Peter Lynch discusses his successful 13 years of running Fidelity's Magellan mutual fund. After a short professional autobiography, he explains his methodology for selecting stocks and explores a few dozen January 1992 stock picks in detail. Lynch wrote this book in the last days before the ubiquity of personal computers and the Internet's copious and accessible financial information. Still, Lynch offers pithy investment advice (each unfortunately titled with a boldface "Peter's Principle") that transcend the book's early-1990s setting. His enthusiasm should inspire most beginning to intermediate investors for whom this material is recommended. Due to its age, used copies of this book should be widely and cheaply available.

This book is old school, but boy is it a classic. I've always been fascinated with stocks and the stock market but in the late 90s, past the apex of the day trading craze, I decided to set a small amount of money to partake in some of the action. I set up my account, started watching CNBC like a nut, and dove right in. Before doing so, I used Mr. Lynch's book as my guide and the biggest thing I learned is to stay grounded and avoid the mania and manic depression of the market. This book is not for slick, know-it-alls with pretensions of timing the market and making fast money, Vegas style. No, this book is for sober grown-ups who are willing to take a longer and more rational approach.

I think the best lesson the book offers is to stick to investing in companies you know and trust (and buy from). By following that simple advice I've been able to earn very handsome gains. In addition, the primer on how to read a balance sheet is easily worth the price of admission. There's just lots of great information presented that will make you a relatively savvy investor. This book demystifies a lot of the perceived complexity of the market and shows ordinary people how to get in on the action. It's sober and timeless advice you can use even today.

After reading this book, I felt I got everything I set out to gain from this informative book. The content is relative today as it was when it was first written, the change in mindset gained from this book has been quite extraordinary.

After managing the Fidelity Magellan fund for thirteen years, mutual fund guru Peter Lynch retired on May 31, 1990 at the age of forty-six. Since then, Lynch continues to propound his message that the amateur investor has a distinct comparative advantage in stock picking relative to Wall Street professionals. For example, mutual fund managers are restricted to investing no more than 5% of their total assets in any one stock, and they cannot own more that 10% of any one company's stock. These constraints limit their profit, but not for the average investor. Lynch adamantly chants his mantra, "Buy stocks! If this is the only lesson you learn from this book, then writing it will have been worth the trouble" (18).

One major reason for touting stocks is that they have grown by an average of 11% (i.e. 8% capital gain + 3% dividend) per/year over the last seventy-years, despite over forty market corrections. Aside from short-term stock-price fluctuations, Lynch believes that in the long-run there exists a strong correlation between the success of a business and its stock price. Therefore, anyone can successfully invest in stocks provided they use common sense observation, and proven valuation strategies that they recheck every three-months. Lynch recommends the NAIC (National Association of Investors Clubs) to neophyte investors who want to learn how to evaluate a business, and be part of an organization whose methods routinely beat the market averages. Amazingly, 75% of professional mutual fund managers fail to outperform the S&P after fees.

When searching for possible companies to invest in, Lynch visits the Burlington Mall in Massachusetts to see where everyone shops. Lynch says, "The very homogeneity of taste in food and fashion that makes for a dull culture also makes fortunes for owners" (152). When analyzing stocks Lynch looks at several prospective indicators:

Fundamental Analysis:
1) Look at for stocks whose charts show earnings above price. These businesses have value that have yet to be priced-in
2) The P/E ratio shouldn't be greater than the business' earnings growth rate
3) Particularly in retail stocks, look for an increase in same-store sales
4) Best conditions for businesses to grow earnings are in niche or regional markets where there is little competition and much room for expansion
5) Insider buying is a good sign that the business is doing well
6) Look for arbitrage opportunities where a business is selling at a discount relative to its peers despite similar composition and performance
7) When taking a "top-down" approach look at the "affordability index," median home value, and % of mortgage defaults published by the National Association of Home Builders

Technical Analysis:
1) Buy stocks on Mondays, and from October through December when historical prices are lowest

If you are looking for books that will sharpen your skills as an investor put this one on the top of your list along with books about Warren Buffett and Phillip Fisher. Peter Lynch was one of the all time greatest mutual fund managers ever during his time at the Magellen Fund. We are fortunate that he wrote several books in his retirement. This book will give you a good understanding of Mr. Lynch's investment style which include: investing only in companies you understand, use the knowledge you have of your own industry to outperform Wall Street analysts, trips to the mall are great opportunities for research by looking at which stores are the busiest, and keeping your eyes wide open to hot trends around you. Lynch believes in buying stocks at reasonable P/E ratios, and loves to buy if the P/E matches the earnings growth rate of a company. He shys away from companies when the stock price out performs the earnings and the stock becomes over priced. Lynch believes that eventually the stock price will reflect the value of a company, so it is great to get an excellent company for a low stock price.You get many examples of how he picked stocks for his Barron's round table in 1993, this gives excellent insight into how his mind works, Peter Lynch is truly a genius at stock picking for long term investment. You will receive 25 golden rules from Peter Lynch in this book, follow them and you will do very well in the market.

