Tesla stock

Those of us who own Tesla stock could have received a nice yearly dividend via Exxon stock in stead, but perhaps that's a bit schizophrenic.

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Lots of options for dividends out there.
I divested myself from any fossil fuel companies.
However, better than divesting, IMO, would be to vote your shares. Rally other investors to do likewise.
Apply pressure to the companies to conduct themselves in more sustainable ways.

I have a lot of respect for the fund that gathered support in order to replace 25% of the Exxon board of directors seats recently.

 

if i had sold the 1400 shares of exxon when i first could have in august of 2019 at $75., and bought 2300 shares of tesla at $45., i would have lost about $6000. in dividends, and made about $600,000.
if my calculations are correct

 

exxons-board-shakeup-could-force-review-billions-dollars-spending-2021-06-09

 

I believe your calculations are off.
There was a 5:1 split, so 2300 shares would be 11,500. Stock value is around $600/share, so that would be roughly $6.9 Million.
But you definitely would have missed out on $6000 in dividends.

 

but we all know, this tesla thing is never gonna last...

 

Well I hope someone gives them a run for their money. I’m not enamoured of 4-door sedan sports cars with laptops in the dash, and 3~4 second 0-60 times.

 

okay, then i don't think the stock was $45. in august of 19. the apple app must have revamped the history to reflect the split.

so it would have been 460 shares at $225. = about 100k

460 becomes 2300 x $600. = $1.38m

i still think i've made a mistake

 

i think eventually. and some will buy for more normal (old fashioned) features. but by the time bev's really catch on, it will be the next generations, who are already touch screen literate, so the other mfg's will probably wind up copying tesla.

 

Yeah as Stephen king was want to say (in Dark Tower series):

The world has moved on.

 

You are 100% correct, my mistake. To get $45 in '19 it would definitely already be split adjusted. Sorry about any heart palpitations

 

Being in Microsoft's back yard, I'd been saying that they didn't have all that much possible upside remaining. For more than 3 decades now ...

About the time Microsoft went IPO in 1986, I bought a new Honda Accord that I didn't really need, the other vehicle (which I kept) was running well enough. That Accord did turn out to be the best car I ever had. Kept it 23 years and 235k miles, then some neighborhood kid ran it well beyond 30 years and 300k before he moved and I lost track of him.

If I'd bought MS stock with that money instead, it'd now be about $32 million ...

... provided I didn't flip it over to the stock of another local startup, Amazon, to now be about $3 billion (even after cap gains taxes on the MS sale) ...

That was an expensive car.

At least all my other investments, into a reasonably balanced market basket, performed well enough to provide for early retirement. But they were all shorter by many decimal points.

 

Stock prices are always best looked at in hindsight. There may be a new company on the market tomorrow that in 20 years is the biggest thing and everyone who considered buying it and decided against it will be kicking themselves. It’s also possible that the current stock leaders will collapse or grow or stay the same. Nobody really knows, and the only ways to know for sure are illegal.

 

I have found that we often have good information on product/company probability of success/failure in everyday life. As an engineer with a good understanding on how systems actually work, I have made (and missed) several stock calls over my almost 8 decades on this planet.

• In the mid to late 1970's Detroit cars were seriously degraded by the EPA rules which caused a major change in the automobile marketplace. There were two major cohorts of consumers affected:
  • Original owners - before then many buyers only kept their car about 2 years before trading in for a new car. They were forced to keep their cars 5-6 years until reasonable cars again were available from Detroit. This actually resulted in a permanent change in consumer behavior.
  • The buyers of used cars were also forced to delay their next purchase due to a limited supply of 2 year old used cars.

I was a young engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories and I discussed my analysis of this situation at lunch which, I believed, would cause a significant increase in sales of new cars in the next few months (Both cohorts needed to replace their vehicles with new cars). One engineer at the table asked the right question, "what are you going to do about your belief?". I answered that I guess that I should buy some automobile stock now. "Which one?" asked my older, now mentor. Since two of the Detroit automakers were close to bankruptcy at that time, I said either American motors or Chrysler. As a relatively conservative investor, I chose to buy the less risky Chrysler which was about $4/share (I only bought 250 shares). Soon thereafter the US guaranteed a $1.5 billion dollar loan as Chrysler was "too big to fail" and the stock quickly jumped to over $30/share and I had a significant windfall.

I then realized that the stock market is a classical "underdamped" system so I sold my share and then bought them back at the low $20 minimum of the relaxation oscillation. When the stock hit $30 again I sold it again for another nice profit. I played one more cycle of the oscillation, and then walked away with a nice profit.​

• Apollo Computers - My department bought several of their early UNIX workstations and selected Apollo as a standard for use at ITT. Did I ever look at their stock? A major oversight on my part. Then later after seeing the early SUN UNIX workstations it was obvious that SUN would supplant Apollo in the market place. Again an opportunity missed.
  
  
• In the min 1980s an VP at ITT asked me about the computer market (we were major users of Intel and Microsoft products at that time) and I told him that I would buy Intel and Microsoft stock if I were investing at that time. Again due to my personal knowledge of their products, I had made a great call. It was much later that I listened to my own advice (I had made some money as my career advanced) and bought 2000 shares of each (half for me and half for my spouse) which I still own today.
  
  
• After we moved to Connecticut My wife told me about the wonderful store called Home Depot and took me to it in North Haven. As a DIYer I fell in love with the place. Did I think to look at their stock? Another missed opportunity.

A sometimes smart, sometimes dumb, sometimes lucky - JeffD

 

While knowing with 100% certainty isn't possible, it is fairly straightforward to have some knowledge of likelihood of success or failure.
With more (legal) investigation the level of certainty goes up.

Of course, a company's success or failure depends upon many, many factors, some of which are easy to figure out, some of which are very complicated.

It all comes down to the capabilities of the company, the quality/appeal of the product, and the behavior of the competition.
Predicting how the competition will behave has the most uncertainty.

 

many seasoned stockbrokers have avoided tesla from the get go.

 

There is nothing wrong with being risk adverse in your investments. My spouse and I are conservative investors while managing to grow our net worth over the years (Married 54 years as of this coming June). Slow and steady does work. (We have never invested in Tesla)

JeffD

 

I took up 'intense' stock trading as one of my 'covid hobbies' and have stuck with it. I had dabbled in it for years though before that though. One lesson I have learned is to pick a price target and stick with it! Hindsight is 20/20 and many folks get burned. People get WAAAAAY too emotional with their stocks and you *have* to learn to disconnect human nature to be successful with trading. I'll admit...it is tough to do sometimes. Note that I made over 150 trades in 2020...

Notice I said stock trading...not *investing*. There is a huge difference. My strategy lately is to swing trade to accumulate 'free shares' in a target company I want to *invest* in...and then lock those shares away. Again...easier said than done.

 

People get WAAAAAY too emotional with their stocks and you *have* to learn to disconnect human nature to be successful with trading.

This is the point I was trying to make in my earlier posts. There are times when it's just fine to like a stock. Many people like Tesla, and that's all good. There are also times to realize when something reaches a sell point, whether it be a positive windfall or negative. You can always buy back in later....