About Peter Lynch
Peter Lynch is one of the most successful and well-known investors of all time. Lynch is the legendary former manager of the Magellan Fund at the major investment brokerage Fidelity. He took over the fund in 1977 at age 33 and ran it for 13 years.
As the manager of the Magellan Fund at Fidelity Investments between 1977 and 1990, Lynch averaged a 29.2% annual return, consistently more than double the S&P 500 stock market index and making it the best-performing mutual fund in the world. During his 13-year tenure, assets under management increased from US$18 million to $14 billion.
Lynch developed an interest in the stock market through conversations he overheard while working as a caddy at an upscale golf club when he was 11. During Lynch’s time as a sophomore at Boston College, he used his savings to buy 100 shares of Flying Tiger Airlines at $8 per share. The stock would later rise to $80 per share, profits from which helped pay for his education.
His hailed investment book, One Up on Wall Street, is in my reading recommendation.
The following are the most badass quotes the investment genius has spoken.
1) I subscribe to the crusty notion that sooner or later earnings make or break an investment in equity. What the stock price does today, tomorrow, or next week is only a distraction.
2) This is investing, where the smart money isn’t so smart, and the dumb money isn’t really as dumb as it thinks. Dumb money is only dumb when it listens to the smart money.
3) Ultimately it is not the stock market nor even the companies themselves that determine an investor’s fate. It is the investor.
4) Actually Wall Street thinks just as the Greeks did. The early Greeks used to sit around for days and debate how many teeth a horse has. They thought they could figure it out by just sitting there, instead of checking the horse. A lot of investors sit around and debate whether a stock is going up, as if the financial muse will give them the answer, instead of checking the company.
5) Buy the right stocks at the wrong price at the wrong time and you’ll suffer great losses.
6) In stud poker and on Wall Street, miracles happen just often enough to keep the losers losing.
7) Only invest what you could afford to lose without that loss having any effect on your daily life in the foreseeable future.
8) The true geniuses, it seems to me, get too enamored of theoretical cogitations and are forever betrayed by the actual behavior of stocks, which is more simple-minded than they can imagine.
9) No matter how we arrive at the latest financial conclusion, we always seem to be preparing ourselves for the last thing that’s happened, as opposed to what’s going to happen next. This “penultimate preparedness” is our way of making up for the fact that we didn’t see the last thing coming along in the first place.
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