저자: PeterLynch · 외국인
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시장 격변기에도 주식 투자의 기본 원칙은 동일하다고 강조. 기업의 재무상태(순부채)와 사업 내용을 이해하고 장기 성장 스토리로 보유할 것을 권함. 향후 10~20년간 기업 이익 성장에 따라 주식이 상승할 것으로 봄. 현재 경기는 과거 침체 대비 완만하며 미국 경제는 회복력이 있다고 평가. 기술주는 조사 중이며 현금 가까운 가치의 산업 리더를 관심 대상으로 언급. 일본식 장기 침체와는 다르다고 주장하고 적자 재정을 완충 장치로 긍정 평가.
다듬은 글
Peter, many viewers want to know whether this market is totally different, whether your old view that people should find, buy and hold good stocks is no longer applicable. What do you think? I think the same rules applied 50 years ago, applied 5 years ago, apply 20 years from now. You first of all, you have to know what you own, whether it's a fund or a stock, and you have to have a reason for it.
And you ought to be able to explain to an 11-year-old in two minutes or less why you own this. And and this sucker is going up is not a good reason. I've tried that one. It's not a doesn't work. Speak to the question of trust, which Marty just expressed considerable concern about it. I did at the opening.
What do you think it's going to take to repair it? Time. I think this is really terrible this week. What you mentioned about WorldCom and Anderson. I mean, these are real problems, but you just have to have faith. I mean, we've had this before. I think it's going to take time to heal. This is very serious.
What do you think the antidote is to make sure we get rid of these abuses? I think, you know, people will be punished for it. I think there'll be surveillance. I think board of directors going to be more careful. I think this is what's happened after you've had an incredible economic boom, a lot of easy money around.
People push the envelope. It's sad. It's a you can't legislate integrity. What would you say to investors now who say, "Peter, everything I own's gone down. Uh it's been going down now for a couple of years. People keep saying we're at a bottom, right? Uh, should I get out and go into CDs or gold bars and and opium or whatever?
Right. Right. Well, basically you look now you have three choices. I think if if you're an investor, you can put your money in a money market fund and get 175 one six and and it's tax at a 40% rate or you can buy a 10-year Treasury and get 47 that's taxed at a 40% rate. Or you can have some equities and I think stocks over the next 10 years will do a lot better than 47 or 17.
So I would have some of my money. Now, it's up to the person to decide how much they want to have in the stock market. For some people, 10% is aggressive. For some people, 50% is the right amount. It's a personal decision, and you can't go by these rules that if you're 25, you should be 100%. And if you're 45, you should be 50%.
If you're 60, you should be zero. And I guess burping a lot. I don't know what the rules are in people at 60, but they that I hate those rules. I think they're pathetic. Why are you confident that stocks will be a lot higher in 10 years? Well, they're not lottery tickets. I mean, when you own a stock, it's a share of a company.
And I think companies are going to make a lot more money in 10 years, a lot more money in 20 years. And that's that's why they go up. That's the only reason. Some companies don't do well. Zero Hawks make a lot less money than they did 30 years ago. It's a lot less, but a lot most more companies are in the work.
Speak to the question of trust, which Marty just expressed considerable concern about it. I did at the opening. What do you think it's going to take to repair it? Time. I think this is really terrible this week. What you mentioned about WorldCom and Anderson. And I mean these are real problems, but you just have to have faith.
I mean, we've had this before. I think it's going to take time to heal. This is very serious. What do you think the antidote is to make sure we get rid of these abuses? I think, you know, people will be punished for it. I think there'll be surveillance. I think board of directors going to be more careful.
I think this what's happened after you've had an incredible economic boom, a lot of easy money around, people push the envelope. It's sad. It's a you can't legislate integrity. What would you say to investors now who say, "Peter, everything I own's gone down. Uh, it's been going down now for a couple of years.
People keep saying we're at a bottom." Right. Uh, should I get out and go into CDs or gold bars and opium or whatever? Right. Right. Well, basically, you look now, you have three choices. is I think if if you're an investor, you can put your money in a money market fund and get 175 16 and and it's taxed at a 40% rate or you can buy a 10-year Treasury and get 47 that's taxed at a 40% rate.
Or you can have some equities and I think stocks over the next 10 years will do a lot better than 47 or 17. So I would have some of my money. Now it's up to the person to decide how much they want to have in the stock market. For some people 10% is aggressive. For some people 50% is the right amount.
It's a personal decision and you can't go by these rules that if you're 25, you should be 100% and if you're 45, you should be 50%. If you're 60, you should be zero. And I guess burping a lot. I don't know what the rules are in people at 60, but they that I hate those rules. I think they're pathetic.
Why are you confident that stocks will be a lot higher in 10 years? Well, they're not lottery tickets. I mean, when you own a stock, it's a share of a company. And I think companies are going to make a lot more money in 10 years, a lot more money in 20 years. And that's that's why they go up. That's the only reason.
