Motley Fool Money - “One Up on Wall Street” Book Club

Episode Date: June 24, 2023

You probably know something that a Wall Street analyst doesn’t, and that gives you an edge. Mary Long and Ricky Mulvey revisit Peter Lynch’s investing classic “One Up on Wall Street: How to Use What You Already Know to Make Money in the Market.” They discuss: - How to research a company beyond earnings statements - One common misunderstanding about Lynch’s style of investing - Where regular investors can find an edge over institutional money Companies discussed: FDX, NVDA, MCD Have a book recommendation for the book club? Let us know at [e-mail] Host: Mary Long Guest: Ricky Mulvey Engineer: Tim Sparks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's all of this, like, think about your edge if you're buying a stock. What is your, like, are you walking in the entrance while everyone else is headed towards the exit or is the reverse true? And if you're doing that, if you're not a part of a herd, you will probably be doing better in the long run. I'm Mary Long, and that's Motley Full Money book club member, Ricky Mulvey. More than 30 years ago, Peter Lynch published the investing classic, one up on Wall Street. Ricky and I revisited the book, and we discuss what investors can take from it today, some parts

that might need a revision and common misunderstandings about Lynch's fabled style of investing. Joining me live in studio in Denver, Ricky Mulvey, to discuss and kick off our inaugural Motley Fool Money Book Club, where we've both read the best-selling book. I almost said novel. One Up on Wall Street, which is sold millions of copies by Peter Lynch. The Peter Lynch novel. The novelization of One Up on Wall Street. Can't wait to see it. where that goes. Okay, Ricky. This is like a fabled investing book, both of us. This is our first time reading it. We dove right in. What were your top line takeaways? Yeah, I think my big takeaway, well, my first big takeaway is that it's funny. Like, I wasn't, it's actually funny.

Like, there's a part on page 20 about long-term investing, quote, long-term investing has gotten so popular, it's easier to admit you're a crack addict than to admit you're a short-term investor, end quote. And I'm like, oh, this guy has zingers. There are savage lines throughout, and also, I I think that it was written in, what, the 80s? Yeah, late 80s. Makes it funny, too. There's a line at one point which reading in 2023 is hysterical. He says, in 1960, there couldn't have been a hotter industry than carpets.

Really? Nice. That is funny. Yeah. And I think you kind of need that for any investing book. There's so many dry personal finance investing books. Some of them are classics, and they are intensely hard to read, just because it is a, It is a, and this is it too.

It's a wall of information that you are getting through in a little over 200, like more than 250 pages. So I'm very glad that he sprinkled in some humor. And it's also good to see where a lot of, I think, modern-day stock investing philosophy comes from. It very much comes from Peter Lynch in this style of investing. But it's sometimes misunderstood, because he makes it very clear in the beginning that the research part, the lived experience that you bring to investing is just the beginning, and that you

also need to actually look at the company. And I think sometimes that's misunderstood as, oh, I saw a bunch of Chewy boxes. That means that's, Chewy's a great investment, which it might be, but that doesn't whole cloth make it a good stock to buy. Totally. But I do think that his focus on research and finding, getting your initial ideas on companies that you're interested in and stocks to potentially invest in, getting that from your real life, He spent so much time hammering that point home.

And I do think that it's really valid, especially if you're investing today, you could be forgiven for thinking, oh, every stock's a tech stock. Because that's so much of what's discussed in financial media and regular media. And Lynch's point is, no, no, no, go out into the world. And he actually talks all about why maybe you shouldn't be investing so much in tech stocks in these hot industries, but actually exploring, boring, dull, perhaps gross industry. Which there's a couple of criticisms with that. People have done fabulously well with tech investing. And in the beginning, one of the things I like is he makes this point of like, you should not listen to financial experts. And I think this is a good book to kind of like take what you need from it. And he also, he definitely has a beef with Wall Street analysts in terms of their expertise on companies.

They don't know as much as they'd like you to think it's a lot of presentation of authority. And you still see that today. I remember listening to a popular, I'll call it a popular show where, Analysts were going around a table explaining that Carvana was a good short candidate. And this was after the stock was like, had completely plummeted. And the stock had completely plummeted. And more than like some crazy amount of the shares were already like being borrowed against. And they're all nodding together.

And it's like, oh, yes, this is the position that everyone's taking. Therefore, that's the position that I'm taking. I also like the way that he frames stock investing into six baskets. Like, generally, I think these hold up. He's like, if you're going to buy a stock, figure out where it fits, and then you can kind of set your expectations for it. So there's six baskets. You've got the slow growers, the stalwarts, the fast growers, the cyclicals, turnarounds, and asset plays. And when you buy a stock, it's like, okay, so where does it fit into these?

