Peter Lynch is an American investor that managed the Magellan Fund at Fidelity Investments between 1977–1990. Under his management, the fund increased from $18 million to $14 billion, with a 29.2% annual return; greater than double the average return of the S&P 500 during that period.
Peter Lynch achieved outstanding returns by adhering to a set of simple yet powerful investing principles. In a 1994 lecture, Lynch pointed out that the small investor had been convinced by the media that they didn’t have a chance in the stock market. He argued that this led to a self-fulfilling prophecy where individual investors chose average performing mutual funds in place of selecting individual stocks. This average performance reinforced the idea that retail investors couldn’t beat the market.
However, Lynch thought this idea wasn’t true at all.