Some companies don't do well. Zero Hawks make a lot less money than they did 30 years ago. It's a lot less, but a lot most more companies are earning a lot more money than they were. And that's why stocks go up. Corporate profits have gone up 40fold since World War II. Stock markets up 40fold. It's 25 years since you started running Mellin.
You had been director of research for Fidelity. You've been with them since I guess 69. What are the most conspicuous mistakes you've seen investors make? Well, I think not looking at the balance sheet, and this mistake I've made. If you look at, you know, if you look at a person's balance sheet, you look to see what the assets they own, their houses, they own a house, if they own a car, what debt they have, and take that away.
That's what your net worth is. You should do that with a company. And I've seen I've seen investors look at companies, I mean, let's say looking at two companies, they're very depressed. They're each at $4 a share, but one company's and they're each losing a couple million dollars a quarter. One company is 100 million in cash and no debt, and one company has no cash and 100 million in debt.
They're about to blow taps on the second company. So you and you could do this if you got through eighth grade math and you get anywhere near 8 and 8 equals 16. You can do this. Look at a company's financial position. It's impossible to go bankrupt. You don't have any debt. I mean you get the Irving G.
Thberg lifetime achievement award. I think they're bad manager. I mean how could you do that? When you were actively managing money, you presumably were under the same pressures as other fund managers to show performance results. Did that incline you to sell too quickly sometimes? Well, I think my greatest mistakes are I you know it's it's funny on a stock all you can lose is 100%.
I've done that. But your great mistakes is selling a good company and it doubles, then it triples, and it quadruples because you make a lot of mistakes. And so those ones that go up 10fold, I call them the 10 baggers. So some of my mistakes just saying, "Oh my god, this stock is too high." And I was wrong.
And you had to figure out what inning am I in this baseball game. I sold Toys R Us way too early. It went up 20fold after I sold. I did the same thing at Home Depot. Those are probably my two greatest mistakes ever made. When should you sell? Well, you ought to find out why you bought a stock. If you're saying it's a cyclical company and they're doing poorly and they're doing awful, you wait till things are getting better and they're doing terrific and then you sell it.
But with a growth company, you have to say Walmart's case 10 years after they went public, you could have bought the stock and made 500 times your money. You see, they still were only in 15% of the United States and you they could say, why can't they go to 17? Why can't they go to 19? Why can't they go to 23?
So for the next four decades, they went around the country. So you have to say to yourself in this stock, I have a 10ear story, a 20-year story. You ought to be able to write that down and follow that. That's what I do with the company. And that's your decision. That's how you sell it. We have a novel element from many investors today in the trust issue.
Yes. We also have security problems that we didn't traditionally have in America. Have they changed the way you pick and believe in stocks? No. You still buy a company and you buy a company to grow and if it's a textile company or it's a electronics company, a software company, you better understand what they do and and if they do well, the stock will do well no matter what happens to the market.
If the Dow Jones today was a thousand or 500, you would have made a lot of money in McDonald's. You would have made a lot of money in Johnson Johnson. You would have made a lot of money in Gillette. These companies earnings have gone up a lot the last 30 years. And if the market was 50,000, you would have lost money in Burlington Industries.
I recommended that in 1969, I think it's I think it's gone from 34 to two with no stock splits because the earnings been terrible. Well, your modesty actually makes an important point, which is people with the best batting averages in the world dump out a thousand. I sometimes get angry mail particularly during bare markets saying so and so recommended such and such and it went down.
Well, how often did you come up with a clinker? Well, this this is a funny business. You don't have to be right even five times out of 10. If the times you're right, you make a double and triple. It offsets all those times you lose 20 or 30%. So, when you buy a psycho say yourself, how much can I lose and how much can I make?
And you ought to be able to make a lot because stocks are risky. I mean, look, look at how much we lost on AT&T. Look how much we lost on Xerox. These were quality companies. You know, you can lose a lot in a stock. So you got to say yourself, how much can I make? Because I want to buy a stock. If I'm right, I'm going to make a double or triple.
Does your own confidence ever get shaken every day? I think the market's going to go up. You know, I keep calling a lot my company. So I keep calling the company. You once said to me that you spent all your time looking at companies, analyzing them as businesses, and you didn't spend a lot of time worrying about the economy.
Do you have a view on the economy now? Well, I I look at the economy. I look historically economy. I don't look at the future. I mean, that's weather forecasting. I look I look at the economy backwards. See what's happening. And the economy looks very good to me right now. The housing market looks terrific.
I mean, the the auto market looks good. The consumer looks good. There's a lot of good elements to it. And if this is we've had nine recessions since World War II, and they've averaged usually about a 2% decline in the workforce. You know, it's terrible. There's about a million and a half people have lost their jobs in this decline.