What a great book of explanation. He gives many of his normal habits to us that are away from all the other advise of investors and financial advisors. His whys may sound old fashioned but look at his record and you will be old fashioned also if you could obtain what he did. I will read any and all of his other books now. I only see one listed at this point but will hope to find him writing more. I have been in the Magellian fund since 1986 and his success has proven itself to me personally.

This book is a must-read for anyone interested investing. Peter Lynch ran one of the most successful mutual funds in history, the Fidelity Megellan Fund, which averaged an annual return of 29% during his 13 year tenure. He is also ranked by Wall Street as one of the most successful stock pickers on the planet. In Beating the Streets, Lynch outlines his common-sense approach to stock picking. The approach, labeled as "buy what you know" by Lynch, or investing in your "circle of competence" as referred to by Warren Buffet, is a simple strategy the yields results proven by many successful investors. In his book, Lynch goes through his entire process of stock picking from how he discovers a lead through what numbers he looks at to how he investigates the company behind the stock. I found the book to be an extremely accessible, comprehensive, and practical guide that is written in an entertaining and light-hearted manner. I highly recommend this book to anyone that wasn't born with a fortune in their bank account.

This book is a must-read for anyone interested investing. Peter Lynch ran one of the most successful mutual funds in history, the Fidelity Megellan Fund, which averaged an annual return of 29% during his 13 year tenure. He is also ranked by Wall Street as one of the most successful stock pickers on the planet. In Beating the Streets, Lynch outlines his common-sense approach to stock picking. The approach, labeled as "buy what you know" by Lynch, or investing in your "circle of competence" as referred to by Warren Buffet, is a simple strategy the yields results proven by many successful investors. In his book, Lynch goes through his entire process of stock picking from how he discovers a lead through what numbers he looks at to how he investigates the company behind the stock. I found the book to be an extremely accessible, comprehensive, and practical guide that is written in an entertaining and light-hearted manner. I highly recommend this book to anyone that wasn't born with a fortune in their bank account.

Lynch makes lots of good points. One of them is as a small investor you can buy into thinly traded stocks on the way up, such as APCC in the early days.

Big funds simply can't get enough stock to make it "worthwhile," an interesting point, usually overlooked by the pros in their writing.

if you want to know how to invest you don't need this book!

90% of this book is Peter Lynch story

if you want to know how to invest you don't need this book!

90% of this book is Peter Lynch story

A lot of repeating in this book. Lack of good ideas.

A lot of repeating in this book. Lack of good ideas.

Really got me thinking and was filled with very useful, helpful, informative, but easy and simple to understand tricks. One of my favorites. A+

In Beating The Street, Peter Lynch gives an insider's view for making valuable investments. By tracing his successes as manager of the Fidelity Magellan Fund, Lynch presents an inspiring format to creating a lucrative portfolio in today's volatile market. He gives an in-depth account of possible investment choices, types of bonds, funds, stocks etc, while indicating which investments he recommends. Today, Peter Lynch seems to be basking in the results of his wisely chosen investments. This book provides readers with noteworthy investment advice, so they, too, can "beat the street."

Marina Kushner
Author
The Truth About Caffeine: How Companies That Promote It Deceive Us and What We Can Do about It

I guess what I find funny is that some of the other reviewers say this book does not help. Having read the book I am really quite taken aback.

This is a wonderful book! This is a book written by real investment guru with a strong track record. His advice is solid.

In many ways I found this to be a very surprising book to read. What I found surprising was the degree to which Peter Lynch tries to think independently and look at the big picture. His advice is very practical and very down to earth. He follows his own instincts and does not follow other people's advice. He tries to follow social trends and go to malls and other places - where anyone can go - to get an idea about what product or store is hot and what is not. Then he investigates the financials of that "hot" prospect.

For example if he learns from his wife that a new store like the Gap or similar is suddenly full of shoppers and things are flying off the shelves, he will investigate the financials, cash flow, etc. If the stock is a "buy" he will not sell when it goes up 25%. He will set a price in his mind where he thinks the stock can go, say 200% or 400% higher. Then he will buy and hold until that occurs, holding the stock through volatile fluctuations. And he does that on his own. Once he can accumulate a number of multi-integer growth stocks, then the portfolio tends to take care of itself and small losers are easily written off.

A very good read. He talks about mutual funds and S&P type investments also.

Five stars.

When I first read this book, it really reinforced the concepts of investing.

Peter Lynch isnt exactly a value investor...a growth investor with a small, if at all, bit of value investing is really his style. This book is really for beginners who want a "practical front" for investing. Overall, the book is a must if you are a novice investor. For advance investors though, read quickly.

Great Book. A must for novice investors.

It is a book that you have to read if you want to know how a very succesful make it.

When Peter S. Lynch speaks, wise investors will listen. This book covers the famous fund manager's career at the helm of Fidelity Magellan from 1977 to '90, and post career into '92. It's far more introspective than "One Up On Wall Street" and it was no doubt meant to be for this purpose. For example, there isn't nearly as much fundamental principles for stock picking outlined in this book as the former. My belief is that the reader would do best by reading "One Up On Wall Street" first and follow up with this title, as its the newer of the two, regardless.

