Investor's Corner
Tesla shareholder sells home to load up on stock, and it’s already paying off
Tesla shareholders are a rare breed, sometimes putting almost everything, and we mean everything, on the line in hopes of striking it big and making major waves in their own portfolios.
Jason DeBolt is one of those shareholders.
DeBolt, a shareholder since March 26, 2013, sold his home and bought around 10,000 shares. The additional 10,000 shares supplemented the 38,000 he already owned.
He began buying the 10,000 additional shares slowly over the last several weeks on margin, or using a loan from a brokerage to buy more shares, in the $128-139 range before the company’s most recent Earnings Call.
As of Thursday, he was up $250,000 on his most recent investment using funds from the sale of his home. “Closed out margin today with house proceeds. Have cash. Feeling good,” he Tweeted.
Sold my house and bought around 10,000 $TSLA shares. Own 48,000 shares now.
Purchased all shares slowly over last few weeks before earnings on margin in $128-139 range. Up $250k on these shares already. Closed out margin today with house proceeds. Have cash. Feeling good.$TSLA pic.twitter.com/aIW7m8d9FJ
— Jason DeBolt ⚡️ (@jasondebolt) January 26, 2023
In an exclusive interview with Teslarati, DeBolt shared his inspiration for the bold move. He noted that Tesla’s attractive stock price was what inspired him.
“Mainly, the attractive Tesla stock price is what drove me,” DeBolt detailed. “It was just too cheap to ignore. Tesla’s stock price had dropped 76 percent from an all-time high of $415 to $101 in a little over a year. During this period, Tesla grew revenue by 51 percent, doubled its net income, rolled out FSD to tens of thousands of people, and began ramping up Megapack production at Lathrop.”
The developments Tesla made over the past year were too good to ignore for DeBolt, even as some speculated that CEO Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter had caused the spiraling of the stock price.
“Many Tesla investors blamed Elon’s behavior for having a role in the drop, but I was trying to find a way to get cash to buy more shares. Selling my house was the obvious answer,” DeBolt said. I didn’t wait to receive the proceeds from my house sale and used a margin loan to accumulate 9,500 Tesla shares before earnings, resulting in a $400,000 gain two days after Tesla earnings on those shares alone. I currently hold 48,000 Tesla shares.”
His investments enabled him to retire from his day job as a software engineer on January 7th, 2021, at the age of 39.
DeBolt’s journey with Tesla shares began long before that. DeBolt has supported Tesla since he saw the Roadster in 2009 and the early Model S prototype at the San Mateo Maker Faire.
“I ordered a Model S in 2011 and took delivery in 2013. I purchased thousands of shares for about $2 a share after seeing the Fremont factory and driving my Model S for the first time,” DeBolt said. “I continued buying shares when nobody wanted the stock. It was obvious to me that Tesla was going to disrupt the entire automotive and oil industries back then because EVs are fundamentally superior to gas vehicles in every way, and there were no serious competitors to Tesla back then. This is true today as well.”
After selling his home, DeBolt rented a new place near the beach in Los Angeles, California.
Today I’m retiring from the corporate world at age 39.
Not selling any shares for the foreseeable future. $TSLA pic.twitter.com/wCDZJlPdoX
— Jason DeBolt ⚡️ (@jasondebolt) January 7, 2021
“There’s a bit more freedom. The last two years of retirement have been amazing. Still, I’m starting to look for something to build and do with my time, so I’m exploring areas such as machine learning, finance, and philosophy in addition to my ongoing Tesla research. My life is pretty dope, and I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing. I try to stay physically fit. I’m quite fortunate.”
Disclosure: Johnna is a $TSLA shareholder and believes in Tesla’s mission.
Your feedback is welcome. If you have any comments or concerns or see a typo, you can email me at johnna@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter at @JohnnaCrider1.
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Investor's Corner
Tesla gets tip of the hat from major Wall Street firm on self-driving prowess
“Tesla is at the forefront of autonomous driving, supported by a camera-only approach that is technically harder but much cheaper than the multi-sensor systems widely used in the industry. This strategy should allow Tesla to scale more profitably compared to Robotaxi competitors, helped by a growing data engine from its existing fleet,” BoA wrote.
Tesla received a tip of the hat from major Wall Street firm Bank of America on Wednesday, as it reinitiated coverage on Tesla shares with a bullish stance that comes with a ‘Buy’ rating and a $460 price target.
In a new note that marks a sharp reversal from its neutral position earlier in 2025, the bank declared Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology the “leading consumer autonomy solution.”
Analysts highlighted Tesla’s camera-only architecture, known as Tesla Vision, as a strategic masterstroke. While technically more challenging than the multi-sensor setups favored by rivals, the vision-based approach is dramatically cheaper to produce and maintain.
This cost edge, combined with Tesla’s rapidly expanding real-world data engine, positions the company to scale robotaxis far more profitably than competitors, BofA argues in the new note:
“Tesla is at the forefront of autonomous driving, supported by a camera-only approach that is technically harder but much cheaper than the multi-sensor systems widely used in the industry. This strategy should allow Tesla to scale more profitably compared to Robotaxi competitors, helped by a growing data engine from its existing fleet.”
The bank now attributes roughly 52% of Tesla’s total valuation to its Robotaxi ambitions. It also flagged meaningful upside from the Optimus humanoid robot program and the fast-growing energy storage business, suggesting the auto segment’s recent headwinds, including expired incentives, are being eclipsed by these higher-margin opportunities.
