Skip to main content

"Million" $ Teslas!

Year 2020 was interesting in many ways...one of those is that many of my friends and colleagues (some of you are readers of my blog) are now  driving "Million" $ Teslas! Let me explain what I mean by "Million" $ Teslas and investing lessons one can derive from this....

At start of 2020, well equipped Tesla car was around $70-80K and Tesla company valuation was $76B. At end of 2020, Tesla car is depreciated and may be worth about $60K. And at end of 2020, Tesla company is valued over $800Billion. Just imagine if one of you who bought Tesla car at start of year would have instead bought Tesla stock, your portfolio would have $800K and some change to buy Tesla car you always wanted (provided you had not sold it - more on this later). And imagine someone buying Tesla car back in 2009 vs buying Tesla stock at IPO price of $20. By some calculations they are driving "10 million$" Tesla (assuming they still kept those cars).

So what's investing lesson from this.

Buy Product; Buy Stock; Keep Stock as long as you are using the Product!

This is the lesson I am telling my kids time and again since personally I did not follow this. I have many examples to empirically prove that this simple investing lesson works. Many of you would be able to connect with following examples.

  • Amazon - Ordering for last 20 years
  • Apple - bought almost every product since first iPOD in 2001...
  • Netflix - since they had DVD by mail in early 2000
  • Google - since it became dominant and only search engine..also using Youtube, docs, gmail..
  • Facebook - while it was still only on college campuses..
  • Disney - have been visiting Disneyland since mid 90s..and watching movies even before that
  • Microsoft - since early 90s
  • Costco - must be using for over 20 years
  • Comcast - for last 10+ years as internet provider
  • Twitter - have been active for few years
  • Tesla - while personally I did not buy Tesla car, I was waiting for affordable version of Tesla (and still waiting...)
  • T-mobile - I was using AT&T for 20+ years but switched to T-mobile couple of years back..
The last example brings 2nd lesson:

Sell the stock when you stop using product for extended period of time!

While many examples are about consumer product companies, one can apply same for B2B companies also such as Salesforce, TSMC, Amazon (for its dominant AWS unit) or companies which went out of existence (like SUN Microsystems, Silicon Graphics and so on).

While looking back is always 20:20, there would be many opportunities in future to apply these simple lessons..some recent examples would be:
  • UBER
  • Spotify
  • AirBNB
  • Snowflake
  • Peloton
  • or even finding out winners in old media companies (just check out how many streaming services you signed up and use many times during week)
So the lessons from "Million" $ Teslas is:

Buy Product; Buy Stock; Keep Stock as long as you are using the Product!
Sell the stock when you stop using the product for extended period of time!

Have a great MLK Day and Congratulations to President Biden and Vice President Harris for taking charge of US leadership on Jan 20!

/Shyam







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Clicks to Tokens: Will 2026 Echo 1998's Boom or 2000's Bust?

My "blogging" was in hibernation last 8 months due to my self-imposed restraint given the environment as well as built-in inertia to get started despite so many interesting events and markets reaching all time highs after taking a big dump around "Liberation Day" in Apr...Around that time I had the blog ready that it would be repeat of Mar/Apr 2020 panic and recovery during onset of Covid Pandemic. The hunch happened to be correct and I was glad that I could keep and take some positions which I am still holding especially around AI theme. But that was then...as 2025 is about to wrap up in 10+ weeks, let's look at what's in store for rest of 2025 and 2026. And what's better time than to start writing again just before one of the most important week on the calendar with multiple key events coming up next week... Fed meeting to decide the course of interest rates - it's almost guaranteed that Fed will cut rates by 25 basis points (2nd time in 2025) and...
Post a Comment
Read more

2026: The Year of Convergence – Melt-up, Moonshots, or Mid-cycle Correction?

Happy New Year! After another period of self-imposed hibernation from the blog—partly due to the festivals, travel, intertia and partly to watch the dust settle on a chaotic 2025—I decided to use the quiet of this New Year’s morning to finally reboot.  Looking back at my October post,  “Clicks to Tokens,”  the hunch about the AI theme held firm. We spent much of 2025 debating whether we were in 1998 or 2000. As we enter 2026, the answer seems to be "neither and both." We have the roaring optimism of the 1920s fueled by "Silicon Spirits," but with the high-speed volatility of the 2020s. So, as the calendar flips, what is in store for 2026? Markets may experience melt-up (S&P touching 8000),  with some moonshots (like SpaceX and OpenAI) IPOs or even see mid-cycle correction bringing down S&P to 6000. That's a wide range and will be decided by Four R's... Here are my thoughts on the " Four R’s ":  Rates, Robots, Rotations, and Real Assets. 1. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Rockets, Relics & Roaring Markets: The $4 Trillion Crossroads of 1927 and 1999

Happy (almost) Summer! After watching Kevin Warsh get sworn in at a White House ceremony two days ago, tracking three S-1 filings that could collectively hoover up more capital than every U.S. IPO since 2022 combined, and watching 26-year-old stock charts finally break to new highs — it felt like the right moment to ask the uncomfortable question out loud. Are we at a party that ends gracefully, or one that ends with the furniture on fire? The market is simultaneously flashing the neon signs of 1999  and  the orchestral excess of 1927. Most commentators reach for the dot-com playbook. I think the original Roaring Twenties is the better map. Here's why... Assembly Lines to AI Clusters Ford's River Rouge complex was the largest industrial facility on earth in the 1920s — raw iron in one end, a Model T out the other. Steel, rubber, and oil became the picks-and-shovels of the age. GE and Westinghouse were electrifying factories and homes. The infrastructure buildout  was ...
Post a Comment
Read more