Peter's style of writing (with John Rothchild) is no-nonsense and easy to take in. To my knowledge three books have been published by the duo and all three have been entertaining and never dry. The reader can comfortably take in some very important stock-picking principles from one of the greats without feeling intimidated at any point. I think this is a sign of a well written book that covers a topic that isn't child's play (unless you like playing with money).

And although this book doesn't cover nearly as much technical information as the first, it still offers a lot of tasty tidbits for stock pickers. I made plenty of notes while reading "Beating The Street", and I'm confident that I'll be well served by doing so. Peter reiterates many of the guidelines he mentioned in his first best-seller, such as scrutinizing company earnings and the balance sheets, and he gives his wise opinion of picking bargain stocks that have lower P/Es than their growth rates.

Overall, this title definitely deserves four stars, and his first book deserves at least five stars. Lynch and Rothchild have authored several investing books that will stand the test of time. You'll sleep better with your investment decisions by having these valuable classics in your collection.

Peter Lynch's book held me back about 10 years in my investing success. I used to believe things I read in books because a good publisher like Simon and Schuster would publish it. I counted cars in parking lots of companies with due dilligence and questioned managers on how things were selling. I also avoided "reading tealeaves" like drawing trendlines on what I was actually concerned about THE PRICE of the stock! Now I make a living "reading tealeaves" and leave the parking lot duty to those who think counting cars makes the price go up.
My suggestion is to learn basic technical analysis from a book like John murphys Technical Analysis of the financial markets. Start there then go on to learn more advanced TA. I also like Investor's Business Daily-BUT it is very specialized and takes reading several times and probably help from a more advanced user to understand IBD. I also swingtrade - hold stocks for 2-5 days sometimes longer.

J

If you're just starting out in stocks and investing. This is a good book. It tells you to know your stocks, to do your homework when you buy stocks and how to pick good stocks. It gives you some good places to start and it also gives you some history on Peter Lynch.
The experienced investor will probably know most of the things in this book. There are no "secret techniques" or anything in this book. Just plain common sense.

I got the cassettes in good working order, within a short period of time.

Peter Lynch writes well and this book has some classic wisdom that lets you into his mind. One drawback is that Mr. Lynch may sometimes forget just how smart he is and tends to over simplify some aspects of investing analysis that come to him naturally. For example, asking a clerk at a retail store what sells well is a technique Mr. Lynch will use on occasion to evaluate a stock. However, it's key to note that he also has a great deal of resources in the form of advanced technology and research tools, not to mention personal genius.

This book is highly recommended and can be a great tool for a business owner or investor but I'd caution most non-professionals on reading this and thinking they can become the next Peter Lynch with little more than a computer and a brokerage account. Good book, thanks Mr. Lynch.

I have not read Peter Lynch's first book but read this one. It's a great story of how Lynch turned Magellan into the largest mutual fund of that time. Some of the stories of now great companies are also very interesting. The problem is that I bought this book so I could "beat the street". Well if I do it like Peter I will pick up the phone tommorrow on my lunch break and call the CFO of Intel to see how cash flow has been this quarter...or perhaps fly out to California next week to visit the Controller of some company to see if they are complying with SOX. These things are great for the fund managers but not a small investor like myself. Essentially the summary of what I got from this book is: Buy stocks of good companies that analysts are not looking at or that everybody else is selling. A good company will always come back around. It was a great story though !! Always remember: get this book at the library like I did and save your money for a share of Home Depot.

Not all that useful, really. Message is "buy mutual funds!". In general, since the vast majority of mutual funds underperform the market, just buy index funds would be the best advice. Most of the text is entirely useless to someone who might want to trade individual stocks. Passages suggest that if a company seems undervalued you might want to have lunch with the CEO to go over the financials and confirm your valuation. Oh, thanks Peter, what great advice... ("Mr. Gates, your 11 o'clock is here to discuss purchasing 15 shares").

I am very new at the investing game, and pretty much know what your average couch potato does...
I found this book to be very interesting and easy to read. Peter Lynch seems very down to earth and humorous and his tips are pretty basic and easy to follow.
Considering the topic (which I assumed would put me to sleep like the History Channel!) I was quite surprised when I found I couldn't put it down.
I would recommend it to anyone w/ a basic interest in investing.

I wrote this review in the hope that you'll avoid the mistake I made.

I bought (and read) in reverse chronological order the first two books Mr. Peter Lynch wrote, "One Up On Wall Street" and "Beating The Street". I got "Beating The Street" before "One Up" because I have been misled by a favourable review of this book made by a well-known financial internet site (maybe they make money out of every book they help to sell?).