But that would only be about a 1% decline in the workforce. So, so far this has been a mild recession. Has been mild in technology. Has been mild in telecom. Has been mild for, you know, for the company's making fiber optics. But it's been a it's been a normal recession. And I would never bet against the American economy.
It's powerful. You were never a big fan of the technology group. Are you now? I've actually started looking. I'm a little early on these things. I started looking at in January and February and I've been researching the companies. Um they're very complex because they're they're they're if there's a thousand technology companies, they're all a little bit different.
They're not like a bunch of banks that are very similar. So you have to be careful. I'm looking at companies that are selling close to cash. They're an industry leader and they're down 95%. All our panelists are a little different, too. Let's turn it over to them. Starting with money swag. Well, let's talk about a little different market.
First, we had a bubble here in NASDAQ. It collapsed. It went down about as much as the Japanese market did. Uh the economy is iffy. Some people are comparing our situation now to Japan, god forbid, 10 years ago. Uh what do you think? Well, I think that's a very interesting correlation. I mean, the Japanese market and economy has been incredibly weak.
They've had a 12-year recession, but there you had a real problem with the banking system. You basically had, let's say, average building of commercial building went from 50 million to 500 million. A bank then made 110% loan against it, a $550 million loan. Then the building went back to 50 and they're stuck with a $450 million loan.
And the the government never cut taxes. They actually raised taxes. I mean, they did everything wrong and they and the companies didn't cut costs. So, they just sort of sat there hoped things would get better. We our our companies act fast. They start cutting costs real quickly. And and our government is fortunately, this is rare in our history.
We went into this recession running a surplus. First time ever. The system is supposed to be in our country. We should run surpluses in the good times and then in the bad times we run deficits. Well, guess what? It's working, right? They didn't have that in Japan. In Japan now, it's wasted 12 years.
I don't think this has all I don't look to me at all like Japan. We're we're near we're starting to get better already. Good. Peter Lou asked you a question about sort of the typical investor mistakes and and when you started in the business I know the average investor held mutual funds for you know 16 17 years and now it's down to less than two years do you think that's one of the problems if time horizon has gotten too short well I think also what they have to say what do I want do I need the money in a year do you need the money in five years you're a terrible investor you need the money in the year if you need for college to send your kids there for a wedding you're not going to be a good investor then you have to do some homework and say should I have 10 growth funds that's silly you say what do I want I want two or three growth funds.
What's my mix that I like? And you want to decide is aggressive. You know, some people aggressive is 50%. So I would say people and some people might want to have foreign funds. It's like a menu at a restaurant. They should look at over and decide what they like and then stay with it. And if one group does well for two or three years, the next bunch of money they add to, maybe they should add to the group that's underperforming.
Over time, different categories work out to be about the same. So you get whipsaw. If you're all in one area, does poorly for three years, you say, "Get me out of that." You go into some other area and that does badly for three years. You could be in it forever and never make money. Peter, does this market remind you of any that you've been through before?
I would say 90 the 90 bare market is very similar in many ways. I mean, I just think Saddam Husseim takes over Kuwait. You know, we sent 500,000 troops to Saudi Arabia. All the people are saying it's going to be Iraq's the third largest army in the world. It's going be another Vietnam. We hit a recession.
We had all these banks in trouble. Right now our banks are in terrific shape which a major positive. So that was a very scary environment and we had defaults. I mean it was an ugly environment. Everybody was afraid. So I think that was a very similar market and I think 8182 was ugly too. We had you know 20% prime rate doubled in inflation double digit in unemployment.
So th those are scary markets. And then top it all off the 7374 market as you remember the nifty50. We had that we had it in technology stocks. So we had 95% declines. And you know, so we've we've combined three markets into one special case. It's been very fast. We have less than a minute left. Those those who were who are less sanguin about the economy than you've just expressed often cite the recent declines in the dollar and the shift from surplus to deficit as negatives.
You seem to indicate that they're positives. Why? Well, I think I think the government running a deficit is terrific. That's the way it should work. I mean, when they were running a $200 billion surplus, which they were, they're taking 200 billion out of the economy. Now the government's running a hundred billion deficit.
It's pumping 100 billion in. It's a cushion. So, you don't see a double dip recession coming? I don't know. I I can't predict the future. That's a healthy thing to have buffers in the economy. We've had nine recessions in World War II. We've got out every one of them. The system works. If you could give one sentence of advice to scared investors right now, what would it be?
I think you ought to see some kids, you know, hire an 8-year-old, hire a six-year-old, just watch them. They don't know who Alan Greenspan is. They don't know about the shape of the yield curve. They're optimistic about the future. We'll be fine for the next 30, 40 years. Let's hope you're right, Peter. Courage and persistence, they've worked in the past.
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