One Visionary We’ll Never Bet Against

BY ANDY SWAN, FOUNDER, LIKEFOLIO

Henry Ford’s Model T turned the impossible into the inevitable – reshaping how America moved by making automobiles accessible to the middle class.

A century later, Elon Musk is doing much the same with Tesla (TSLA): Pushing electric vehicles (EVs) into the mainstream, driving autonomy forward, and staking billions on a future most still doubt.

Critics have circled like vultures at every stage, but history tells us one thing: Betting against visionary leaders is a losing game.

Today, I’ll show you why. Because while it may be too late to invest in Henry Ford’s innovation, LikeFolio’s consumer-facing data is flashing green for TSLA – and the opportunity won’t last forever…

“If I Had Asked People What They Wanted, They Would Have Said Faster Horses"

In 1908, the United States moved at the speed of a horse. The clatter of hooves echoed through every city, wagons jammed the roads, and farmers rose each morning to hitch teams of draft animals to their plows. Railroads handled long-distance travel, but outside the reach of a station, most people rarely ventured far from home.

The rhythm of work and commerce bent entirely to the limitations of animal power.

The automobiles that did exist cost more than the average family earned in a year: $2,000 to $3,000 a pop, which in today’s money, would be north of $70,000.

Cars were status symbols for the wealthy… out of reach for the American middle class.

The idea that a car could ever replace the horse was unimaginable, even laughable.

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But where others saw folly, Henry Ford saw opportunity.

Ford’s vision was about making cars accessible to ordinary families. Like a true innovator, he found a method for driving production costs down until his vision was achieved.

Henry Ford (Source: Ford)

Ford introduced the Model T in October 1908 at less than half the cost of many competitors – just $850 – then spent the next years slashing costs further by refining his greatest innovation: the moving assembly line.

By streamlining production and standardizing parts, Ford turned a twelve-hour job into a less-than-two-hour task and slashed the cost of his Model T from $850 to under $300 in just a few years’ time.

If Ford had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. Instead, he gave them something better.

By 1918, half of all cars in the United States were Fords.

Roads were paved, new businesses sprouted to service the machines, and families began to think about travel in ways that had once been unimaginable.

Ford’s achievement wasn’t responding to consumer demand. It was creating an entirely new demand.

True visionaries build the future and bring the world along with them. Ford was ahead of his time envisioning cars could replace horses as the default transportation in America.

People doubted him, even laughed at the idea. It didn’t matter. Ford had a vision – and the means to execute it. His legacy lives on a century later in Ford Motor Co. (F).

And love him or hate him, there’s no better example of a modern-day visionary than Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

“When Something Is Important Enough, You Do It Even if the Odds Are Not in Your Favor” – Elon Musk

A decade ago, if you told people cars would one day drive themselves, they would have laughed. Now, there is a very real possibility that children born today may never need to learn how to drive at all.

From the start, Musk’s vision was about more than building expensive cars for a niche audience. Like Ford, he wanted to take his company’s innovation mainstream.

Tesla’s Model S proved an electric vehicle (EV) could be powerful and sleek, capable of competing with gas cars on performance. The Model 3 pushed the idea further, offering a car designed to be affordable for millions. But as Musk soon learned, scaling the Model 3 was the real challenge. Tesla faced production delays, cash shortages, and critics circling like vultures.

In 2010, The New York Times dismissed Tesla as an unproven carmaker that has never built anything at scale and may never survive.

In 2017, short seller Jim Chanos declared the company was “headed for a brick wall.”

These mainstream voices captured the widespread belief that Tesla was on the brink of collapse.

We saw things differently. In April 2019, TSLA stock was beaten down as the hate piled up. But LikeFolio’s consumer data contradicted that narrative. Our Data Engine showed more and more people were talking about spending real money on Teslas. Its share price was in the gutter (down 20% year to date), but demand was surging – up and to the right. My exact words on the TD Ameritrade network: “This is a pretty compelling time to look at Tesla.”