And then you can set it based on that. So I think a stalwart is undervalued. If it goes up 40%, then I'm going to sell. which I think that's a more difficult style of investing, but I like how he sets those expectations. And I think for the most part, all of those different categories are pretty self-explanatory, just based on their names alone. But do you want to walk us through and give us a brief, like, quick one-liner about what each of those actually means? Oh, that would be helpful. So, yeah, slow grower is like a more established company that is described by being a slow grower.

Stallwart is, that's kind of where you're looking for your dividend payers. So maybe a McDonald's, Kellogg, that kind of thing, which are referenced in the book. I would say still hold up as those kinds of companies. Cyclicals, he would describe as like a carmaker. So when the economy is doing really well, those companies are doing well, economy goes poorly. They might cut their dividend. They might not be doing so hot. I would actually throw advertising into that bucket as well for a cyclical.

Turnarounds is exactly what it sounds like. Companies gotten into itself into trouble. This is more of a speculative bet in Lynch's mind, and also one that you, have to be intensely patient on, and one where you have to watch the story even more closely, making sure that the company has cash on its balance sheet to weather the storm they're going through. And then asset plays is a little bit more technical. I actually think this is more difficult for a regular investor.

That's where you think that, let's say, a company owns a lot of land next to a railroad, and that is not being accounted for by the market. I think that's a lot. He uses a golf course as an example, is an asset play where, Oh, investors don't see the value of Pebble Beach owning this wonderful golf course. I think that's a lot harder, actually, in the days of the Internet and also just harder for a regular investor because you're playing. I think the market might be a little bit more efficient on those plays.

I'm with you. I think asset plays are more, shall we say, advanced, but also turdorounds, I think, are advanced. That is where you need to really kind of be diving deep into the balance sheet and seeing what other people might have missed. And I guess that's kind of a common theme with all the different types of companies that he walks out, seeing what other people might have missed, but especially true with asset plays and turnarounds. Yeah.

And that's where you want to look at leadership, obviously. And I actually really liked, okay, so the act of judging a CEO is intensely difficult for an investor. And I don't think there's like one way to do it, but one thing he suggests is listening to how a CEO talks about their competition. And if they say nice things about their competition, that's usually a good sign. And I really liked that. I guess that's somewhat related to the turnarounds, but I don't know.

I think Lynch's perspective on management and how you should factor that into your valuation of a company was interesting to me, especially today. We live in this – perhaps this was always true, but it feels especially true today that we live in this era of big personality CEOs and that that's such a driver for a stock price. But a quote that Lynch says throughout the book is, like, I want a company that could be run by an idiot. And I think there's a lot of, there's something totally valid in that, but also, do you want a company that is run by an idiot? And how much should you, how much does management matter when you're looking at a business? Maybe you're looking at the basic business first, but management has to have a play a factor in your evaluation of it, right? Yeah, and there's also an element of this book where I would say take it seriously, but not literally. It was written, what, 30-ish years ago, but I still think a lot of it holds true when he's looking.

for a company, there's a little bit of a treatise against just looking for growth. He says, quote, if you find a business that can get away with raising prices year after year without losing customers, an addictive product such as cigarettes fits the bill, you've got a terrific investment, end quote. And I still think that holds true today. He's very much looking for pricing power more than just top line revenue growth, and even expands it to the point of look for companies taking market share in a declining industry. And you almost have more protection because you don't have to worry about entrance fighting for that market. And I really like that as a frame to look for companies.

Yeah, he talks. He loves fast growers. That's a thing. But he hates fast growing industries. And that was an interesting distinction to me. Like, no, no, no. You don't want to go where everyone else is going. You don't want to go for what's fast.

He talks about, like, being interested in plastic forks and knives. That's a slow growing, maybe even no growing industry. But if you crack the code there, a company itself can see a lot of growth. Yeah, people aren't. The picnicking industry might have some stability to it. And with that, his advice would be avoiding hot stocks and hot industries. You can probably think of two of those for exactly right now in 2023. One of his big pieces of advice is not being afraid to kick the tires.

And not just try to discover companies in your daily life, but going to stores, and trying their food, that kind of thing. And you might be wrong sometimes, but there's also, for a lot of, let's say, like, chain stores, chain retail stores, there's going to be a little bit of, they're going to be very similar throughout the country. So your experience in St. Louis might not be so different from someone's experience in Columbus, Ohio. And with that, like, it's all of this, like, think about your edge if you're buying a stock.

