The chart below says it all….

Since the start of new year upto today, TSLA stock has doubled where as PVAC stock has halved. I am long PVAC and for a short while in 2020, I was short TSLA. I could not be more wrong! These are testing times for a contrarian investors like myself and I have to remind myself, I am in it for the long haul and some times this means, you will look stupid!

For some solace, I am reminded of an interview that Howard Marks did with Shane Parish on the Knowledge Project Podcast, where in he provides great insights into traits of successful investor, one of them being, the willingness to look stupid.

Below is a brief except from his interview on the question: How important is that ability to look stupid in terms of out-performance?

It’s essential. It is one of the most essential ingredients and again I wrote a memo back in ’06, I think it was. I wrote one called, ‘Dare To Be Great‘, and I said in order to be great you have to dare to be great and then in ’14 I updated it to ‘Dare To Be Great II‘, and I said everybody dares to be great. The question is not the dare to be right, the question is do you dare to be different. Because clearly… you have to diverge from the pack is required if you’re going to be superior in anything and number two, do you dare to be wrong. Number three – do you dare to look wrong because even things which are gonna be right in the long run maybe look wrong in the short run, so you have to be willing to live with all those three things. Different, wrong, and looking wrong in order to be able to take the risk required and engage in the idiosyncratic behavior required for success.

Want to end the post with some data on fundamentals of the two companies at their current valuations.