Rather than give up, Tesla forced the industry to respond. And rather than listen to the naysayers, we followed the consumer.

By 2021, the Model 3 became the world’s best-selling EV (only to later be surpassed by the Model Y). Charging stations spread across continents, and automakers that once mocked the company scrambled to follow its lead.

Source: Electrek

TSLA shareholders who stuck to their guns reaped life-changing profits over those two years. Between our early bullish call in April 2019, and when the Model 3 achieved best-seller status, the stock soared an incredible +1,400%.

Elon Musk’s detractors love to bet against him and his lofty goals for Tesla, turning each new ambition into a headline about imminent failure. But time and again, Musk has defied his critics and turned skeptics into reluctant admirers.

His next “impossible vision” was that Teslas would eventually drive themselves using cameras and software, without the expensive lidar and mapping systems other companies relied on.

Once again, the backlash was swift: Lawyers argued in court that Tesla was “selling a product that doesn’t exist.” Regulators launched investigations, newspapers ran exposés, and skeptics warned that Musk was overpromising once again.

So what did Musk do? He deployed Full Self-Driving (FSD) software to millions of cars, enabling Tesla to gather more driving data than any competitor. And what did LikeFolio do? We doubled down on our bullish TSLA call – and once again, the stock powered higher.

Waymo (GOOGL) CEO John Krafcik declared Musk had “failed utterly and completely” at autonomy. Meanwhile, Tesla’s existing fleet of FSD-equipped EVs was logging ~40x more miles of real-world driving data per day.

Source: ARK Invest

The media focused on edge-case errors around Tesla’s Robotaxi rollout. Meanwhile, Musk was already planning his next move – launching a robotaxi app that delivered explosive first-day downloads.

Source: ARK Invest

The market continues to underestimate Tesla’s Optimus robot as nothing but a side gig. Meanwhile, Musk advances his lead in a humanoid robot market that Goldman Sachs projects could reach $38 billion by 2035.

Source: Goldman Sachs

A Billion-Dollar Vote of Confidence

Musk has been doubted at every turn.

He has been called reckless, overhyped, and doomed. But the record is clear. Each time the world predicted Tesla’s failure, the company expanded its lead – and shareholders were rewarded.

If you’re still sitting on the sidelines, don’t worry: You haven’t missed out on the profit opportunity ahead.

TSLA stock already trades near all-time highs, yet Musk is doubling down. Just this week, he bought a huge chunk of Tesla shares on the open market for the first time since 2020.

When a visionary leader commits $1 billion of his own dollars, it confirms belief in what comes next. Musk is making clear that the next stage of Tesla’s evolution is close at hand, and it’s mass adoption of autonomy layered on top of EV leadership.

LikeFolio data crystallizes the opportunity in the here and now.

Tesla digital demand is on the rise. Web visits are currently up 7% year over year as consumers rush to take advantage of tax credits before they expire on Sept. 30. While the end of federal EV tax credits could pose a risk, this is exactly the kind of pull-forward effect we wanted to see – a clear sign of durable consumer demand feeding directly into near-term sales.

Musk once said, “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”

Whether critics accept it or not, Musk has moved autonomy from science fiction into a live commercial race. Mass-market interest in autonomy is growing. Main Street demand for Tesla is on the rise. Musk believes Optimus could account for ~80% of Tesla’s future value.

And LikeFolio’s Social Heat Score confirms the opportunity. By distilling millions of individual consumer datapoints into a single signal, LikeFolio places TSLA firmly in the buy zone, with a Social Heat Score of 72.6.

Bottom line: We haven’t bet against Musk yet. And we aren’t going to any time soon. Wise investors know, when a visionary leader speaks, it’s best to listen.

To learn more about the Social Heat Score, and how you can use TradeSmith to access these scores on hundreds of stocks we cover – visionary or otherwise – go here now.

One Visionary We’ll Never Bet Against