Imagine you have written an excellent book and you have sold one million copies of it. What would you do after that? Would your publisher push you to write another one? Wouldn't you write again to try and repeat the success?
I think this is what happened to Mr. Lynch. He wrote "One Up On Wall Street", which is an excellent book indeed (I published a few weeks ago a review of this book, where I explain why I warmly recommend it) and he sold over one million copies of it.
"Beating The Street" is, I presume, an attempt to profit from the success of the first book.
Problem is, "One Up" is a masterpiece: it explains very well Mr. Lynch's proven investing philosophy and methods. If so, what else to publish in a later book?

While "One Up" is a book that explains and recommends strategies, i.e. tells how to successfully pick winning stocks, "Beating The Street" is actually a book that picks stocks for you.
Remember, this book has been published in 1993. I believe it is easy to understand that, after so many years, the then cheaply valued companies recommended by Mr. Lynch may be fairly valued, overvalued, no longer in business, or taken private by now.

In my opinion, "Beating The Street" is now a poor and completely out of date book.

Here's an excerpt (from page 206 - ISBN 0-671-89163-4):
"I talked to Glacier (Bancorp) the day after Christmas. I'd come into my office in Boston wearing plaid pants and a sweatshirt. The building was empty except for me and the security guard.
(...) whoever answered the phone at Glacier Bancorp in Kalispell told me they were having a retirement party for one of the officers, but they'd inform chairman Charles Mercord that I called. They must have dragged him out of the party, because a few minutes later Mercord called me back.
Asking a president or a CEO about a company's earnings is a ticklish proposition. You're not going to get anywhere by blurting out, 'What are you going to earn next year?' First you have to establish rapport. We chatted about the mountains.(...)
My only worry was that Glacier may have overpaid for its acquisition, a topic I approached obliquely. 'I assume you had to pay over book value for this,' I said, inviting Glacier's president to admit the worst. But no, Glacier hadn't overpaid.
(...) I never hang up on a source without asking: what other companies do you most admire? (...) I've found many good stocks this way."

Well, apart that the well-known SEC-enforced "Regulation Full Disclosure" (Reg FD - not existent at the time Mr. Lynch wrote his book) now forbids analysts to talk privately about business matters with companies' officials, I'm not sure any of you would be able to pick up the telephone and have a nice conversation the day after Christmas with any CEOs, wouldn't you?
I estimated that, if every buyer of those one million copies "One Up" sold were to call Glacier Bancorp, the CEO would have to spend over nine years talking to the telephone (one million 5-minutes calls, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year...).

Save your money and get "One Up On Wall Street" instead.

This is one of the "must read" books for anyone wanting to invest well, and gets 5 stars for that reason only. It is by and about Lynch and his legendary carreer @ Fidelity's Magellan Fund, and the period Lynch knocked the cover off the ball hitting home run after home run for a long string of years.

How did he do it? Well, several other reviews point out the difficulty of extracting Lynch's secret formula, and they rightly describe the lack of formulaic presentation. If there was a fabulous book on Lynch instead of this autobiographical one, I might put it on the "must read" list instead. There is not (yet, maybe Lowenstein will grace us with one?). However, too many fail in investing by looking for instant-coffee recipies that any boob can implement from the couch. If it was that simple, everyone would be rich. Success takes work and in-depth understanding of some, probably simple, strategies that ordinary investors can learn. In fact, investors who focus on fundamentals of the sort described by Lynch, & stay tuned out of the frenetic trading centers' "action," are likely to increase chances of success. The real beauty of Lynch's book is the myriad of different strategies, one or a few of which each of us can learn and implement as our investing "sweet spot."

Lynch covers a series of investment decisions in some detail. The detail is not uniform from company to company, position to position, making comparison of his formula difficult between investments. And he does not summarize his formula anywhere in the book. This oversight (which may be intentional to more quickly drop the instant-coffee addicts) leaves it up to the reader to digest the material and extract the essential focus of the master. I suggest a relaxed, 3 part method to do the extraction:
1) read the whole book (its easy reading), then set it down for a week or so.
2) read it a second time, pencil or highlighter in hand, and mark where you spot formulaic focus you can implement.
3) read it again in 6 months or a year, and repeat #2. This time around, with the aging of the first 2 readings, you will be surprised at how the formulae stand out. You will "see" more of what Lynch describes, and take your understanding of the master's strategic vision to a new and satisfying level. Not all examples will give the same level of insight to the master's strategies, so don't strain to make Lynch's magic stand out on every page. It is really only about what you can see & replicate. Even one good trick, well understood, will be worth the effort for your invesment results. If you can find 2 or 3 good tricks, like I did, you are on your way to richer success.

I have read this book at least 5 times (so far), and I get a firmer understanding of Lynch's myriad strategies each time. As a master of the game, and with a mountainous pile of cash demanding a high yield, Lynch needed many strategies to keep out-distancing all the averages. He did just that. Although a cookbook would be easier to put into use, it probably wouldn't work as well, as it wouldn't require depth of understanding. Patience is the key to implementing this important work.

