*What a boring title! Some days, the creative juices just aren’t flowing.
My main goal* was to build an investment and cash portfolio of $1,120,000* ($1,000,000 to retire on and $120,000 to pay off the house) in 1500 days**, starting from 1/1/2013 and ending in February of 2017. I made my goal in 2016, my 1500 Days are over, and I’ve left my job. In the interest of openness, I’ll continue to share my numbers. For now…
Busy Life
Life has been full of adventure and work! On the last day of May, we jumped in the Model Y for a road trip to Seattle. We then went on an Alaskan cruise. After that we spent some time in Oregon before heading home. We were gone for over 3 weeks which is by far, the longest trip we’ve ever taken. Thoughts on the trip here.
We arrived home to experience a steaming hot Colorado. I DO NOT like heat, so the 95+ degree days were an unwelcome surprise. Another unwelcome surprise came when I discovered this crappy aspen tree had destroyed the lines to our pool:
I broke out the shovel and started digging out the broken lines which was horrible work. There are roots everywhere and I already mentioned the heat. To get the pool going before the decade ended, I reran the pool lines above ground. It’s not pretty, but works extremely well:
Between the road trip, cruise, and amateur pool repair, I completely blew off last month’s Performance Update. You didn’t miss anything:
May Performance
Prior to May, our investments were up a whopping $6,784 for the year. Meh-riffic! May was better. We started the month at $4,569,534 and ended at $4,629,351 for a gain of $59,817. Add in our $400,000 in primary home equity and our net worth is up to $5,029,351:
Oof
Market watchers may note that this year, my portfolio is underachieving. Some of this is because we sold about $40,000 in stocks to pay random bills including that cruise. But mostly it’s because of Tesla which has not had a good year:
Tesla stock started the year at $250 and at the end of May, was about $180. Slowing demand for Teslas has resulted in Elon Musk betting the company on a Robotaxi network. I remain unconvinced. Tesla’s FSD has gotten much better, but at least here in Colorado, it’s not close to being Robotaxi ready. I’m giving Musk the benefit of the doubt for now, but I’ll probably begin selling off Tesla stock early next year if I don’t think Tesla will solve FSD any time soon.
More 1500 Days!!!
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*My goal wasn’t to have $1,120,000 at the end of 1500 days, but at any time before the day count was up. Why? It all goes back to the 4% Rule. Remember that our little friend, Mr. 4%, is nothing more than the most conservative safe withdrawal rate. Since my investment portfolio now sits at $1,550,000, I can spend about $62,000 in my first year of retirement.
**My original goal was $1,000,000 and no debt, I later raised the goal by $120,000 to $1,120,000 because I will have debt in the form of a mortgage and I firmly believe in not paying it off (LOOK at the MONEY I’m MAKING!). My compromise was to have enough money put away to cover the mortgage at the time of retirement.
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Personally, I’d sell the Tesla stock no matter what. Tesla isn’t as dominant in EVs as it used to be, and Elon Musk is getting more erratic, reckless and untrustworthy by the day.
Did you read the story about how he fired the entire Supercharger division (by far Tesla’s biggest advantage!) out of spite, just because the head of the division thought his layoffs were too drastic?
Elon isn’t what he used to be. Or maybe he is and now we’re seeing his true personality brought out by his wealth.
Yep, I know about the Supercharger story and it’s hard to see moves like that. However, there is a little more to the story that wasn’t public information. Also, he’s hired many of those people back already.
Elon’s strange moves recently are all about pivoting the company to robotaxis which would be tremendously profitable. He realized that a $25,000 car is no longer a good idea because Tesla can’t compete with BYD and the other Chinese upstarts. RIP Giga Mexico. The Superchargers are also less important because robotaxis would be charged and maintained at a private site.
The big question is if Tesla can actually solve autonomous driving. I’m not convinced. Mine does great most of the time, but in Seattle and Portland, it almost rear-ended other vehicles. I’m pretty sure there would have been accidents both times if I didn’t hit the brakes. It doesn’t instill confidence.
Seems like whatever happens tarriffs are here to stay for the US and europe, so $25k cars might work there, but China has changed the game making Tesla’s life hard. So your rethinking the indexing approach to selling?
“So your rethinking the indexing approach to selling?”
Oooh yeah, I guess I am. Dunno. Selling is hard. I’ll probably stick to it, but who knows. I’ll see in 6 months.
