One Up on Wall Street by John Rothchild, Peter Lynch (1990, Paperback, Reprint)

This is the first book I read on investing - and still the best. I bought this copy for my daughter who went to work with a liberal arts degree (and no knowledge of investing) for a small, home town investment firm that wants to train her to be a broker. I successfully invested in good times (much of the 90's ) and bad times (late 90's to early 2000's) with Peter Lynch's great advice. His brilliance is that he demystifies investing, breaking down several simple basics for investing in stocks, with paticualr attention on how to evaulate the basics of a company. He also gives great beginner advice. For example, he advises before investing in stocks that any investor pay off credit card bills and buy a home because the return and risk/reward are better than investing in stocks. HIs first rule in investing is that you should be able to sleep at night! After I read this book, I took the dive into investing and made enough to pay my already mentoned daughter's undergraduate college education at two good public colleges (Radford in Virginia and Colorado State). Through the last 20 years, I have continued to use Peter Lych's advice to invest in savings that have helped buy bigger and second homes and grow my retirement. Even though I have professional money managers handle my retirement investments now, thanks to "One Up On Wall Street" I know what questions to ask them and how to evauate the returns I am getting. Buy this book! You will feel a growing sense of excitment as Peter Lynch helps you realize that investing isn't that difficult.

If you haven't read this book, I am recommending you to get it now. This is one of the three best investment books in my opinion (the other two are Ben Graham's "The Intelligent Ivestors", and Philip Fisher's "Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits"). Out if these three, this one is my favorite.

Peter Lynch gives you all his experience in this book (also in his other book, "Beating the Street" which is also a good addition). All you need to know about the stock market and how to go about and reaseach all the companies. He gives practical example (from his experience) of each of the theories that he give which is what I like best. And the examples aren't outdated yet so the book is also very interesting to read.

This book inspires me to change my way of researching companies and also becoming a more active and proactive investors/shareholders (such as quesioning/talking with the management, visit and observe the business first hand, see if any analyst is covering the company). I know this soundstedious and might not be suitable strategy for everyone but at some point it makes sense to do this.

Another interesting topic Peter Lynch covers is that sometime great investment are near you (you don't have to look far). Pay more attention to the surrounding or when you go out. For example if you observe one of the retail chain store at the mall is always crowded and people keep buying their products (or the opposite), or when your spouse or kids observe some things about some product or service, that often could lead to a great investment decision.

Lastly, if you don't know who Peter Lynch is. He used to manage the Magellan fund, having average annualized return of almost 30% (which is super). So I would say that this man knows what he is talking about.

Keep the "ten bagger" coming! (which is a phrase he coined in a financial context to refer to a stock that has gone up 900% since the purchase price)

Happy Investing!

The normal one up on wall street book is wonderful. This review pertains to the minibook, which any 6 year old could read in 5 minutes. It's worthless as a book. Buy the real full-length book - it's great.

This book written for the ordinary investor by one of best mutual fund managers of all time help you chose which of the thousands of listed companies to chose for further analysis. Other books such as those written by Frank Cappiello and Benjamin Graham help further to determine if the targeted company is worthy of investment. This book fills a critical investing need. Its advice is sound and balanced and easily understood.