Historically, stocks are embraced as investments or dismissed as gambles in routine and circular fashion, and usually at the wrong times. " n the late 1920s that common stocks finally reached the status of 'prudent investments,' whereas previously they were dismissed as barroom wagers-and this was precisely the moment at which the overvalued market made buying stocks more wager than investment.įor two decades after the Crash, stocks were regarded as gambling by a majority of the population, and this impression wasn't fully revised until the late 1960s when stocks once again were embraced as investments, but in an overvalued market that made most stocks very risky. At the beginning of One Up on Wall Street, he writes: " As I’ve noted on prior occasions: 'That’s not to say there’s no such thing as an overvalued market, but there’s no point worrying about it.'" Like Warren Buffett, Lynch is a talented investor, but like Buffett, he's created a folksy public persona that misleads investors into thinking investing is simpler than it really is.īeyond that, much of Lynch's advice is vague and contradictory. In the introduction to Beating the Street, Lynch recommends that income-seeking investors put their money in stocks, since stocks produce higher long-term returns than bonds, and generate income by selling a portion of their shares each year.
Beating the Street fleshes out these principles by providing case studies of the stocks that Lynch recommended in the 1992 Barron's roundtable.īoth books have a dangerous "stocks are always a great investment" theme.
One Up on Wall Street explains the investment principles that Lynch used during his market-beating tenure as the manager of Fidelity's Magellan Fund. I recently finished two books by Peter Lynch: One Up on Wall Street, his late-1980s bestseller, and Beating the Street, which he published in 1993.