How Much the Average Tesla Investor Has Gained Since 2020 (If They Didn’t Sell)
Written by
Vance Cariaga
Edited by
Jenna Klaverweiden
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Like most of Wall Street, Tesla (TSLA) has seen its stock price rally in a big way since cratering earlier this year. Shares of the Elon Musk-led electric vehicle (EV) maker recently hit new 2025 highs — despite the company’s various operational issues.
If you had bought Tesla’s stock at the beginning of 2025, you’d have a double-digit gain for the year. But if you had bought it at the beginning of the decade, your investment would have ballooned by over 1,400% — as long as you didn’t sell.
How much has the average Tesla investor gained since 2020? Keep reading to learn more.
Also see five things that have made Tesla stock jump over the years.
Massive Returns
Here’s a quick look at what Tesla’s stock price has done since the beginning of 2020, according to Yahoo Finance. We are using the closing price for December 2019 as a starting point, since that would have represented the opening price on the first day of trading in 2020.
- Closing price December 2019: $27.89 per share
- Closing price Nov. 12, 2025: $430.60
- Average return: 1,444%
One thing to keep in mind is that the December 2019 price has been adjusted to account for a couple of stock splits since the beginning of 2020 — a 5-for-1 split in August 2020 and a 3-for-1 split two years later. The actual stock price back then would have been different.
As the above numbers show, you would have enjoyed a gain of over 1,400% since 2020 if you kept your Tesla shares. That compares with a gain of about 160% by the tech-heavy Nasdaq over the same time frame. Because Tesla does not yet pay a dividend, your stock gain would reflect your actual gain.
To break things down further, suppose you initially invested $1,000 in Tesla at the beginning of 2020. At $27.89 a share, you would have received 36 shares. Those 36 shares would have been worth over $15,500 at the Nov. 12 at market close — a massive return on a $1,000 investment.
What If You Sold?
Here’s what your return would have been if you had sold your stock on a couple of key dates:
- All-time high: Tesla’s stock hit an all-time closing high of $479.86 on Dec. 17, 2024. If you had sold your shares at that point, your original 2020 investment of $1,000 would have been worth over $17,000.
- 2025 low: Tesla shares fell to a 2025 closing low of $221.86 on April 8. If you had sold your stock then, your 2020 investment would have been worth almost $8,000 — which means your return has almost doubled since then.
Why Does Tesla Keep Rising?
Tesla’s upward trajectory might be hard to understand if you base things on just the company’s financial performance. In recent quarters, it has experienced sluggish revenue growth, declining earnings and issues with its self-driving technology.
Meanwhile, analysts continue to lower their expectations for Tesla.
Since the beginning of this year, the consensus 2025 Tesla profit forecast has fallen by nearly half, Investor’s Business Daily reported. The consensus 2026 earnings estimate has seen a similar dip. A recent consensus estimate had Tesla earning $1.68 a share in 2025, which represents a 30% dip from the prior year.
So why does Tesla’s stock keep pushing higher? Most of it has to do with the company’s forays into artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and other technologies that offer more growth potential than EVs, experts say.
“[A lot] depends on whether you think Tesla is a car company, a tech company or something else entirely,” said Edward Corona, founder of The Options Oracle AI Trade Manager.
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