Peter Lynch - One Up On Wall Street

Reading this book took more time than it should have since I lost focus on my investing goals for a while. Book itself was an easy read. One of those motivational, anecdote-heavy type books for mass consumption. Having a pretty good Croatian translation was also a plus.

There are three major parts to the book. The first one was pretty useless. It frames picking stocks as an easy feat, emphasizing anecdotal evidence and downplaying fundamental analysis. It doesn’t ignore the importance of research, but it’s very relativized.

The second part is a bit more practical, giving guidelines for putting companies into categories and listing good and bad flags for each without going too deep into technical analysis.

The third part is again less helpful for me, but I give it a pass since it comes down to avoiding hype and being mindful about selling and buying stocks.

Lynch comes off funny and cool guy, but I doubt his success is as simple as he presents it here. He has a knack for breaking down complex things into simple explanations. Glad this was not the first book about investing I’ve read; otherwise, I might get overly excited and blindly throw more money into stocks.

Even though I believe holding a total market ETF is the best way for me, I will try to apply Lynch’s advice to analyze a few stocks I already own.