Peter Lynch.
by Peter Lynch — One Up on Wall Street · Magellan Fund · PEG ratio · tenbagger
Former manager of Fidelity's Magellan Fund and author of One Up on Wall Street and Beating the Street. Lynch averaged a 29.2% annual return during his 13 years running Magellan — one of the best long-term track records in mutual fund history.
About Peter Lynch
Peter Lynch managed Fidelity's Magellan Fund from 1977 to 1990, growing it from $18 million to $14 billion in assets and achieving an average annual return of approximately 29.2% — a track record that remains one of the most impressive in the history of active fund management.
Lynch retired at 46 and went on to write two widely read investment books. One Up on Wall Street (1989), co-authored with John Rothchild, argues that individual investors have a natural advantage over institutional managers: they encounter great companies in their daily lives before Wall Street analysts do. His framework of investing in what you know — products and services you observe firsthand as a consumer — democratized the language of stock analysis for a generation of retail investors.
Beating the Street (1993), his follow-up, extends those lessons with detailed case studies from his Magellan years and his analysis of the market post-retirement.
Lynch popularized several investment concepts that remain in wide use today, including the PEG ratio (price-to-earnings relative to growth), the concept of a "tenbagger" (a stock that increases tenfold), and a taxonomy of stock categories — slow growers, stalwarts, fast growers, cyclicals, turnarounds, and asset plays — that helps investors set realistic expectations before buying.
Since leaving Magellan, Lynch has served as a vice chairman at Fidelity Investments and has been active in philanthropic work in education.