The thesis
“buying Tesla stock every year since its IPO”
How buffet read it
$10,000 invested in Tesla at IPO, with $10,000 added each year.
Tesla IPO date: July 1, 2010.
Period: 2010–2026.
Dividends reinvested (Tesla pays none).
Benchmark: S&P 500.
TSLA · 4,065 trading days · benchmark SPY
$10,000 became
$0
The same money in the S&P 500 would have been $99,512 over 2010–2026 — the thesis came out ahead by $2,282,660.
The worst stretch
−73.6%, November 2021 to January 2023 — you would have sat through fourteen months of that, and it took until December 2024 to get back to level.
the S&P 500 fell 33.7% at its worst over the same period. The thesis moved 57.3% a year against 17.0% for the index.
Where the thesis was wrong
The thesis beat the S&P 500 by $2,282,660 over 2010–2026, turning $10,000 in plus annual top-ups into $2,382,172 against the index's $99,512. That result depended entirely on one stock, and the ride included a −73.6% drawdown from November 2021 to January 2023, which did not recover until December 2024. In 2022 alone the thesis lost −65.0% while the index lost −18.2%, and 2026 gave back −22.5% against the index's +13.4%. The +743.4% in 2020 did most of the heavy lifting; without that single year the long-run figure looks far more ordinary.
Counter-test
Same money, same schedule, parked in 1–3 month T-bills instead: $12,551.
Year by year
| Year | The thesis | SPY |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | +21.3% | +23.7% |
| 2011 | +7.2% | +1.9% |
| 2012 | +18.6% | +16.0% |
| 2013 | +344.1% | +32.3% |
| 2014 | +47.9% | +13.5% |
| 2015 | +7.9% | +1.3% |
| 2016 | −11.0% | +12.0% |
| 2017 | +45.7% | +21.7% |
| 2018 | +6.9% | −4.6% |
| 2019 | +25.7% | +31.2% |
| 2020 | +743.4% | +18.4% |
| 2021 | +49.8% | +28.7% |
| 2022 | −65.0% | −18.2% |
| 2023 | +101.7% | +26.2% |
| 2024 | +62.5% | +24.9% |
| 2025 | +11.4% | +17.7% |
| 2026 | −22.5% | +13.4% |
What this verdict does not include
- US-listed stocks and ETFs only, priced on end-of-day closes.
- No tax, no trading fees, no slippage, no bid-ask spread.
- Dividends are reinvested, because closes are adjusted for them.
- Survivorship is not corrected for: only instruments that exist today are held.
- Tesla's IPO was June 29, 2010; start date set to 2010-07-01 as the first full trading day.
- 'Every year' is modelled as a $10,000 lump sum added on January 1 of each subsequent year after the initial purchase.
- Tesla has never paid a dividend, so dividend reinvestment has no effect.
Keep this thesis
buffet re-runs it once a month and mails you the new number. Nothing else is ever sent.
Another thesis
Every verdict names something it could not test. That gap is usually the next thesis.
Run another thesis — $5