Peter Lynch
Peter Lynch
Peter Lynchis an American businessman and stock investor. As the manager of the Magellan Fund at Fidelity Investments between 1977 and 1990, Lynch averaged a 29.2% annual return, consistently more than doubling the S&P 500 market index and making it the best performing mutual fund in the world. During his tenure, assets under management increased from $18 million to $14 billion. He also co-authored a number of books and papers on investing and coined a number of well known mantras...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth19 January 1944
CountryUnited States of America
I can't recall ever once having seen the name of a market timer on Forbes' annual list of the richest people in the world. If it were truly possible to predict corrections, you'd think somebody would have made billions by doing it.
I think you have to learn that there's a company behind every stock, and that there's only one real reason why stocks go up. Companies go from doing poorly to doing well or small companies grow to large companies.
If you can't find any companies that you think are attractive, put your money in the bank until you discover some.
Logic is the subject that has helped me most in picking stocks, if only because it taught me to identify the peculiar illogic of Wall Street. 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 just by 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.
Well, I think the secret is if you have a lot of stocks, some will do mediocre, some will do okay, and if one of two of 'em go up big time, you produce a fabulous result. And I think that's the promise to some people.
There is always something to worry about. Avoid weekend thinking and ignoring the latest dire predictions of the newscasters. Sell a stock because the company's fundamentals deteriorate, not because the sky is falling.
Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Suicide is a choice and I think if we work with that with kids, we'll get somewhere.
The stock market really isn't a gamble, as long as you pick good companies that you think will do well, and not just because of the stock price.
I spend about 15 minutes a year on economic analysis. The way you lose money in the stock market is to start off with an economic picture. I also spend 15 minutes a year on where the stock market is going.
People have all this data and they go through it and make up their minds in four seconds, ... We're forcing people to do the wrong things. They look at what's hot. They spend so much time trying to figure out if the market is going up. That's so unimportant. It's about earnings. They need to follow the earnings.
I think Coca-Cola needs a rest. Some phases of the market, some of the big stocks are in that category.
People want to know 'what is my cost.' Period.
People were writing off California a couple of years ago, now they have a massive surplus. Canada is running its first surplus in 20 years and Mexico is doing well. Wouldn't you have been shocked if someone told you that the U.S. would have been running a surplus?
We're not budgeting for it to do that. We think that it is possible that into our coffers you could probably push 8 or 10 million (euros) EBITDA ...but I think it's probably not the right thing to do in this period of consolidation.