Peter Lynch: Avoid These 10 Investment Mistakes

this is a very important rule this is a very it's one of the key rules the stock doesn't know you own it remember that you could be a miserable person you could have uh you know never helped anybody never done anything right had 67 spouses never done anything right have you owned coca-cola last 50 years it's gone up 300 fold now what i'd like to talk about is what i call the 10 most dangerous things uh people say about stocks uh uh here's a good one if it's gone down this much already you can't go any lower uh everyone polaroid went from 140 to about 107. people said if you ever get polaroid under 100 you've got to buy it just back up the truck buy the stock it's like you get 110 that rally you know fall 103. you've got 112 105 he said gets under 100 bipolar polaroid broke a hundred people started buying it and within nine months the stock was 18. uh i saw saying avon products so just saying you know it's gone down this far you know how much lower i mean it's crazy but you know it can keep going in fact i tried this out kaiser industries i was a new analyst at fidelity and we were about to buy the biggest block ever at kaiser industries the stock had gone from 29 to 17. we're about to buy the largest block ever in the history of the americans exchange we bought you know 10 or 15 million shares at 50 and three quarters i said my god the stock's gone from 29 to 17 how much lower can it go so we bought this enormous block at 50 and three quarters so i called my mother and i said mom i guess like kaizen says it's 10. so about three months later said you ought to buy this it's going from 29 to 10. how much lower can it go well went to nine it went to eight it went to seven it went to six it went to five and went to four now fortunately this happened very rapidly or i'd be working at the stop and shop bag and behind the lines of the city fidelity so fortunately this was compressed in only about six months so i had to go to the fundamentals and say i was a little bit early on this at fifteen and three quarters uh but it uh we call this premature in the business the uh uh had a correction which you know is a euphemism for losing a lot of money rapidly at the uh so i said let's check this again the stocks for they own 45 percent of kaiser aluminum they own 59 percent of kaiser steel they own 38 percent okay cement they own all of kaiser electronics all the kaiser broadcasting which had seven tv sets they own jeep the kaiser fiberglass said about kaiser santa gravel a bunch of other kaisers and they had no debt now in this room because i know freeman billings is very interested in financial stocks no one's ever gone bankrupt without any debt now that would take a real i think you have to get some kind of distinguished service award does somebody do that yeah but they had no debt i said it's not going to go to zero you know i was wrong when i said it can't go below 15. so we hung on and within three years they gave out the shares and kind of still gave out the shares in kaiser's men gave out the shares in kaiser steel and aluminum and they sold off all the businesses you got 55 a share but if you didn't know the story and the stock went from 15 to 11 and you're just saying how much low can it go when it went to 91.8 you'd you would have gone so you can't just say you can't go any lower because i saw taco bell go from 14 to 1 in 1974 and they had no debt and making 60 cents a share uh there's a corollary to that that's even more dangerous if it's gone this high already how can it possibly go lower uh higher sorry that philip morris adjusted for splits uh sold for 12 cents in 1951. and then it goes to 60 cents in 1961. so it goes up fivefold and you say yourself how much this never sold for that but just for splits to say how much higher can this go it's got a five-fold they missed the power of marlboro they missed the there's 220 countries in the world they missed the cash flow of the company they missed everything this stock was 100 bagger after going up five fold but people sold it just saying how much higher can it go can't go any hard they did the same at home depot they did the same with toys r us i did the same thing toys r us just saying it can't go any higher it's gone this much already that's very dangerous and don't don't use that one and uh i it's a very bad thing to do eventually they always come back here's another one that sucks uh that's a technical stock market term we just use only in the stock market the uh uh rca just about get back to us 1929 price was backed out by g manville never came back international harvester even with its name changed and adjusted for splits doesn't get all the way back yet western union double knits remember those wonderful things floppy disks they don't have to come back but they say eventually they always come back uh not true uh here's a great one it's three dollars how much can i lose this is a great one you see i've get get out this is i don't have a computer and i can't do high-level math but uh just do this once let's say you buy your neighbor buys ten thousand dollars of a stock at 50. the stock's now three and you put twenty five thousand dollars in at three if it goes to zero who loses the most a lot of people cannot answer this question you know the uh i mean if you put a billion in at three you can lose a billion you know i mean they blow taps in lots of companies every year you know you just have they can go to zero uh the uh here's a good one that helped me a lot it's always darkest before the dawn uh the uh this business is terrible it's awful you ought to buy the group this is not a good way of making money at the the uh here's one you're probably talking about before lunch uh freight car deliveries uh 1979 there was 96 000 freight cars deliver united states two years later it fell to 45 000 the lowest in 23 years it goes from 96 000 to 45 people say business is awful it's horrible pathetic then it falls to 25 000. they say just load up there's about 15 