Highlights
Peter Lynch is one of the most successful and well-known investors of all time. Lynch is the legendary former manager of the Magellan Fund at the major investment brokerage Fidelity. He took over the fund in 1977 at age 33 and ran it for 13 years. His success allowed him to retire in 1990 at age 46. His investment style has been described as adaptive to the prevailing economic environment at the time, but Lynch always stressed that you should be able to understand what you own.
Early Life and Education
Peter Lynch was born in 1944 in Newton, Massachusetts. When he was ten years old, his father, Thomas Lynch, died from cancer. To support the family, his homemaker mother entered the workforce, and Peter began working as a caddy. While working at an upscale golf club, he developed an interest in the stock market through conversations he overheard.
Peter earned a caddy scholarship and later attended Boston College, where he graduated in 1965 with a degree in finance. A year later, he worked as a summer student at Fidelity.
One of Lynch’s first successful investments was in an air freight company called Flying Tiger, which helped him pay for graduate school. In 1968, Peter graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business with a Master of Business Administration and married Carolyn Hoff. From 1968 to 1970, he served in the Army ROTC program.
At age 25 and after caddying for Fidelity's president, Lynch got his first full-time job as a textiles and metals analyst at Fidelity.
About
Peter Lynch is an American investor, mutual fund manager, author and philanthropist. Lynch averaged a 29.2% annual return, consistently more than double the S&P 500 stock market index and making it the best-performing mutual fund in the world. During his 13-year tenure, assets under management increased from US$18 million to $14 billion.