Howard
It is interesting to read your forecasts of wonderful times to come. I too am an optimist but, as an investor am wary of putting a ruler on a graph and convincing myself that trees will grow to the sky. No-one knows whether you will be right or not. We could see a major problem occurring with the growth in China and sadly, the current health crisis could be an indicator of a major setback, or not?
I personally think the valuation of Tesla is insane. But what do I know? Your forecasts of their huge successes over the last five years or more, may come true. Anyone investing in them over the last six months has certainly made a killing. As a cautious investor, I'd be tempted to top slice as the price may come down.
In the real world, Tesla's performance is going to be reflected in their earnings report due out in the next week. We can assume that, on past form, this will present the rosiest possible view of their current financial situation. And presumably Tesla shareholders will be delighted to transfer a major part of their wealth to Elon Musk as a reward for his performance.
No one ever knows what will happen in the future and we all have to live with that lack of knowledge. If we had time machines and could see what was to come it would make life very certain but add a level of knowledge that many would likely have trouble with.
We all have to make decisions in this framework. A person can not e.g. know if a person they choose to live with will be a good fit for them, they evaluate all the information and then go ahead or not. If they go ahead they continually monitor the situation, ready to act if needed to correct problems or in a worst case to split apart.
Trading/investing is governed by the same mechanics.
We can e.g. believe that the current virus troubles in China are going to get a whole lot worse or be soon forgotten. We can look at projections which show a 6% growth in China, similar in India, 2% in the US etc:
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/the-5-l ... 2020-01-22
and take comfort, but we can never know what will actually happen.
In trading/investing as in choosing a partner, we have to look forward and in doing so we consider many things. For financial decisions we often look for growth and we make our price decisions about whether to buy, sell or neither on what we think might happen, on what potential a share might have and do so with no certainty, just the collective feelings of all interested participants at the moment of consideration and then ongoing we continually consider if the current price is reasonable in our opinion. This type of analysis is very difficult when one is dealing with a company that has shown extraordinary ability and is now priced on the assumption that this extraordinary growth will continue. Many say it can not, many said the same of Ford, or of Amazon and others and were wrong, but there were many other runners who fell and are forgotten.
There is never certainty, just risk.
Tesla risk is that it could go badly wrong or that it could go greatly right. A Tesla holder could lose their stake or multiply it many fold. Many investors/traders can’t handle this and pass.
For now I currently feel the risk is of missing out to the upside.
Regards,