opportunities to lose money there's about 15 suppliers of freight cars 15 manufacturers business was awful but last year we shipped 7000 freight cars united states the business just continue to be miserable and uh i'll give you one that's even there's even greater opportunity to lose money on uh energy services industry this we all had a great opportunity to get our heads handed to us uh in 1982 there was 11 000 of those oil rigs drilling left you know drilling those holes all over oklahoma and texas and colorado we used to have the rig count every week and the recount fell from 11 000 in 82 to 6083 then for a little bit lower 84. there's hundreds and hundreds of companies here companies that made the muds and did the down hole stuff the fracturing companies the the well companies all the measuring companies the championships the bid companies lots of opportunities lose money here there's equal opportunity opportunity here for serious losses and the people said listen the business is terrible let's buy this group well the recount was only a thousand three years ago so it went from eleven thousand to six thousand five thousand then eight years later was under a thousand the industry really started turning about two years ago so just saying the business can't get worse i i was lucky enough in addition to the metals industry and start finally i had the textile industry which is a great group to follow because you follow companies like jp stevens was founded in the 18th century and uh west point pep roll was found in the 18th century burlington's one of the new companies was founded in 1904 these people have been through recessions depressions were wars they've seen it all there's a great expression texas industry it's always darkest before pitch black yeah now that's a good one to remember because business is terrible it can get considerably terrible you're terrible to the power of six and uh it uh i love those numbers of fake card to lose you ever watch i love the show jeopardy i watch jeopardy and people come out they will know those numbers they'll know the numbers and they'll know you know what uh what country uh box uh took his first vacation in and they'll know phil rizzuto is batting average and what his wife's first name was and they'll know the stock symbols of xerox before was hallowed or you know they know everything and you watch the show you feel like an absolute idiot watching the show because they answer all these questions but they're really smart i almost i've owned this stuff before king world right after they show wheel of fortune and they what happens is they'll have this word up there it'll be th and there's a t and it says that by a vowel here should buy you you know vanna spins the wheel and they buy the a and you know you you redeem by watching the wheel of fortune after feeling like an absolute jerk on the jeopardy game and uh it's really smart uh when i rebound to 10 i'll sell uh here's a great rule somebody buys a stock at 10 and it falls to six let's say if it gets back to 10 i'll sell now i think the math four and six i can handle this level math i think that's about a 66 percent return you ought to buy if you think it's going back to 10-yard buy the hell out of the damn thing but they think if it gets back to 10 i'll sell now what you ought to do is never put down a round number these i think for the next 26 years to start going between five and nine and a quarter it'll never get to ten so maybe put nine and eight or eight three quarters but just saying the stock if it gets back what i paid for it is a very important rule this is a very it's one of the key rules the stock doesn't know you own it remember that you could be a miserable person you could have uh you know never helped anybody never done anything right had 67 spouses never done anything right if you owned coca-cola the last 50 years it's gone up 300-fold you could be the greatest human in the world help special olympics help the mentally challenged help poor people help aids people if you own bethlehem steel it's lower than it was 30 years ago it's not your fault don't take this personal you know but people treat stocks sometimes like a grandchildren or a puppy i mean they think they think the stock knows who you are you know it's you know it doesn't work that way it uh uh let me worry i own conservative stocks uh i don't have to worry i own conservative stocks iron con ed fell uh 80 percent then tripled uh public service indiana went down 90 gulf states utilities long island lighting this may be oxymoron with quality texas banks that went to zero we had uh quality new england banks that went to zero uh these are companies have been around for 150 years 120 years saying i don't conserve stocks i don't have to worry i've seen a lot of people don't inherit a stock from somebody they'll say you know my mother said on her deathbed don't sell the long island lighting you know you always wondered you know is it she's going to heaven or hopefully where she's going heaven you know they talk about a little game or a vacation or game of hearts they had or imagine talking on your deathbed about long island lighting and he said you know but you get these stories all the time and i think your mother would have noticed she would have sold at 29 but she went she would have noticed it this little plant that was about 6 billion over budget no one wanted it and wasn't working and long island stopped growing so maybe she would have turfed at 22 or got up at 18 she wouldn't let it go to four you know so just because you inherit some stock and it's so-called conservative like eastman kodak fell 75 ibm fell 75 percent don't tell anybody you own a conservative stock companies are very dynamic i don't buy that argument here's a very dangerous one look at all the money i've lost i didn't buy it it uh people do this all the time they say i didn't own blockbuster i didn't own home depot i know toys r us i uh eric it was very nice to say some nice things about when i came up here and manny has