Hey Prof, what a great article - thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm also psyched that you so openly call out your misses, especially on Tesla. If I can put in my 2 cents on the lesson you are taking away, I'd like to reframe it just a tad...

Valuation, stock price, is a noisy, delayed signal of the quality of the business. The quality of the business is a function of many inputs but I think the top factors include product (as you mentioned), strategy, and execution. Great product without great strategy or great execution will never see the light of day or die a quick death, destroyed by competition, obsolescence, or incompetence. Investors can see great product easily, but have no real insight into strategy or execution, as those are locked in board rooms and management war rooms... so stock prices can only look in retrospect - therefore the noisy and time-delayed signal of a company's quality.

That is why most of us get companies (much less stock price) wrong. It's a crap shoot, and no one has particular insights which consistently outweight the variability from noise and ignorance.

Instead of focusing on stock price, we need to focus almost exclusively on product, and whatever we can of management quality (and their outputs for strategy and execution).

You have better insights than most of us, which we value, and we appreciate that you share them on forums like this. But you getting wrong such important stories like Tesla points out the limitations of even your level of insight... and keeps us all humble!

And we love ya duuuude!

;)

Best, S.D.