| During the thirteen years that Peter Lynch was the manager of the Fidelity Magellan Fund, until his retirement in 1990, Magellan was the top-ranked general equity mutual fund. An investment of $1,000 in Magellan in 1977 was worth $28,000 in 1990. Time called Lynch the nations's "#1 money manager."
In his best-selling first book, One Up on Wall Street, Lynch revealed the philosophy that guided him, and which he believes every investor can profit from: invest in what you know. More than 600,000 investors have bought that book, making it one of the most successful books ever written about the stock market. It has been translated into six languages.
Now Peter Lynch shows investors how he puts his investing philosophy and techniques into action as he takes readers step-by-step through the process of selecting stocks that he recommended at the 1992 Barron's Roundtable. (And he describes how he followed these companies through most of the year to see how their stories unfolded and tells us whether, at the end of nine months, he recommended the reader buy, sell, or hold the stocks.)
Lynch also examines his years at the Magellan Fund, analyzing the reasons why he outperformed all other fund managers. He discloses that it was a small number of major success stories ("10-baggers") that were the principal reason for the fund's superior record. He draws a lesson for the average investor: there are good companies looking for investors, and it takes only one or two good companies a decade to turn a portfolio from an average performer into a winner.
Finally, in what may be the most valuable section in the book, Lynch offers advice on devising a mutual-fund portfolio of stocks, not bonds, and he recommends a mix of growth funds, value funds, and blue-chip funds. He explains how to adjust new investments among these different types of funds.
Beating the Street also tells the wonderful story of a group of seventh graders who, following Lynch's advice to invest in what they knew, outperformed nearly every fund manager on Wall Street.
Beating the Street is destined to join One Up on Wall Street as an investment classic.
|