Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary Now Bullish on Tesla, Convinced by Son

‘Shark Tank’ star and co-founder of the O’Shares ETFs, Kevin O’Leary, used to be a Tesla bear, but has now become bullish on the electric automaker, according to his recent interview with Benzinga CEO Jason Raznick.

O’Leary says he nearly shorted Tesla, at a time when shares were falling due to an analyst downgrade. But then he had a change of heart after learning from his son, who started an internship in September 2019 at Tesla.

While viewing Tesla only as a car company, O’Leary’s son said to view Elon Musk’s company as a technology company that had “tons of collected data”. His son convinced him to buy shares of Tesla, which has resulted in decent gains for O’Leary.

“I did, I said maybe the kid’s right….and he was. So was Cathie [Wood]”, added O’Leary.

O’Leary’s son, Trevor, currently now works at Tesla as an Electrical Test Engineer, a position he started in January of this year, according to his LinkedIn.

The interview section about Tesla starts at about the 22-minute mark below:

O’Leary also detailed he only holds a max 5% allocation of any stock in his portfolio and also 20% of any particular sector. If Tesla shares increase in price beyond 5%, he sells shares, noting it was a strategy learned from his mother. “You listen to your mother, what do you do? She was absolutely right,” added O’Leary.