Peter Lynch was born in 1944 in the USA, just before the end of the Second World War. He is most well-known for his management roles and especially the fund management role at Fidelity Investments Inc.
His father died when he was seven so at the age of 11 he got his first job at caddying golf to help his mother to pay the bills. This eventually gained him a contact to an internship at Fidelity after graduating from college.
After serving two years in the military he went on to finish his MBA studies in 1968 at the University of Pennsylvania. He returned to work for Fidelity Investments as an investment analyst, eventually working himself up to the firm’s director of research. Thereafter Lynch was named manager of the (then little known) “Fidelity Magellan Fund” in 1977 which he continued to manage until his retirement in 1990. During his management tenure, the fund’s assets grew from $20 million to $14 billion while he outperformed the S&P 500 Index benchmark in 11 of those 13 years, achieving an annual average return of 29% – making it one of the best performing mutual funds in the world.
His most famous investment principle is simply, “Invest in what you know”. He had a chameleon-like investment style in that he adapted to whatever investment style worked at the time. He worked around the clock, talking with company executives, other investment managers, industry experts and analysts. Always keeping an eye out for opportunities, he found many investment opportunities when not in his office, during everyday life while out with his family, driving around or making a purchase at the mall. “If you stay half-alert, you can pick the spectacular performers right from your place of business or out of the neighbourhood shopping mall, and long before Wall Street discovers them.”
He dedicated himself to a high level of due diligence and company research. “Investing without research is like playing stud poker and never looking at the cards.” He disregarded market noise and concentrated on a company’s fundamentals rather, using a bottom-up approach. “Go for a business that any idiot can run – because sooner or later, any idiot is probably going to run it.” He believed it futile to predict the economy and interest rates. “If you spend more than 13 minutes analysing economic and market forecasts, you’ve wasted 10 minutes.”
He avoided the “long shots” rather investing for the long run and paid little attention to short-term market fluctuations. “Absent a lot of surprises, stocks are relatively predictable over twenty years. As to whether they’re going to be higher or lower in two to three years, you might as well flip a coin to decide.”
Over the course of his life he is widely written and quoted. He’s known for coining the phrase “ten bagger” which refers to an investment which is worth ten times its original purchase price.
Perhaps his most famous book you might find on any investor’s bookshelf is “One up on Wall Street” (1989). This book as well as “Beating the Street” (1993) and “Learn to earn” (1996) are widely considered to be mandatory reading for any investor.
Following retirement, he continues to work part-time as vice chairman of Fidelity Management & Research Co., spending most of his time mentoring young analysts. He has also been an active participant in a variety of philanthropic endeavours (which he sees as social investment).