No offense taken. I've also spent more time than I'd care to admit beating myself over the head over how bad I am at timing this stock. I got lucky and made a few good trades a few months ago and got super excited, but that turned out to just be luck. I'm going to harden up a bit more and completely change my trading strategy. As in, shoot myself in the foot before I sell again for short term gain.
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No offense taken. I've also spent more time than I'd care to admit beating myself over the head over how bad I am at timing this stock. I got lucky and made a few good trades a few months ago and got super excited, but that turned out to just be luck. I'm going to harden up a bit more and completely change my trading strategy. As in, shoot myself in the foot before I sell again for short term gain.
Yeah, days like today are why I don't sell covered calls on TSLA.
(I considered selling covered calls at $500 strikes but apparently nobody wanted to pay much for them
)
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@Jayjs20,
To echo some of the other comments, emotions are your worst enemy when investing. Making investment decisions based on emotions is the main reason most individual investors do much worse than the market.
It is not only the "buy high, sell low" phenomenon, but a lot of small decisions that subconsciously are driven by emotions rather than facts that result in very bad investment outcomes over time. One particularly bad habit of most investors according to the research is the tendency to sell winners too soon and hang on to losers too long because it feels good to win, and it feels bad to lose. This affects even professional investors although to a lesser extent. (Probably why some short sellers are still holding on for dear life, hoping to avoid the "pain" of a loss.)
There has been a lot written in the last decade on this topic. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. It covers a lot of territory but the chapters on investment psychology are very good. (Some might say Elon should read the chapters relating to the "Planning Fallacy," but that's a different topic)
Good luck!
To echo some of the other comments, emotions are your worst enemy when investing. Making investment decisions based on emotions is the main reason most individual investors do much worse than the market.
It is not only the "buy high, sell low" phenomenon, but a lot of small decisions that subconsciously are driven by emotions rather than facts that result in very bad investment outcomes over time. One particularly bad habit of most investors according to the research is the tendency to sell winners too soon and hang on to losers too long because it feels good to win, and it feels bad to lose. This affects even professional investors although to a lesser extent. (Probably why some short sellers are still holding on for dear life, hoping to avoid the "pain" of a loss.)
There has been a lot written in the last decade on this topic. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. It covers a lot of territory but the chapters on investment psychology are very good. (Some might say Elon should read the chapters relating to the "Planning Fallacy," but that's a different topic
)Good luck!
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Remember, *you need to be able to sleep*. Do whatever psychological tricks help you to avoid being kept up at night by worry. If you're being kept up at night by worry, among other things, you'll stop thinking clearly and make trading errors.
And if you have to, forego the money. Your health is more important. I really have foregone a lot of good money-making opportunities because of what keeps me up at night. I knew, knew with absolute certainty, that the rational thing to do last October was to load up on SCTY on margin, but debt keeps me up at night, so I didn't.
I think a good comparison here would be me coming back and sleeping in the barracks after spending a year in Iraq. Sure it wasn't comfortable, but it was a heck of a lot better than sleeping on a fold-out cot in a small prison cell-turned-room with 7 other guys.
I was sleeping way, way better when I wasn't trading for short term gains, so going back to just holding until the end of time should be a good improvement.
Zhelko Dimic
Careful bull
As I said, like FB couple years back.
Covered calls are risky play, unless you want to lighten up anyway.
Zhelko Dimic
Careful bull
Great advice. I started carefully, and after few years of great success started doing 'all in', or close enough. I made x yearly salaries over few years, and then lost 2/3*x yearly salaries on Tesla. Very unpleasant.
I've recovered some since, but my lowered tolerance to risk wouldn't let me recover as quickly, as I can't stomach 'all in' anymore. Hence waiting for $380
So, yeah, GREAT, GREAT advice
* x>5
It's a good thing market was closed, or the bots could have made many barnfuls of hay out of that straw in the wind.
I'm out, it's midnight here.
MitchJi
Trying to learn kindness, patience & forgiveness
Me too.
Plus I pulled in another $30k from a home equity loan to buy J19 $240's current;y up $42k, our "free" M3.
@Jayjs20
Echoing 1kEE, endeavouring to understand the company thoroughly has been crucial to not panicking during the rollercoaster ride that comes with being a TSLA shareholder. I had never bought a stock before TSLA, and spent more than 1000 hours studying *everything* Musk and Tesla related over a 9 month period before buying my first share at the start of 2016. Since then, and despite being a super long term investor, I've spent *at least* 6 hours a day on this forum, Electrek etc. to keep up with the story as it plays out, ready to sell at a moments notice if things started smelling iffy. At one point I was down more than my house is worth, yet despite my wife freaking out, I could remain calm and allay her fears.
I'm a lurker rather than a contributor (writing is not really my thing), so I'll use this opportunity to give a big thank you to all on this board (bears included!) for your output over the last couple of years. Without this resource it's unlikely I'd be along for the ride, and I'm sure there are plenty of other lurkers who feel the same.
Looking forward to celebrating a trillion dollar valuation with you guys in a decade or so
Echoing 1kEE, endeavouring to understand the company thoroughly has been crucial to not panicking during the rollercoaster ride that comes with being a TSLA shareholder. I had never bought a stock before TSLA, and spent more than 1000 hours studying *everything* Musk and Tesla related over a 9 month period before buying my first share at the start of 2016. Since then, and despite being a super long term investor, I've spent *at least* 6 hours a day on this forum, Electrek etc. to keep up with the story as it plays out, ready to sell at a moments notice if things started smelling iffy. At one point I was down more than my house is worth, yet despite my wife freaking out, I could remain calm and allay her fears.