What is your, like, are you walking in the entrance while everyone else is headed towards the exit or is the reverse true? And if you're doing that, if you're not. a part of a herd, you will probably be doing better in the long run. And this goes back to the whole research conversation, but there's a fine line, I think, between focusing, like looking at your own life for stories, which is something that Lynch is obviously advocating for, for stories for companies, and also going where it's kind of gross and where things are dull.

And what's interesting to me about that is, well, if you're looking at your own life, you might not immediately be seeing what's gross or dull. And so you kind of have to look around you, but also go deeper than you would just typically as a regular consumer to look for the company behind what's in front of you. Or that's kind of doing the dirty work that you don't typically see, but that you understand because you're paying attention needs to get done. Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I think all of it is just like tactics. And both of those make sense. And also, there are parts of this book where they might be less applicable to you because he is a,

He is a professional stock picker who owns very clearly 1,500 companies. Insane. And so, it's like, part of his advice is that you want to be able to keep up with the story for all of the companies that you own. And there's kind of this right off line of, like, I own 1,500, but don't you worry about me. And, yes, I will leave it at that. One other thing that I think is kind of misunderstood in the big takeaways is this section on, like, don't pull flowers and don't water the weeds. there's a lot of this where he does, like, there's a section where he suggests doubling down on an underperforming stock, quote, to me, a price drop is an opportunity to load up on bargains from

among your worst performance and your laggards that show promise, end quote. And I think sometimes that can be a little misunderstood, but also there's the advice that if the story changes, you should sell. So, I don't know. Again, this is a book where you want to kind of take what you need from it. Yeah. And that he, in talking about those six different types of companies and realizing up front which category, whatever company you're looking at falls into, he admits after going through all this, well, companies change categories all the time. And so the story changes, that shifts. Maybe that means it's time to leave or it's time to sell. And if a company, a stock has done what you wanted it to when you got in. But it might also mean that it's time to rewrite the story and come up with something new. And that's something that I quite like about this book is he doesn't just drop those six categories on us early on and leave them there. That, like, is carried on throughout the entire.

Yeah, two sections I found really valuable. One is the lies that investors tell themselves. I think many of those are true today. There's the portion where, what is it, a stock does not know that you own it. And the other section I really like is when he breaks down how he views a balance sheet. If you're a stock investor, I think those two sections are in particular or worth visiting. Yeah, and I think when I've read investing books before and there's a section dedicated towards going through the balance sheet, so often it's kind of going through the balance sheet line by line and explaining very blandly and clearly this is what this means. And he doesn't really walk through it line by line. But he still walks through the metrics that

he values and pays attention to in a way that makes sense, but it's very conversational and less formulaic, and I found that appealing, but I also wonder, okay, if you're reading this to really get started, is that helpful? Or do you kind of need more of a background in what these metrics are really mean? Do you need to understand an income statement in a balance sheet before you walk in? I think that's fair. And also, this is not to judge the book with the 20-23 lens, a lot of it is, you know, if you can't figure it on the balance sheet, go to this like paid directory of stocks where they will explain what's going on.

Or call your broker? Or call your broker. There is a lot of love in this book for both the broker and active stock pickers, which makes sense because that's what he does for a living. Or that's what he did for a living. All right. I will say real quick while we're on this topic and what we found helpful. I thought the description of a P.E. ratio was one of the clearest and best that I've read.

The P.E. ratio can be thought of as the number of years it will take the company to earn back the amount of your initial investment, assuming, of course, that the company's earnings stay constant. You've pointed this out that he doesn't really distinguish between forward PE and trailing PE, but I still thought that rather than just talking about this ratio as what it means numerically, but what it means practically, that was quite helpful. Yeah, a lot of the book is How to Think About Investing, and I enjoyed that. Shall we move to quibbles? Let's quibble.

There are some quibbles. We do have some quibbles. The first I mentioned, so I'm going to skip past the fact that he owns 1500 stocks. There are parts of this book, Mary, where you can imagine his co-author, John Rothschild, sitting in an office while Lynch paces around pointing a pen in the air, declaring that this is the law of stock picking. The first of which is, in the beginning of the book, he describes what you need to be a stock investor. Oh, yes, this is good.

the personal qualities required are a little tough. They are, quote, the list of qualities ought to include, patience, self-reliance, common sense, a tolerance for pain, open-mindedness, detachment, persistence, humility, flexibility, a willingness to do independent research, and equal willingness to admit mistakes, and the ability to ignore general panic. In terms of IQ, probably the best investors, fall somewhere above the top 10%, but also below the top 3%.

end quote. That is a lot. And I think sometimes through this kind of thing, you can be imperfect and you can maybe strive for these things, some of which probably are a little repetitive. But, you know, I don't think you have to build a perfect version of who you are as a stock investor before you get started. Yeah. And he talks about timing. And I think a kind of key theme throughout this book is, it's not too late. It's not too early. Just get started. and look in your life and bring that in. And if you're waiting until you achieve human optimization to become a stock picker, I hate to break it to you.

