Longtime investor Ron Baron said he’s standing by his growth darlings, unfazed by the volatility in the stock market, especially in the tech sector. “I’m not really worried about the stock market,” Baron said on CNBC’s ” Squawk Box ” Tuesday. “I don’t worry about the market. I don’t worry about the economy.” Baron’s mutual fund has been one of the biggest winners over the long term thanks to the exponential growth in his tech picks like Tesla . The Baron Partners Fund (BPTIX) , with $5.7 billion in assets under management, has notched a five-year total return of 26.5% on an annualized basis and a 10-year return of 20.9%, making it the top-performing U.S. equity fund over the long term, according to Morningstar. The veteran investor said he’s seeing historically high demand for Tesla’s vehicles, predicting the stock to skyrocket in the coming years. Elon Musk’s Tesla has a 30% portfolio weighting in Baron’s fund, the biggest holding in the portfolio. “Demand picks up so much, it’s unprecedented demand for his cars right now. We started investing in his company in 2014, and they were doing 31,000 cars a year … he thinks 20 million cars by 2030. I’m thinking $1,500 a share by 2030,” Baron said. Baron called Tesla “the safest car ever built in the world,” and he believes that producing a lower-cost model will make the company worth seven to 10 times more in the future. The 79-year-old investor said he has high conviction in Musk’s space company Space X. Last year, he revealed that this biggest purchases of 2022 included $100 million worth of SpaceX private investments. “It used to cost you $100 million to get to space, $200 million more for a satellite. For us to get to space now, it costs … we can use a rocket over and over and over again … $20 million, it’s about to cost us $6 million. The cost to get to space is going to be nothing,” Baron said. He added that satellite as the backbone for the internet is an investing opportunity worth a trillion and a half dollars. Correction: Baron’s Tesla price target is $1,500. An earlier version misstated the figure.
