Jason DeBolt managed to accumulate several million dollars in shares of Tesla, the electric car company that catapulted the tech mogul.
Between 2020 and early 2021, Tesla’s stock took a big leap. The shares of the company that grew thanks to the impetus of Elon Musk increased by more than 950%.
This not only generated immense profits for the South African magnate, but also for several people who bet on this electric vehicle development company. Among them, the case of Jason DeBolt stands out, an engineer who managed to retire at the age of 39 thanks to accumulating almost 12 million dollars in Tesla shares.
DeBolt, who worked at technology firms such as Google and Amazon, started buying Tesla shares in 2013, when very few people believed in the future of this company, which had been founded in 2003 in Silicon Valley. In an interview with Ramp Capital LLC in 2021, he recalled that he made his first major acquisition of 2,500 shares when they were priced at around $7.50 each. “That initial purchase cost me $19,000 and is now worth about $2.2 million,” he said. Over time, he accumulated 14,850 shares.
The ups and downs of Jason DeBolt’s investment in Tesla
DeBolt’s journey as a Tesla investor was full of ups and downs. On September 8, 2020, Tesla’s shares fell 21%. That day, he lost $1.3 million in his portfolio. “I think my head would explode if I saw a day of -10%,” one user wrote to him. DeBolt then replied: “How about -20%? Don’t worry.” In the post, he shared a screenshot showing a loss of 21.03%, representing $1,308,433.
In the interview with Ramp Capital LLC, he said that he also suffered margin calls in 2018, which forced him to sell part of his positions to cover debts. As he explained, he was forced to part with nearly 10,000 shares, many of them borrowed, and he acknowledged that he almost lost everything: “It was an extremely stressful period in my life.”
Despite these obstacles, DeBolt held on to a large number of shares which, over the months, recovered and surpassed any previous falls. By the beginning of 2021, the total value of his shares was close to $12 million, which led him to make the decision to retire.
Jason DeBolt retired at the age of 39 thanks to the profits he made from Tesla shares.
“Today I am retiring from the corporate world at the age of 39. I will not be selling any shares in the near future,” he posted on Twitter on January 7, 2021, along with an image showing a daily profit of $904,216 (8.04%) and a portfolio worth $11,944,889.
From the outset, several experts had warned him that it was very risky for his assets to be invested in a single company. “I understand why an advisor would think that. It would be very irresponsible to recommend that a client have 100% of their portfolio in a single stock,” he acknowledged. However, he maintained his confidence in Tesla and time proved him right.
Meanwhile, he does not plan to sell the shares in the near future. His idea, as he explained on X (formerly Twitter) to various users who asked him, is to finance his life with loans based on his shares, taking advantage of interest rates of less than 1% and maintaining a wide margin to avoid new margin calls. He believes that Tesla could trade at between $20,000 and $30,000 per share by 2030, provided it achieves its battery production plans and successfully develops its robotaxi service.