I'm a lurker rather than a contributor (writing is not really my thing), so I'll use this opportunity to give a big thank you to all on this board (bears included!) for your output over the last couple of years. Without this resource it's unlikely I'd be along for the ride, and I'm sure there are plenty of other lurkers who feel the same.
Looking forward to celebrating a trillion dollar valuation with you guys in a decade or so
I feel your pain. I had 200 shares of Tesla at $150 and 1000 shares of nvidia at $25 sold both at a slight loss only to watch nvidia quadruple and tesla hit $270.
Ive learned I'm amazing at picking stocks but terrible at knowing when to sell. So now I'm back in Tesla at $190 and holding till year 2025. No more day trading for me
That's a great reminder to never put your investments above your health. My Grandpa used to say if you lose even one night of sleep over an investment sell asap because it's not worth it if it keeps you up at night, I think that was hard one advice.
My Grandpa used to say that if you lose even one night of sleep over an investment you should sell it because it's not worth it even if you have to take a loss. Congrats on hanging on, hope it keeps going up and you didn't lose any sleep.
racer26
Active Member
I don't have a margin account, but I had a similar idea I chose not to act on - I have a large (well, large relative to the size of my investments) line of credit available to me, and strongly considered the idea of pouring it on the fire when we were down in the 180s. Even though I was sure we were headed back to where we are today and beyond, I couldn't convince myself that it was worth the risk. As much as I have nearly my whole net worth on the line, I'm still young. Even if TSLA went to zero, I would be able to recover. So I'm not that worried about it. I've never been more sure of an investment decision than I am of being long TSLA for the next 2-5 years.
Prior to selling my house, I had been sitting on ~$30k of non-mortgage debt I had been unable to pay off within any reasonable time horizon and had been sitting on it for years. Since selling my house, I've been debt free for the first time since buying my first house 8 years ago, and its a feeling I'm unwilling to give up.
Funny how everyone's grandfathers are being mentioned. My grandfather passed away in July. My whole life, he was retired from working for the public utility commission in our area and had been investing in the stock market in his retirement. He mostly focussed on banks and other blue chips. He knew I had been planning to invest strongly in TSLA, and that I'd started about a month before his passing. His words at that time were that he needed to live another year. That TSLA would be a great investment, but that it wasn't quite time. I argued with him at the time - I was pretty sure that we were already headed on a climb toward Model 3, and at the time I was up. This was right around the time we had the brief foray to 235 in July shortly after I got in. In hindsight - he was totally right.
Sorry to hear about your Grandpa, mine was back and forth to the hospital last year so hopefully power through for a while longer. I went on and on about Tesla with my Grandpa in the lead-up before 2013. He understands manufacturing exceptionally well but he didn't understand that Tesla is like old school manufacturing combined with software engineering, plus pretty much all the pundits that my Grandpa could relate to were very negative about Tesla. So I didn't convince him to invest, it was too big a reach for a guy that remembers cranking his Dad's Model T and bought his first car over 3/4 of a century ago, which is understandable. He had to quit driving several years ago and but I hope he sticks around long enough for self-driving. Took him for an S test drive a few years ago and he was pretty impressed when they let me floor it.
Yep, happy to be wrong here! Still have all my core shares even if I closed my short puts too soon.
I don't see any serious resistance until 250, though there's some historical resistance at 242 since there was an equity raise at that level. Could easily see us run back to the 270 post m3 reveal high after earnings.
racer26
Active Member
Speaking of earnings, aren't we getting a bit late in the month for Tesla to announce when the call is?
I'm a Grandpa and I have watched several young investors on this thread. I have a number of shares at $271 UGH. but they are long so I dont worry about them. My "play account" is much lower and more profitable. If what you like about the company is unchanged the fluctuations of the market should be ignored. And, if you play with the stock it should not be something you cannot afford to lose
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BaileyDog12
Member
I believe Tesla needs the stock price to go way up in the first half of 2017 because Tesla is almost certainly going to seek another round of funding from the markets to get the Model 3 to market. That's why I believe the short term prospects of this stock are good right now until the next offering is announced. After that I wish I had insider knowledge or a crystal ball.
Another thing that concerns me short term is how long it will take for the solar business to get ramped up. If you just go on yelp (I know it's a totally non technical form of analysis), the number of negative reviews I see concerns me as to the experience many folks have had with Solar City. My sister decided on using Sunpower over Solar City and other competitors about 6 months ago and told me the experience going with Sunpower was night and day compared to the other guys and that was her second time getting solar panels on a home in 5 years. I have a lot of faith that Tesla can turn the solar business around and integrate things but it's not going to happen overnight.
Another thing that concerns me short term is how long it will take for the solar business to get ramped up. If you just go on yelp (I know it's a totally non technical form of analysis), the number of negative reviews I see concerns me as to the experience many folks have had with Solar City. My sister decided on using Sunpower over Solar City and other competitors about 6 months ago and told me the experience going with Sunpower was night and day compared to the other guys and that was her second time getting solar panels on a home in 5 years. I have a lot of faith that Tesla can turn the solar business around and integrate things but it's not going to happen overnight.
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