Who bought in today?

I like Tesla. It's a new technology (EVs since AC Propulsion) and nobody knows which companies will survive the shakeout. If I was investing for the long term I'd put some money in them and regard it as high risk (young company in a young market). But at my age I'm looking for things that pay present income (bonds are nice that way, and mutual funds that pay good dividends). I don't expect Tesla to start paying dividends for a while, so it does not really fit my portfolio.

It's certainly a better bet than Zenn, which some folks bought in hopes that EEStor would turn out to be for real.

 

Yeah. None of my "real" investments is in individual stocks, but I do own microscopic amounts of Toyota and a few other companies that I just like enough to want to own a piece of. All of those stocks are down since I bought them. The problem with an initial stock offering is having no idea if it's going to double or halve the day after it is issued. But I like Tesla, and if I was going to put some high-risk money into the market for a long-term investment, Tesla would be high on my list.

 

Supply & demand . . . the stock had gone up
Time to sell!

 

I'm glad you made a profit. But I don't trade stocks with the hope of making a short-term profit by selling quickly. The market has a lot of sharp ups and downs, and if you predict them correctly you can make a lot of money in a short time; but if you get it wrong, you can lose a lot of money in an equally short time.

The central character in Pushkin's The Queen of Spades, Herman the German, says near the beginning, with reference to his friends' pastime of gambling at cards, "I refuse to risk the necessary in pursuit of the superfluous."

I invest in bonds for present income, and relatively safe mutual funds for long-term capital appreciation. I don't gamble on the short-term vagaries of the market. I own a few individual stocks in companies I like, for reasons unrelated to investment. They've all gone down since I bought them. But I like the idea of owning a bit of Toyota, for example. I may buy a little bit of Tesla for the same reason, once the stock has been on the market long enough to find its price. If I do, it will be a toy, not an "investment."