THE NATIONAL BESTSELLING BOOK THAT EVERY INVESTOR SHOULD OWN

Peter Lynch is America's number-one money manager. His mantra: Average investors can become experts in their own field and can pick winning stocks as effectively as Wall Street professionals by doing just a little research.

Now, in a new introduction written specifically for this edition of One Up on Wall Street, Lynch gives his take on the incredible rise of Internet stocks, as well as a list of twenty winning companies of high-tech '90s. That many of these winners are low-tech supports his thesis that amateur investors can continue to reap exceptional rewards from mundane, easy-to-understand companies they encounter in their daily lives.

Investment opportunities abound for the layperson, Lynch says. By simply observing business developments and taking notice of your immediate world -- from the mall to the workplace -- you can discover potentially successful companies before professional analysts do. This jump on the experts is what produces "tenbaggers," the stocks that appreciate tenfold or more and turn an average stock portfolio into a star performer.

The former star manager of Fidelity's multibillion-dollar Magellan Fund, Lynch reveals how he achieved his spectacular record. Writing with John Rothchild, Lynch offers easy-to-follow directions for sorting out the long shots from the no shots by reviewing a company's financial statements and by identifying which numbers really count. He explains how to stalk tenbaggers and lays out the guidelines for investing in cyclical, turnaround, and fast-growing companies.

Lynch promises that if you ignore the ups and downs of the market and the endless speculation about interest rates, in the long term (anywhere from five to fifteen years) your portfolio will reward you. This advice has proved to be timeless and has made One Up on Wall Street a number-one bestseller. And now this classic is as valuable in the new millennium as ever.

Beating the Street by Lynch Peter
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings by Fisher, Philip
The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book On Value Investing, Revised Edition by Graham, Benjamin
Learn to Earn : A Beginner's Guide to the Basics of Investing and Business by Lynch, Peter

An a bit out-of-date and unfocused
This book offers general concepts more so than specific technique. If you are looking for a book about the creature called "fundamental analysis," you may find the last half of this book interesting. However, if you want specific, practical advice you will be disappointed in the vagueness of the author. The only detailed bullets occur in chapters 15 and 17--all of 20 pages long, and even there the bullets are really just key points about indicators (things to watch for). How to calculate, how to interpret the value of, and where to find the indicators is left to the reader. Even, with his several page long description of price-to-earnings ratio (pp165-173), he ultimately advises, "Once again, your broker may be your best source for p/e analysis." (p. 170) 20/20 hindsight seems to be his emphasis throughout. He offers many, many just imagine if... anecdotes--both supporting and refuting his advice. As a result, contractions invade throughout. For example, he calls "Whisper Stocks" a bad investment (pp 157-159). Okay. Then he regretted missing Cisco in 1990 when they were just a start-up. Why? Because looking back, he could have make $480 for every $1 invested (Intro). But wait, it was a "whisper stock" in 1990. He is against "diworsefication" (p 153), unless the stock price goes up afterwards (pp 154-157). Then he laments buying into an IPO with solid fundamentals and a smart business plan. Why? The expansion failed and he lost money (pp 180-182). Since most of the book is about finding young companies early (Street Lag, p 57) with solid fundamentals (ch 8-15) and taking a chance that they will grow maybe 10-fold (ch 6), his lament is lost on me. There are some saving graces to this book. The author does a decent job defending the importance of researching and understanding what a company does before investing. Frankly, there are better books out there about investing for beginners and experts alike. The financial advice industry has evolved over the past twenty years, and this million seller just doesn't stack up. I would recommend instead reading any Suzie Orman, Phil Town's "Rule #1," Bartiromo's "Use The News," or anything about Warren Buffet.