I’m super curious to see where FSD ends up this year. It’s 99% great/1% awful now. That may sound good, but these percentages would have to be 99.999%/001% for a Robotaxi network. The March of 9s ain’t easy…
Hey Carl,
Sounds like a fun trip, good stuff.
I mostly concur with your current take on Tesla. I guess I’d say Elon is betting the farm on AI, not on just FSD. I am far more confident that Tesla will mass produce a marketable Optimus robot than I am that they will successfully mass produce a robot-taxi running on FSD software any time soon. Latest reporting has two Optimus bots working the factory floor at Tesla.
At the shareholder meeting Elon indicated Optimus would go through one more hardware iteration this year to reach a mass production version. If you think about it, Optimus is the low hanging AI fruit. Tesla has AI capable of self-driving a car successfully for large stretches with minimal interventions on US streets. That same AI should have no problem operating a robot in a controlled indoor environment, on a level surface, and a well defined set of variables (i.e., no high speeds, fog, construction zones, unpredictable vehicle/pedestrian interactions, etc.) This is a multi-trillion dollar market and Tesla could be rolling the first production models of Optimus off an assembly as soon as Q1 next year.
My personal thinking is that I will stick with Tesla as long as the energy side of the business is growing 50% YOY and maintaining or expanding margins. TE buys Tesla time and revenue to pursue multiple avenues of AI revenue generation.
I was disappointed to hear Tesla would not be doing the Gen 2 $25k car. However that disappointment was mostly alleviated by Tesla’s announcement that they would be manufacturing new/cheaper models using a hybrid of the “unboxed” manufacturing process on their existing model 3 & Y lines. This will allow Tesla to get cheaper models out quicker.
I think competition from China is both real and overblown given the failure of US and European manufacturers to mass produce any EV models profitably to date. Instead of pushing through to profitability, Ford, GM, VW and others are pushing hybrids instead. This will backfire spectacularly in the long run IMO. There is plenty of market share for BYD and Tesla to split, along with the other Chinese players and Kia/Hyundai. I don’t see any other competition for a growing EV market share.
Final thought, with all other major brands adopting Tesla’s NACs charging standard. Tesla supercharging revenue will continue to streadily grow as other brands put more EVs on the road and those EVs pay a premium to use Tesla superchargers. It all adds up…
Good points, especially with energy storage. There will be huge demand for it this decade and beyond.
Regarding your last point, I saw my first non-Tesla charging as a Supercharger a couple of weeks ago. It was a Ford Mustang Mach-E. I talked to the owner and he absolutely loved being able to use the Supercharger network.
Ditto on what orchard said, I think at this point if Elon is talking, he’s lying (remind you of anyone). I don’t think he is straightforward with his promises and goals for the company.
Is he lying or wildly optimistic? I’d like to believe it’s the latter believe he dreams very big and usually delivers, just not on time. However, FSD has been promised for years. It’s such a hard problem though.
I guess I have to agree with you as I trust Elon a lot less now than I did 4 years ago. Oof.
Was in San Francisco last week and saw Waymo taxis all over the place without safety drivers and passengers riding in the back. SF is one heck of a tricky city to drive in! Looks like they have solved the problem first.
“Looks like they have solved the problem first.”
They may have. Waymo is taking a different approach that relies on LIDAR and highly detailed maps. It is more costly upfront to implement and takes a lot of work (that’s why it’s only in certain parts of certain cities), but Waymo could win the battle. The next couple of years are going to be very interesting.
Elon is only now controversial because he is now tied to “you know who.” Before that, he was, and will remain, a revolutionary scientist and inventor.
He doesn’t give a rip about what others think, and in my book, that is a checkmark in his favor. You can’t care what others think to make true progress, because to get what no one else has, you must do what no one else does.
This involves variance. So you may have the lowest of the lows but also the highest of the highs.
Elon’s main Achilles heel imo is that he pours his energy into whatever is interesting him at the moment. So if he isn’t passionate about autonomous driving, he won’t put his energy there. OFC if he solves autonomous driving I think we all know what that would do to his stock…
It all depends on your personal risk tolerance in the end.
Oh yeah, autonomous driving would blow up the stock. It would be a multi-trillion dollar company at that point. Do you think they will though? It’s so hard.
FSD has gotten very good in that I rarely have to intervene. But while 1 critical intervention every 500 miles is an amazing accomplishment, it’s still a long way from being robotaxi capable.