Beating the Street stands among others on the "must-read" list:
~ The Intelligent Investor, Benjamin Graham (ignore the mathematical formula, but savor the stuff on perspective & margin of safety; another book that should be re-read periodically),
~ Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, Phil Fisher (ditto on the re-reading),
~ Conservative Investors Sleep Well, also by Fisher; out of print so watch here on Amazon for a clean used copy,
~ Buffett, the Making of an American Capitalist, Roger Lowenstein
~ The essays of Warren Buffet: Lessons for Corporate America, Buffett & Cunningham (great compendium of Buffett's own analysis of corporate governance, accounting and other issues investors need to watch),
~ When Genius Failed, the Rise & Fall of Long Term Capital Management, Roger Lowenstein. This is the sort of post-mortem on investing mistakes that every investor needs to guard against, and all the more important because it was a cadre of smart guys who lost their butts,
~ academic papers of Terrance Odean & Brad Barber, finance professors @ UC Berkeley & UC Davis, respectively, see their websites for links to papers about investor mistakes to avoid.
Good Luck on the Street!

I don't know why some readers give it a low grade. Investment is a combination of art, science and legwork. You cannot beat the market by scientific calculation only. Even Warren Buffett has to use 85% value investing and 15% growth investing. Don't over-emphasis on quantitative technique, qualitative technique on growth rate estimation is a must!

This book, written in 1993, simultaneously comes at the end of Mr. Lynch's career in money management and the beginning of a long sprint in the broader stock market, largely fueled by tech/internet stocks. In any period, one can expect 1 of 100 money managers to far outperform both his or her peers and the broader market by chance. Mr. Lynch was that one money manager.

Mr. Lynch starts the book by turning investing into a game. Although his method was subtle (using an example of grammar school kids picking stocks), the implications are profound. Investing does share some resemblance to many games we play in life, and one of the Great Money Masters, the fictitious 'Adam Smith' readily admits this in his classic book on investment, The Money Game.

However, Mr. Lynch takes things one step beyond the game, and as the book's title hints, he turns all investment activities into a competition. In so doing, he pits the small investor against the institutional Players, and as a result, sets up the naive reader to walk a well-trodden path littered with sorrow and the bones of many foolish investors.

Granted, 'Adam Smith' once said, "The Players aren't smarter than you. They just have more information", and there also is a certain level of truth to Lynch's assertion that the Little Guy can outperform the Big Boys. However, Lynch fails to disclose one important and critical difference.

I believe it was Hemmingway who said, in response to Fitzgerald's observation that the rich were not like the ordinary schmuck, that "Yes, I know. They have more money." Something frightfully similar can be said of the key difference between the Little Guy and The Players, but with one critical insight: The Players do not merely have more money, they have a lot more of Other People's Money. That in essence is the fundamental difference between The Players and the Little Guy, who must wager his (or her) own hard-won funds in order to play the Grand Game- the stock market.

Needless to say (but will be said anyway), the consequences of one's actions weigh heavily on one's shoulders when one's own money is at stake, but really aren't felt when Other People's Money is on the line. The Players play with Other People's Money, but you, dear investor, play with your own hard-won earnings. That said, the intelligent investor must ask herself, 'Do I really want to play with my money?'.

Beating the Street rests heavily on this undisclosed truism and a host of faulty assumptions. The book really is a sales pitch to buy stocks and to participate as much as possible in stock mutual funds. To that end, Mr. Lynch places before the reader a number of questionable arguments. Here are just two:

First, perhaps the most flawed argument of the book is that the small investor, upon retirement, will spend more than she earns in investment income. This is stated as a bona-fide fact when in reality, it is a generous assumption. From this assumption, Mr. Lynch then argues that one should invest in stocks and use some portion of the capital appreciation in addition to the dividend income for the purpose of meeting one's spending needs. He then fortifies his argument by citing inflation and emphasizing its ability to erode fixed income.

The facts are 1) how much investment income you will need is determined by how much you plan to spend, 2) many people choose to work either part-time or full-time after retirement (either out of necessity or desire), and thus have some supplemental income, 3) though the general historical trend for stock prices has been 'up', there is nothing that says that stocks have to go up, and finally 4) inflation can adversely affect stock prices (and have actually done so in the past). Lynch invokes the inflation argument when trashing bonds, and abandons it when touting stocks, even though inflation acts on both. Nor does his idealized comparison of stocks vs. bonds on pages 52-56 take into account taxes and transaction costs incidentally.

Second, on page 69, Mr. Lynch boldly says that, "If you plan to to stick with a fund for several years, the 2-5 percent you paid to get in will prove insignificant". This last statement may actually be worse than his first (of many) flawed arguments, for the following reason: the money lost to the load fails to compound at whatever investment rate of return, and over long periods of time, the difference between what you committed and what gets actually invested grows- and this is before we even consider the effect of annual expenses.

These and other flawed but superficial arguments for stock investing make for very difficult reading. Apart from the gross argumentative errors, the book presents many of Mr. Lynch's reminiscences of a stock market long gone. However, there are some useful hints in the book, most likely put there by Mr. Rothchild, but they are far outnumbered and over-shadowed by Mr. Lynch's deceptive pitch to buy stocks.