Tesla’s own data underscores exactly why Wall Street is waking up to FSD’s potential. According to Tesla’s official safety reporting page, the FSD Supervised fleet has now surpassed 8.4 billion cumulative miles driven.
Tesla FSD (Supervised) fleet passes 8.4 billion cumulative miles
That total ballooned from just 6 million miles in 2021 to 80 million in 2022, 670 million in 2023, 2.25 billion in 2024, and a staggering 4.25 billion in 2025 alone. In the first 50 days of 2026, owners added another 1 billion miles — averaging more than 20 million miles per day.
This avalanche of real-world, camera-captured footage, much of it on complex city streets, gives Tesla an unmatched training dataset. Every mile feeds its neural networks, accelerating improvement cycles that lidar-dependent rivals simply cannot match at scale.
Tesla owners themselves will tell you the suite gets better with every release, bringing new features and improvements to its self-driving project.
The $460 target implies roughly 15 percent upside from recent trading levels around $400. While regulatory and safety hurdles remain, BofA’s endorsement signals growing institutional conviction that Tesla’s data advantage is not hype; it’s a tangible moat already delivering billions of miles of proof.
Elon Musk
SpaceX IPO could push Elon Musk’s net worth past $1 trillion: Polymarket
The estimates were shared by the official Polymarket Money account on social media platform X.
Recent projections have outlined how a potential $1.75 trillion SpaceX IPO could generate historic returns for early investors. The projections suggest the offering would not only become the largest IPO in history but could also result in unprecedented windfalls for some of the company’s key investors.
The estimates were shared by the official Polymarket Money account on social media platform X.
As noted in a Polymarket Money analysis, Elon Musk invested $100 million into SpaceX in 2002 and currently owns approximately 42% of the company. At a $1.75 trillion valuation following SpaceX’s potential $1.75 trillion IPO, that stake would be worth roughly $735 billion.
Such a figure would dramatically expand Musk’s net worth. When combined with his holdings in Tesla Inc. and other ventures, a public debut at that level could position him as the world’s first trillionaire, depending on market conditions at the time of listing.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index currently lists Elon Musk with a net worth of $666 billion, though a notable portion of this is tied to his TSLA stock. Tesla currently holds a market cap of $1.51 trillion, and Elon Musk’s currently holds about 13% to 15% of the company’s outstanding common stock.
Founders Fund, co-founded by Peter Thiel, invested $20 million in SpaceX in 2008. Polymarket Money estimates the firm owns between 1.5% and 3% of the private space company. At a $1.75 trillion valuation, that range would translate to approximately $26.25 billion to $52.5 billion in value.
That return would represent one of the most significant venture capital outcomes in modern Silicon Valley history, with a growth of 131,150% to 262,400%.
Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, invested $900 million into SpaceX in 2015 and is estimated to hold between 6% and 7% of the private space firm. At the projected IPO valuation, that stake could be worth between $105 billion and $122.5 billion. That’s a growth of 11,566% to 14,455%.
Other major backers highlighted in the post include Fidelity Investments, Baillie Gifford, Valor Equity Partners, Bank of America, and Andreessen Horowitz, each potentially sitting on multibillion-dollar gains.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk hints Tesla investors will be rewarded heavily
“Hold onto your Tesla stock. It’s going to be worth a lot, I think. That’s my bet,” Musk said.
Elon Musk recently hinted that he believes Tesla investors will be rewarded heavily if they continue to hold onto their shares, and he reiterated that in a new interview that the company released on its social accounts this week.
Musk is one of the most successful CEOs in the modern era and has mammothed competitors on the Forbes Net Worth List over the past year as his holdings in his various companies have continued to swell.
Tesla investors, especially those who have been holding shares for several years, have also felt substantial gains in their portfolios. Over the past five years, the stock is up over 78 percent. Since February 2019, nearly seven years ago to the day, the stock is up over 1,800 percent.
Musk said in the interview:
“Hold onto your Tesla stock. It’s going to be worth a lot, I think. That’s my bet.”
Elon Musk in new interview: “Hold on to your $TSLA stock. It’s going to be worth a lot, I think. That’s my bet.” pic.twitter.com/cucirBuhq0
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) February 26, 2026
It’s no secret Musk has been extremely bullish on his own companies, but Tesla in particular, because it is publicly traded.
However, the company has so many amazing projects that have an opportunity to revolutionize their respective industries. There is certainly a path to major growth on Wall Street for Tesla through its various future projects, including Optimus, Cybercab, Semi, and Unsupervised FSD.
- Optimus (Tesla’s humanoid robot): Musk has discussed its potential for tasks like childcare, walking dogs, or assisting elderly parents, positioning it as a massive long-term driver of company value.
- Cybercab (Tesla’s robotaxi/autonomous ride-hailing vehicle): a fully autonomous vehicle geared specifically for Tesla’s ride-sharing ambitions.
- Semi (Tesla’s electric truck, with mentions of expansion, like in Europe): brings Tesla into the commercial logistics sector.
- Unsupervised FSD (Full Self-Driving software achieving full autonomy without human supervision): turns every Tesla owner’s vehicle into a fully-autonomous vehicle upon release
These projects specifically are some of the highest-growth pillars Tesla has ever attempted to develop, especially in Musk’s eyes, as he has said Optimus will be the best-selling product of all-time.
Many analysts agree, but the bullish ones, like Cathie Wood of ARK Invest, are perhaps the one who believes Tesla has incredible potential on Wall Street, predicting a $2,600 price target for 2030, but this is not even including Optimus.
She told Bloomberg last March that she believes that the project will present a potential additive if Tesla can scale faster than anticipated.