You'll probably never become a stock picker. It's going to be tough. Well, there is one thing that you need to do, and this is another little quibble that I have. So early in the book, he describes his journey where he starts picking stocks as a sophomore in college. He buys Flying Tiger Airlines. It becomes a five-bagger.

And then little by little, he sells it off and look at that. that, he's able to go to Wharton Business School on this Flying Tiger Stock scholarship. How phenomenal. 22 pages later, before you buy a share of anything, one of the personal issues that you have to address is, do you own a house? Before you invest anything in stocks, you ought to consider buying a house, since a house, after all, is the one good investment that almost everyone manages to make, period, end quote. I don't think that's necessarily a bad idea, but I think getting someone starting investing

earlier is better than hitting the checklist before you start. One of the quibbles that I have, and I go back and forth on this, is you've kind of alluded to this earlier on. He says at one point, I'd rather invest in a company that makes drugs, soft drinks, razor blades, or cigarettes, okay, addictive things, minus the razor blades, than a company that makes toys. And I get what he's saying on his face, but I also ask myself, like, what kind of companies do I want to invest in?

How do I want to feel about the company personally before I become an investor? How much does that matter? How much does it not? So, not necessarily a quibble, but that set me down like an internal debate a little bit. Should you buy tobacco stocks? I don't know. Go back and forth. He's a big fan of Philip Morris.

He is. But I think it's more illustrative of like focusing on things that people need to buy. And that's where the razor blades fit in versus like maybe, I guess he would argue against a Hasbro, which has not been a fabulous performer over the past 10 years. The biggest quibble of all. I actually loved this because the book gets a little unhinged around the section of when to call the company's investor relations department. My first thought when I was reading through this was like, thank goodness for the internet

because there was a period of time where if you wanted to know the Wall Street estimates for a company, you had to get on the phone, which you might not know the number of the investor relations department. So you have to call your broker, get the number for the investor relations department, hope they pick up and then tell you the Wall Street analysts for earnings. Now it gets a little unhinged because Lynch has some helpful questions and topics about what to do when you call the Investor Relations Department, including possibly lying to them.

Like, let's say the Investor Relations Department gives you the cold shoulder. What do you do? This is Lynch's advice. Quote, in the unlikely event that investor relations gives you the cold shoulder, you can tell them that you own 20,000 shares and are trying to decide whether to your position. Then casually mention that your shares are held in, quote, street name. That ought to warm things up. Actually, I'm not recommending this, but fibbing is something that people would think of, and the odds of you being caught in it are nil. The company has to take your word for the 20,000 shares because shares held in street name are lumped together by the brokerage firms and stored in undifferentiated masses, end quote. I love this because you can see he's changing his mind mid paragraph.

Actually. And now, I don't know, I just found this entertaining where, let's say, you want to call the Investor Relations Department, but you don't know what to ask them, Mary. What do you do? What do you ask them? Quote, even if you have no script, you can learn something by asking general questions. What are the positives for this year? And what are the negatives? Maybe they'll tell you about a plant in Georgia that lost $10 million last year, but has now been

closed down, or about the unproductive division that's being sold off for cash. Maybe some new product has come along to speed up the growth rate, end quote. That feels a little bit like insider trading. Like, oh, now that you're on the phone, we're going to tell you that we're laying off employees. And my quibble with that also is like, really, do I believe that if I were to call up the investor relations department in today's day and age that I wouldn't be given, like corporate PR, gobbledygook? Like, just packaging everything up really nicely with a boat. Do I really think that I would get something all that different from that? Yeah.

I don't know that I think I would. I think it depends. I think, you know, if you email them with a specific question that they're not discussing in their earnings, they'll probably get back to you with that. But a lot of, and again, this is like, I know we're probably unfairly judging it decades later. You know, those general questions can probably be answered any other places. What were your quibbles? Okay. This is not so substantive, but this book is illustrated with stock charts, and I found them absolutely impossible to read. They have, like, what appears. is to be Peter Lynch's handwriting annotating them, and it's over just dark gridlines. So to me, you could barely even see the direction that the stock was moving. So that was a big quibble that I had, but I digress. It's not terribly substantive. That's more with the editor than Lynch, I think. Who do I got to talk to? And honestly, other than that, we mostly covered it.