It's hard to find a better written book on investing that Beating the Street. Despite working in the industy for many years, Peter Lynch urges people to do it for themselves. He writes clearly giving examples of how one could do better than the Wall Street pros. This book is one of the best on investing that I have read.

In my opinion, this book was a lot more readable than I would have expected a book about the stock market to be. The light humor (very light) kept the book interesting and there were plenty of good tips. The "20 Golden Rules" were great. Lynch obviously knows what he's doing and he proves it by giving real life examples from his own successful experience. The only setback I found was that the tips were made out to be really easy, but they sounded tough. Overall, though, I would recommend it to both beginners and pros involved in the stock market.

Lynch's success comes not from his complex algorithms and estoric financial modeling, but from opening his eyes to the world and noticing good businesses.

His success at Magellan is attributed to his ability to find good companies, at reasonable valuations, and be patient enough to watch them climb.

This book is much more specific than his other release. Here, he provides detailed accounts of stock picking strategy, including how to choose from different stocks, when to buy, when to buy more and when to sell.

This is a quick read, but there is a huge amount of information that the average investor can use to their benefit.

This book had a little more meat in it than the Learn and Earn. Solid information if you are just starting out
Summary:
Join an investors club
Pick a maximum of 10 companies
Buy stocks or stocks in a mutual fund
Buy them on a regular basis
Know something about those stocks
Hold your course regardless of outside factors
Do your homework: PE, book value, goodwill, debt, and same store sales just to name a few
Buy more good stocks when others are selling
Perform a regular six month check up
Overall this book is good but not Great

This book had a little more meat in it than the Learn and Earn. Solid information if you are just starting out
Summary:
Join an investors club (This is very good advice, but hard to do if you have a busy life)

Pick a maximum of 10 companies - (or less in my opinion)

Buy stocks or stocks in a mutual fund

Buy them on a regular basis (check out on-line access to save time doing this)

Know something about those stocks (Do this on the computer)

Hold your course regardless of outside factors

Do your homework: PE, book value, goodwill, debt, and same store sales just to name a few (One year after reading this book I still have not made the time to go to the library and act on this suggestion. It is good advice - just hard to do)

Buy more good stocks when others are selling

Perform a regular six month check up (Again - hard to do, maybe tie it to the same day you go in for your semi-annual dental appointment, Kinda like checking the batteries in your smoke alarm when daylight savings occurs.

I guess what this book has taught me more than anything else is that you must take care of your financial goal much like you tend a garden. You must care for it in order for it to grow.

Another good book from Peter Lynch. I can't remember what exactly is the best part. But it fills the gaps in the first book (One up on the Wall Street) and make you understand more about his investment process. Lots of details that are worthy of noting, given Peter Lynch beat the index and almost all his peers in his days as fund manager of Magellan Fund.

Equally funny. A good laught. I bet John Rothchild, the ex-journalist is the person who should take the credit.

They've has done it again, this book is very funny and filled with useful tips from seasoned investor Peter Lynch. This book has several of "Peter's Principles" (which are very humorous one-liners that make a lot of sense for investors.) My favorite parts of this book are: The story about the St. Agnes 7th grade portfolio managers (these kids beat out 99% of fund managers when they had a two year gain of 70%.) Another part of this book that I enjoy are the subtle tips for evaluating stocks. Mr. Lynch doesn't tell you to do this, that, and another thing to find the ten-baggers, but he does give clues throughout the text.

Reed Floren

The only lesson I learnt and agreed with this book is to diversify your investment. And THAT! is what the entire world already knew about the investment long time ago. It is so easy to say in the book, but in a reality, I don't think average investors could follow Lynch's advice. How could you call your target company and ask for the update or (even funnier) call up so-called CEO. Mr. Lynch could do that easily because he was a fund manager. And most fund managers are welcomed by all listed companies (if not, they still have to accept the visit request). The book is perhaps best (well let's put a big ?) used in the States. But most of his guidances will definitely not work in emerging markets like China, Thailand, etc. Why? if you look at listed companies in these countries, you would find out that their dividend payout history is entirely different story from what Lynch has said in the book. And if you have read a real valuation book, you'll find out that this book is so watery. I totally agree that the capital gain from equity is far more greater than those recevied from the Bond's. But you need to be careful of putting your fund entirely in this market. Huge gain comes with enormous risk. This is why most of the valuation and investment books mention risk in their beginning chapters. I have witnessed many times that huge capital gains do not necessarily associate with good solid companies. As you know most of the investors are speculators. Think about of what Lynch's advices in his book. And buy a real investment / valuation book and compare (i.e., Damodaran's). You will know exactly of what I mean.

