Austin Dillon, the grandson of Richard Childress (he races for Richard Childress Racing), won the 2018 Daytona 500; winning The Great American Race in the #3 Chevrolet (GM) car, 20 years after Dale Earnhardt Jr. broke his career-long draught at the 2.5-mile track. Run in front of a sold-out crowd (101,500 reserved stadium seats), Dillon used a “last-lap, bump and run move that was absolutely Earnhardt-like” to win the 60th edition of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season. Austin follows the market closely and shared some insight on his personal portfolio with JohnWallStreet.
JWS: Do you personally invest in your corporate sponsors?
Dillon: Every sponsor that I have, that is traded (DWDP, GIS), I have stock in. It works well. You can build together. When you are running well, they are doing well. It’s cool how that works.
JWS: You mentioned that you do a little bit of trading for fun. Can you share a few of your holdings?
Dillon: Caterpillar (CAT), I had them as one of our partners for a while; my Grandpa did well on Caterpillar. Builders First Source (BLDR) has been doing well. Nintendo (NTDOY). I was playing Pokeman like crazy when it came out and was like I should get some stock, they’ve been doing well.
Can you give us one trade you’d like to have back?
Dillon: I messed up on Tesla (TSLA), badly. I had it at $44. One of my engineers was like ‘it’s not going anywhere’ and I sold it (currently at $335.49). I had around 200 shares.
Howie Long-Short: While Dillon only references DWDP and GIS (as corporate sponsors he invests in), he owned shares of Cabela’s prior to the its $4 billion acquisition by Bass Pro Shops. Bass Pro Shops remains one of Dillon’s sponsors, but is not publicly traded.
Fan Marino: Dillon returning the famed #3 Chevrolet to Victory Lane was the biggest story line from Sunday’s race, but there were several other noteworthy headlines. Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr. returned a Richard Petty Motorsports car to the Daytona 500; the rookie finished 2nd, the highest ever finish for an African-American driver (and first time an African American has participated in the race since Wendell Scott in 1969). Danica Patrick was also competing in her last NASCAR race. She finished 35th after being involved in a Turn 3 crash on Lap 102. The wreck also ended the day for Chase Elliott, Brad Keselowski and Kevin Harvick.
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