But if you, okay, put the editor hat on. What you're reading this book in 2023. What do you add? what do you take away? Okay, there are many examples that he uses to get a single point across, such as experience a product before you buy the stock. We get it in golf courses, we get it in hotels. There seems to be a lot of repetition in some cases to drive home a main theme, which granted, I understand. Sometimes you need multiple examples to communicate something,

but in some cases, I found it a little repetitive. Yeah, I'm with you on this. I loved a lot of the examples. especially when it was company names that I could recognize and that I could look at 40 years later and be like, whoa, he was spot on. That was really rewarding and fun and made this read more like a novel. But there were other times when I thought, okay, it's another example.

I can kind of skip and skim this and go ahead because I know what the point of the story is, and it's one of 75,000 examples in the book. One thing I really likes, though, with the examples is that there is an amount of balance and humility. I think he generally, if he talks about one big winner he's had, he's also discussed a mistake he's made or times he's been wrong about a stock. And you know what? Maybe that is one of the personal qualities you need to be, to be an investor. So I do respect him for walking the walk a little bit on that. Totally. And he also brings up, and this is one of the lines that he says, you know,

people kind of use to stop themselves from investing in the first place. But he says at one point, like, you can't win them all. And you're not, you can't spend all your time regret that you sold, you still made money, but you sold when you could have held on and made even more money. And that's kind of a point that he makes in the examples. He does admit, oh, if I had done X, Y, or Z, I could have benefited in this way or another. But he's also quite humble about it and is like, you shouldn't get hung up on the potential unrealized wins or losses that you missed out on, especially if you still made a good decision at the end of the day. All right, Mary, any like revisions for decades later, anything else you want to talk about?

We know Lynch managed the Magellan Fund. So he is like totally engrossed in this world. But I really appreciated the time that he spent talking about just how much money it costs to kind of keep this whole charade. I don't want to call it a charade, but this whole like operation going. He mentions at one point that it's just like, I forget the exact number, but it's this massive number of money just to like have your fund look one way on January 1, do a whole bunch of shuffling throughout the year. and then have it changed throughout the year, but on December 31st, effectively look exactly how it did with the exact same stocks held as it did in January 1. And I think that that's kind of interesting. He doesn't like, he's in this world, but he also kind of addresses, okay, there's a lot moving around.

And I do this for people. You can do this yourself. That's like pretty core also to the Motley Fool philosophy. Yeah, there's a lot of this book is like, I am in this world, but I am not of this world. I'm just like you. I'm just like you. I think one thing that would be interesting to hear him discuss now is about how much more stocks fluctuate, whether it's Invidia gaining the full market share of McDonald's in one day. FedEx lost, I think, 30% in one day late last year. That might actually make the

case for cycling stalwart's stronger in his mind. I'm curious to, I'd be more curious to read a revision about maybe a more volatile market. in part because of more options trading, and also, like, if any of his philosophy has changed now that trading costs are zero. He does have some thoughts on options. He does. He does consider trading. He compares options trading to alcoholism, which I...

Another one of those savage lines. Raised a little bit of a question mark, but it's towards the end of the book. He puts his thoughts on short selling and options towards the end of the book for a reason, I think. Yeah, it's brief. Mary, overall review. Overall review? I hate number scales, so I'm not going to put it on a number scale. But I think it's definitely a worthwhile read, and it's fabled for a reason.

I think that I understood the Motley Fool philosophy of investing a lot better because I have read this book. And I loved, again, I know I've hit on this before, but I loved the focus on research and how there is a story everywhere you just have to keep your eyes open. That was like the biggest takeaway for me. Yeah, highly recommend. Highly recommend. I would recommend it as well. I think some of the advice is a little dated.

That's fine. Take what you need from it. I think the fundamentals of the book are really strong. And I also really like how it gives you investing frameworks, too. When you write your, there's like suggestions on how to write an investment thesis based on which bucket your stock falls into. And I think that it helps you kind of set those expectations for stock, stock picking and investing really, really well. Yeah, go for it. It's also not that like, parts of it are long, but it's not that long of a read if you listen to a daily investment podcast.

It's worth your time. It's probably worth your time. And if you do give it a read and you haven't already, let us know what you think. Yeah. Podcasts with an S at fool.com podcasts at full.com. As always, people on the program may have interests in the stocks they talk about. And the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. So don't buy ourselves stocks based solely on what you hear.

I'm Mary Long. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.