been nice to me i laid in one of my books listed on two pages in the 13 years of ramagellan i listed i think about 200 stocks a through l on the new york stock exchange they went up 10 fold or more that i didn't know well i ran magellan i had on lots of stocks i listed 200 stocks a foreign i stopped the letter l and i didn't know any shares they went up tenfold or more and i was able to do okay with magellan and people worry all the time about missing microsoft missing western digital missing united airlines they spent all their time worrying about stocks they miss you cannot lose money in a stock you don't own that's a variable you have the only way to lose money is buy stock have it go down and sell it that's the only way and i swear that people that their spouse has to cut out the newspaper in the morning cut out the seas and the person will look at the ams oh my god microsoft's up up three you know i had i was gonna buy a thousand shares on microsoft i lost three thousand microsoft last night while i was sleeping you know the uh you know i was gonna buy seven thousand shares a national semiconductor at ten it's now 17 i just lost 49 000 on national semiconductor they do this all the time they may have to cut holes the block thank god blockbuster finally went away because that was early in the alphabet people would always be looking how much they lost in blockbuster uh i missed that one i'll catch the next one that usually does not work toys r us there's a lot of copycats of toys r us there's trial world there's lionel there's copycats from home depot buying the next of something usually doesn't work it's uh it's very bad it's like buying on dips i think it's always better to buy from dips i was that was a better rule than bioentex you may have to explain this to some other people uh just another technical term they have to explain after hours where the dip is hit but usually referred to as plurals dip so i've never heard dip you know he's a dip because she's a dip they usually only have a plural tents for it's a and it's a gender non-specific it's usually plural it's never used um stock has gone up i must be right stock has gone down and must be wrong i ain't convinced that people do this all the time they buy a stock at 10 they buy a little bit of it it goes to 13 that they now say they don't know anything more about it than they knew when they were 10 they have no idea what this company does it's gone 13 now they take a second mortgage in the house and buy the 13. the best thing could happen for us to stock up directly from ten to four for these folks you know it's gonna go to four eventually but it goes to 13 in the middle they're convinced now they bought a hundred shares of ten not only by twenty thousand and thirteen and uh all the fact is the stock market from 10 to 13 is it went up the average movement of a stock in the near stock exchange this century between its highest low has been 50 percent the average stock nearest exchange that means the stock of the year 20. sometime during the year sold 16. sometimes during the year sold at 24. might have finished the year 21. might officiate 19. the average range of a stock in the stock change is 50 in 12 months between tide slope so stocks go up and down a lot within a year and say this stock is going up means you're right doesn't mean a damn thing so don't buy off an allen that uh that is not a good one the uh avoid long shots uh these are the companies that uh we have this very technical term for this uh called whisper stocks the uh everybody whisper stocks they're uh they're great maybe play any golf and then i'll say i want to talk to you about international blivet and the next one they'll get a shorter term in those places where they they have nordic tracks and they put them away and they don't they don't have to make big rocks into small rocks they just watch movies and they have nordic tracks but they won't they will not catch these people if they whisper in the phone and these are always these long shots these are stocks that are going to grow hair and make your kid have better spelling and your breasts can improve and you won't have to iron your pants you know it's one of those stocks and they always do everything for you but they're missing they don't have any sales yet you know that's the missing element of the story the story is temptation there's no prophecy no sales yet but my god if this works if this works it's going to be the next xerox you know and uh and it's going to help murder in space and everything it's a very very good deal now this is not a launch shot this is a no shot you have to separate these out i've tried 30 of these i have never broken even on a long shot never i've made 25 30 times my money on some stocks i never thought about sally mae or mbia or fannie mae or some of the banks or stop and shop i made 20 tons of money 30 times money i had no idea i thought the stocks are going north i had no idea you look back 10 years later you say my god i made a lot of money in this thing but once i went into thinking i could make four times my money i've never broken even so don't do the long shot guys they don't work it uh the uh they simply don't work uh and again if a stock's three and it has huge potential write down the story take the stock symbol if it's going to 300 it's okay to buy it at 15. check in later check it a year later see if it's still listed you can still get a quote on it see if they sell the orange yet but if it's going write the story down some of these work i haven't heard yet but maybe they will work but it's worth tuning in six months later

Channel: Investor Center

Views: 190,398

Keywords: Peter Lynch, Investing mistakes to avoid, 10 investing mistakes to avoid, How to invest, Peter Lynch interview, Peter Lynch book, Peter Lynch investment strategy, One Up On Wall Street, Stock market news, Warren Buffett, Charlie munger, Ray Dalio, Carl Icahn

Id: eM09TfTPAeI

Length: 17min 21sec (1041 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 21 2020