thing to do considering there's always something growing faster than you'd expect, kick yourself for not buying TSLA options, not the stock. That's where the real money was.
chris_mahan 13y ago
I did buy the stock at 27, and also at 17. Back then, thought, the naysaysers were all: Tesla will fail; Tesla will never make a profit; Teslas are too hard to recharge, yadda yadda. I invested $3K (today: $17K). I also invested in Ford (made 9K) and American Airlines (lost $600) and Washington Mutual (lost $300). You've got to spend money to make money. My prediction? TSLA at 500 sooner rather than later. Who would have predicted Google at 700 three years ago? (it was 430 then) Of course, now look for competitors, especially those who can poach Tesla people. I imagine all the car makers are researching aluminum bodies and electric powertrains. Do your research. I had already decided to buy TSLA 6 months before IPO, when Elon, A'nold and Toyota President made presentation at Google One on saving the Nummi plant. My strategy on investing: stable, smart management; products people buy; stocks only. (no mutual funds, bonds, etfs, etc--if your company does matching 401k, take it, but don't bank on superior annual yields). Learn about foreign exchange. Read everything you can about the companies. Read all SEC filings on the companies you invest in and all their competitors. Stay away from tech, retail, and financial services. These are iffy. Read about the US economy, about the economy of large foreign countries: China, Japan, Germany, France, UK, Russia, India, and if you have time, Poland, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico. Stay away from precious metals, they are a form of currency, with ill-understood inflation. Stay away from airlines. Stay away from very heavily regulated industries that are utilities (telcos, cable, etc). Stay away from disposable-income consumer products--consumers are fickle. Sell equal amounts of losses and gains, to limit tax exposures. Don't hold on to a stock for sentimental values. If you can't afford to take the risk of it going to zero tomorrow morning, don't buy. Diversify your portfolio. (I have holdings in 60 companies right now.) An interesting side-effect of studying the market: choice of programming language makes zero difference. If the company is successful, you will be able to hire people to rewrite it all in whatever language is fastest that day. To quote the Unix philosophy: Make it work correctly first, and make it fast later. Facebook today has a market cap just above $100B (price 41 and change) and got started with PHP. Don't knock PHP. By the way, FB's capitalization is 5 times that of TSLA. Finally, and oddly, smaller companies tend to yield higher returns (not by much, but some).

Still kicking myself for not buying the stock when it was $27 :)

by alyx 13y ago

Still kicking myself for not buying the stock when it was $27 :)

If you want to kick yourself for not buying anything, which is not a wise thing to do considering there's always something growing faster than you'd expect, kick yourself for not buying TSLA options, not the stock. That's where the real money was.

chris_mahan 13y ago

I did buy the stock at 27, and also at 17. Back then, thought, the naysaysers were all: Tesla will fail; Tesla will never make a profit; Teslas are too hard to recharge, yadda yadda. I invested $3K (today: $17K). I also invested in Ford (made 9K) and American Airlines (lost $600) and Washington Mutual (lost $300). You've got to spend money to make money. My prediction? TSLA at 500 sooner rather than later. Who would have predicted Google at 700 three years ago? (it was 430 then) Of course, now look for competitors, especially those who can poach Tesla people. I imagine all the car makers are researching aluminum bodies and electric powertrains. Do your research. I had already decided to buy TSLA 6 months before IPO, when Elon, A'nold and Toyota President made presentation at Google One on saving the Nummi plant. My strategy on investing: stable, smart management; products people buy; stocks only. (no mutual funds, bonds, etfs, etc--if your company does matching 401k, take it, but don't bank on superior annual yields). Learn about foreign exchange. Read everything you can about the companies. Read all SEC filings on the companies you invest in and all their competitors. Stay away from tech, retail, and financial services. These are iffy. Read about the US economy, about the economy of large foreign countries: China, Japan, Germany, France, UK, Russia, India, and if you have time, Poland, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico. Stay away from precious metals, they are a form of currency, with ill-understood inflation. Stay away from airlines. Stay away from very heavily regulated industries that are utilities (telcos, cable, etc). Stay away from disposable-income consumer products--consumers are fickle. Sell equal amounts of losses and gains, to limit tax exposures. Don't hold on to a stock for sentimental values. If you can't afford to take the risk of it going to zero tomorrow morning, don't buy. Diversify your portfolio. (I have holdings in 60 companies right now.) An interesting side-effect of studying the market: choice of programming language makes zero difference. If the company is successful, you will be able to hire people to rewrite it all in whatever language is fastest that day. To quote the Unix philosophy: Make it work correctly first, and make it fast later. Facebook today has a market cap just above $100B (price 41 and change) and got started with PHP. Don't knock PHP. By the way, FB's capitalization is 5 times that of TSLA. Finally, and oddly, smaller companies tend to yield higher returns (not by much, but some).