While I don’t view any investment as a suicide pact, my general approach is to only purchase securities I intend to hold for at least a decade. I was adhering to that long-term philosophy when I purchased a few Tesla shares in 2018.
I still own those shares (actually quite a few more than originally purchased thanks to a stock split), and I mention that fact when I write about Tesla or its CEO Elon Musk -– typical journalistic protocol. I’ve started to get some pretty irate emails over this disclosure accusing me of everything from idiocy to moral turpitude.
First off, it’s just naive to portray investing in Tesla as a stupid financial decision. Yes, the stock is overvalued based on its price-to-earnings ratio, and yes, the price has cratered from its recent highs, but even if I sold my shares right now (after market close on March 24), my capital from 2018 would have doubled, then doubled again, then doubled again, then just about doubled one more time. You don’t get much better returns than that.
More importantly, the world was very different in 2018. Tesla was struggling, electric cars were not even close to as widely embraced as they are today, and I viewed my investment as a way to encourage the development of a technology that would be objectively good for the planet (well, objectively better than what it would be replacing, anyhow). Musk, meanwhile, was criticizing Donald Trump’s first-term policies on climate change and was even still a couple years away from reportedly calling Trump “a f*cking moron” behind his back during a White House visit.
When I became a Tesla shareholder, that action was perfectly aligned with leftist politics on the environment and climate change. Criticizing Tesla shareholders, or Tesla automobile owners, whose business with the company predates Musk losing his damn mind (which we really only found out about in approximately July of 2024) makes as much sense as criticizing since-enlightened comics for old routines that didn’t age well. Dumb shit like backdating moral outrage is what got Democrats into the terrible situation they’re now in in the first place.
Moreover, there’s no evidence that selling my Tesla shares now would do anything to discourage Musk’s DOGE destruction. Musk’s net worth fell by about $100 billion as a result of Tesla’s stock cratering since Trump took office -– which still leaves him the world’s richest person with about $329 billion. His Tesla shares are no longer even Musk’s biggest asset: that would be his 42% stake in SpaceX, valued at around $147 billion. If Musk does not seem particularly discouraged by losing $100 billion, he probably doesn’t care about losing a few billion dollars more, and even if Tesla is bankrupted, Musk’s fortune would remain unfathomably immense.
Meanwhile, even as its CEO runs amok dismantling the federal government, as a company, Tesla is still doing what you would think many members of its newly formed mob of critics would appreciate. Tesla is still producing cars that are vastly better for the environment than those of most of its competitors, it is still providing tens of thousands of Americans with well-paying jobs, and it is helping to develop new technologies that will make our lives better if they become commercially viable.
No one is angrier than me about what Trump and Musk are doing to the federal government, and I get it, people want to feel like they are doing something. It is hard to protest SpaceX whereas almost everyone is reasonably close to a Tesla dealership.
But Musk owns just 12.8% of Tesla’s equity. Left-leaning activists who target Tesla to get at Musk are punishing 87.2% of its innocent shareholders, most of whom probably agree with them ideologically and could do more from the inside to reign in the errant CEO of their company, like, for instance, demanding he come back and actually do his job at Tesla instead of wrecking the federal government, or potentially even ousting him from his role as CEO through a shareholder derivative lawsuit.
I was willing to lose my investment in Tesla in 2018 if the company failed to take off, and I would be willing to lose it now if I really thought that driving Tesla’s value to zero would do anything to stop Musk and Trump. It won’t, though. Activist efforts to wreck Tesla are just another example of the circular firing squad tactics the American left has, unfortunately, become known for.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.
The post Left-Leaning Tesla Protesters Have Arranged A Circular Firing Squad Around An Elon Musk Hologram appeared first on Above the Law.
While I don’t view any investment as a suicide pact, my general approach is to only purchase securities I intend to hold for at least a decade. I was adhering to that long-term philosophy when I purchased a few Tesla shares in 2018.
I still own those shares (actually quite a few more than originally purchased thanks to a stock split), and I mention that fact when I write about Tesla or its CEO Elon Musk -– typical journalistic protocol. I’ve started to get some pretty irate emails over this disclosure accusing me of everything from idiocy to moral turpitude.
First off, it’s just naive to portray investing in Tesla as a stupid financial decision. Yes, the stock is overvalued based on its price-to-earnings ratio, and yes, the price has cratered from its recent highs, but even if I sold my shares right now (after market close on March 24), my capital from 2018 would have doubled, then doubled again, then doubled again, then just about doubled one more time. You don’t get much better returns than that.
More importantly, the world was very different in 2018. Tesla was struggling, electric cars were not even close to as widely embraced as they are today, and I viewed my investment as a way to encourage the development of a technology that would be objectively good for the planet (well, objectively better than what it would be replacing, anyhow). Musk, meanwhile, was criticizing Donald Trump’s first-term policies on climate change and was even still a couple years away from reportedly calling Trump “a f*cking moron” behind his back during a White House visit.
When I became a Tesla shareholder, that action was perfectly aligned with leftist politics on the environment and climate change. Criticizing Tesla shareholders, or Tesla automobile owners, whose business with the company predates Musk losing his damn mind (which we really only found out about in approximately July of 2024) makes as much sense as criticizing since-enlightened comics for old routines that didn’t age well. Dumb shit like backdating moral outrage is what got Democrats into the terrible situation they’re now in in the first place.
Moreover, there’s no evidence that selling my Tesla shares now would do anything to discourage Musk’s DOGE destruction. Musk’s net worth fell by about $100 billion as a result of Tesla’s stock cratering since Trump took office -– which still leaves him the world’s richest person with about $329 billion. His Tesla shares are no longer even Musk’s biggest asset: that would be his 42% stake in SpaceX, valued at around $147 billion. If Musk does not seem particularly discouraged by losing $100 billion, he probably doesn’t care about losing a few billion dollars more, and even if Tesla is bankrupted, Musk’s fortune would remain unfathomably immense.
Meanwhile, even as its CEO runs amok dismantling the federal government, as a company, Tesla is still doing what you would think many members of its newly formed mob of critics would appreciate. Tesla is still producing cars that are vastly better for the environment than those of most of its competitors, it is still providing tens of thousands of Americans with well-paying jobs, and it is helping to develop new technologies that will make our lives better if they become commercially viable.
No one is angrier than me about what Trump and Musk are doing to the federal government, and I get it, people want to feel like they are doing something. It is hard to protest SpaceX whereas almost everyone is reasonably close to a Tesla dealership.
But Musk owns just 12.8% of Tesla’s equity. Left-leaning activists who target Tesla to get at Musk are punishing 87.2% of its innocent shareholders, most of whom probably agree with them ideologically and could do more from the inside to reign in the errant CEO of their company, like, for instance, demanding he come back and actually do his job at Tesla instead of wrecking the federal government, or potentially even ousting him from his role as CEO through a shareholder derivative lawsuit.
I was willing to lose my investment in Tesla in 2018 if the company failed to take off, and I would be willing to lose it now if I really thought that driving Tesla’s value to zero would do anything to stop Musk and Trump. It won’t, though. Activist efforts to wreck Tesla are just another example of the circular firing squad tactics the American left has, unfortunately, become known for.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at [email protected].