Lynch's story is a good account of how a top performing mutual fund manager (better than 25% a year over 13 years) accomplishes a superior track record, but it's a poor how-to manual for the individual investor. Unfortunately, you will not have the access to all the brokers, analysts, and CEOs that Lynch had by merely picking up the phone. Also, most investors do not have his knowledge of finance and business practice intricacies. Thus, his advice has to be taken with this in mind. Still, he's something of a genius and you can benefit from his experience.
His insight into why mutual fund ownership is not a good way to invest (due to philosophy, fees, size, past performance ratings, etc.) is timely advice today in light of recent revelations exposed by NY Attorney General Elliott Spitzer. But his best argument against investing in mutual funds has to be, "You never know where the next great opportunity will be, so don't get stuck in a fund that won't take advantage of it." The good thing about Lynch is that not only does he believe money can be made in the stock market year in and year out, but he's also proven it. It's just too bad that approximating his record the way he recommends is a real stretch.
His "buy what you know" and "check out the local malls" makes profitable investing sound easier than it really is. Just because your local clothier is prospering doesn't mean the store in the same chain 3000 miles away is also doing a bang-up business or that corporate headquarters has got its head on straight.
One area that I wished he'd commented on more was point of entry - when to buy. He talked a lot about liking a stock but missing out on it until it had already rallied a goodly percent. The old adage in Wall Street says "I'd rather buy a bad stock at a good price than a good stock at a bad price." Translation: Every stock has an optimum entry point and if you miss it, you shouldn't chase it. Find another gem. He doesn't seem to agree. He's looking for his "10 baggers." Stocks that appreciate 1000%. He does stress that the long term stock market return is somewhere around 8% - something we all forgot in the late 90s. So that means there aren't that many 10 baggers around.
Another weakness is his dependence on company reported earnings growth. We've just been through enough scandals to educate us to the fact that "earnings" frequently can be whatever someone wants them to be.
The last half of the book gets bogged down in his thought processes as he finds, researches, and picks his big winners. The mental work is revealing and does have merit in learning how good stock pickers think, but again, it's not something an individual investor can master as easily as Lynch makes it out to be. Remember, he admits he retired early because of too many 24/7s on the job, whereas the individual investor has to work with what can be easily and accurately obtained.

The book is great for both amateurs and professionals.

I can't believe this book has been reviewed 5 stars. It is horribly outdated (many companies it mentions are out of business), the writing is insubstancial and borders on join-my-Lynch-fan-club promotion. I didn't learn anything from it, other than the simple (and obvious) fact that you need to research companies before you buy into them. But when Lynch goes and tells up to call up a company CEO to ask them how things are going (as he recalls numerous times throughout the book), that's when it's worthless.

Save your time and money and go with someone else.

I had read this book back near the beginning of the real boom time (sometime in the mid-90s), and rereading it now made me wish that I had paid much closer attention back then. Even though this book is extremely optimistic about the stock market and was written well before internet mania, there are probably 50 different sentences sprinkled throughout the book that would have kept me out of the market during the next few years and saved me a lot of money had I remembered any of them. When this book is slow, it can be really slow. But when Mr. Lynch does hit gold, it's the motherload. Indeed, the last three pages of the book, "20 Golden Rules," are probably worth the purchase price alone (particularly since you can almost certainly buy this book used for less than $5 at any time). The last third of the book, where Mr. Lynch gives advice on investing in a number of different industries, ranges from incredibly useful to skippable, depending on what you already have some knowledge about.

I have two particular criticisms of this book. One is that, although Mr. Lynch's tales of his days running Magellan make it clear that he was selling only a little less often than he was buying, he doesn't give much advice about how to go about that side of things. Secondly, although the book starts off with the story of a group of elementary school kids who beat the pros, the rest of the book seems to contradict Mr. Lynch's implication that a 10 year-old can do this. Although this book is very readable, one can't help but come away with the conclusion that investing in stocks is hard (if you don't think so, you may living on luck). Mr. Lynch's main argument is that you don't have to be a pro to invest in stocks, but just about every story that he has about researching a stock includes him talking to the CEO of the potential investment at some point. I'm not expecting to be able to replicate that research technique.

Still, I'd highly recommend this book, and I look forward to reading his other well-known book, "One Up on Wall Street."

This is a great investing book. While some of the informatio is repreated from One Up on Wall Street, there is still enough new information to make this book a worthwhile read.I would recommend that you read One Up first and also Learn to Earn. I also recommend Buffettolgy and 2 Bad Years and Up we go.Learn to earn and beat the street with proven techniques by one of the greatest inestors of all time--Mr. Peter Lynch.

Peter Lynch was a very successful mutual fund manager before he retired, and in this book, he outlines his methods at a level the average investor can understand.

Of course, this book doesn't tell the whole story of how Lynch was so successful, but it distills the essentials into an easy-to-understand, easy-to-apply presentation. This doesn't mean that investing is easy, but that Lynch makes his ideas accessible to people without MBA degrees.

What I really like about this book is that Lynch warns you about the risks inherent in investing, a point that few books of this sort bother making. If you are at all interested in investing, read this book. I've read it and I apply Lynch's principles in my own investments. I especially recommend this book for people new to investing because it is very accessible. Lynch and Rothchild did a great job with this one.

Having worked on Wall Street I think this book is great and poor at the same time.

