The following is a Q&A session with Peter Lynch from an interview that PBS.org conducted. In this Interview Peter Lynch answers questions such as how did he first get interested in the stock market, what was his first bought stock, what do the terms “four bagger,” “five bagger” mean?
Q&A session with Peter Lynch
Q: How did you first get interested in the stock market.
A; Peter Lynch: Well, I grew up in the 1950s. I started caddying when I was 11. So the PETER Lynch would have been 1955 and in that part — the ’50s were a great decade for the stock market. I caddied a very nice club out in west Newton, had a lot of people, corporate executives, and some of these were buying stocks and I remember them talking about stocks and they mentioned the names and I’d look in the paper and look at it a month later, a year later, and I noticed they were goin’ up. And I said, “Gee, this makes a lot of sense.” And so I watched it. I didn’t have any money to invest, but I remember the stock market being very strong in the 1950s and some people, not everybody, but a lot of people on the golf course talking about it.
Q: What was your first stock?
A; Peter Lynch: Well, when I got a caddie scholarship to college. It was actually a partial scholarship, a Frances Wimen Scholarship, a financial aid scholarship, but it was thousand dollars to go to Boston College and they gave me a $300 scholarship and I got to earn over $700 a year caddying. So I was able to build up a little bit of money and I worked also during the winters. So while I was in college I did a little study on the freight industry, the air freight industry. And I looked at this company called Flying Tiger. And I actually put a thousand dollars in it and I remember I thought this air cargo was going to be a thing of the future. And I bought it and it got really lucky because it went up for another reason. The Vietnam War started and they basically hauled a lot of troops to Vietnam in airplanes and the stock went up, I think, nine- or ten-fold and I had my first ten bagger. I started selling it, I think, at 20 and 30 and 40, sold all the way up to 80 and helped pay for graduate school. So I almost had a Flying Tiger graduate school fellowship.
Q You originated the expression “four bagger”, “five bagger” et cetera. What’s that mean exactly?
A; Peter Lynch: I’ve always been a great lover of baseball. I mean if you grew up in Boston, you know that the last time we won the World Series, Babe Ruth pitched for us. It was 1918. So it’s been a long drought here. So I’ve always loved baseball and the ten bagger is two home-runs and a double. It’s you run around a lot, so it’s very exciting.
A You made ten times your money. Is a ten bagger.
Q That’s pretty good.
A; Peter Lynch: Excellent. You don’t need a lot in your lifetime. You only need a few good stocks in your lifetime. I mean how many times do you need a stock to go up ten-fold to make a lot of money? Not a lot.
Q Was that your secret?
A; Peter Lynch: Well, I think the secret is if you have a lot of stocks, some will do mediocre, some will do okay, and if one of two of ’em go up big time, you produce a fabulous result. And I think that’s the promise to some people. Some stocks go up 20-30 percent and they get rid of it and they hold onto the dogs. And it’s sort of like watering the weeds and cutting out the flowers. You want to let the winners run. When the fun ones get better, add to ’em, and that one winner, you basically see a few stocks in your lifetime, that’s all you need.