Great because

1) It is ideal to read for the casual to serious investor.
2) Some of Lynch's prominent themes like "Buy what you know" and investigating the companies that you buy are great strategies, especially for non-professionals.
3) He walks you through his thought process on numerous stocks in several industries, highlighting mistakes as well as successes. I found his various rules of thumb with respect to each industry (retail, restaurants, cyclicals) helpful

I say it is poor because Lynch himself used to buy and sell stocks frequently. So while he says "buy and hold" he did that, but he also traded the heck out of stocks he knew inside and out. When they got expensive, he would trim his position and when something got really cheap he would buy the heck out of it. This enabled him to compound his returns by a phenomenal amount

Lynch primarily invested in retail stocks. This was great as brand names and the "homogenization" of retail concepts via chain stores was sweeping the nation with the baby boom wave. However, most of that "easy money" was made along time ago. Current baby boom themes of biotech, health care, along with some financial service industry stuff is tougher to make money at and it doesn't grow as fast as retail. Well, biotech can but it is far riskier.

Lynch never talks about debt. The U.S. economy expanded in the 80's due to 1) heavy government spending, which created a huge national debt (2) consumer spending a ton of money and going into debt and (3) the entrepreneurial spirit. The government actually funded a lot of the developments we see today. The problem with this is that they have mortgaged the future to pay for past wealth creation. He never once mentions the impact of debt. It is great while you are charging the credit card up and enjoying the ride but eventually you have to pay the bills!

Lynch spends a lot of time telling the reader how he went about picking stocks for his Magellan Fund, but he has the ability to talk to CEO's and visit companies on site headquarters, something the average investor certainly does not have. I would say though that Reg FD has made the playing field more even, as now nobody gets a lot of information!

My thoughts on stock picking, having worked in the financial service industry for 3 years in research (got out because my values didn't correlate with the business) is that no one should expect to beat the pros unless they are 1) very observant and 2) willing to commit time to finding new investment concepts/vehicles.

It is a great book and thanks Peter for sharing his exciting and valuable experience with his fellow Americans. I have read "Learn to earn", "One Up on Wall Street" and "Beating the Street" and am looking forward to Peter's future books.

I would like to know in MORE DETAIL Peter's experience in analysing specific companies(e,g, how he evaluated a specific balance sheet etc). This will benefit the amatuer investors a great deal.

After reading this book (as it should to most) investing just seems to make more sense. Mr. Lynch has worked magic at Fidelity and his genius has effected many investors. This book isn't just full of good info, it's full of info that nobody but Mr. Lynch could have written.

Although chatty and an easy read, this book contains little information of actual use to the individual investor. Lynch spends the vast majority of the book presenting anecdotes of his own stock-picking successes that occurred as part of his job managing Fidelity's Magellan fund. He spends virtually no time presenting or discussing any of his less-than-successful picks (much less explaining why they didn't work out). This leaves the reader with an extremely unbalanced picture of how easy (and likely) it is to "beat the street." Further, Lynch ignores the transactions costs that individual investors would have to face but from which he was effectively exempt. He also ignores the fact that his success was as a fund manager, purchasing hundreds of stocks, which individuals cannot do. He states that about five stocks could be enough for an individual investor-- but says nothing of the risk that such a lack of diversification would entail. Although Lynch correctly encourages investors to know a lot about any stocks they choose, he provides little help in teaching us where to find such information-- most of Lynch's sources appear to be telephone conversations with CFOs and lunches with CEOs, options that are not available to us litte folk. For far better advice, see Burton Malkiel's "A Random Walk Down Wall Street."

While "One Up" methodically lays out Lynch's approach to identifying good stocks, "Beating the Street" serves as a sequel that puts the philosophy into practice. Published four years after the first book, this one felt redundant in places and at times, I got the impression that the sequel was born because Lynch just wanted to score another payday. But I still found the book useful and I think it provides an interesting peek for an outsider into a portfolio manager's first-hand experiences. He walks you through his thought process on numerous stocks in several industries, highlighting mistakes as well as successes. I found his various rules of thumb with respect to each industry (retail, restaurants, cyclicals) helpful, since I had little investment experience at the time. One chapter also serves as a useful primer on mutual funds, but that's probably not why you're considering this book. Just use this chapter as a starting point in that effort. One element of Lynch's approach that is outdated is his ignorance of the tech sector. Though volatile, it has been a source of great riches and heartache and it is too important now, at 18% of the S&P 500, to be excluded from a stock picker's universe. It also goes without saying (but I'll say it for this review) that there's more to beating the market than "buying what you know." But at least Lynch's approach is designed to be enduring over a multi-year period - it would have allowed you to make some money during the go-go days of the late 90's and yet, could also have steered you toward some great values in the past two years while the rest of the world was still clinging to technology stocks. My recommendation would be to read "One Up" first. If you're comfortable with those concepts and understand the nuances of each industry, then this book is not a "must read."

The book begins at a slow pace and eases into a higher-level analysis of the companies and stocks that Peter Lynch invested in and researched. The perception that everyone may value stocks providing one is prepared to do the homework is emphasised. On the flip side, if you are not prepared to do the homework, rather let an expert assist you... I found the analysis and thoughts of the author to be intriguing.