"How To Make Millions In A Market Crash" — Peter Lynch

but if you didn't understand the company if you're just buying on the fact the stock had come from 26 to 16 and then again 10 what would you do when it went to nine what would you do it went to eight what would you do when went to seven this is the problem that people have is they sell stocks because they didn't know why they bought it then it went down and they don't know what to do now you flip a coin you walk around the block you know what do you do today we are learning from one of the greatest investors in history peter lynch was a legendary mutual fund manager of fidelity magellan fund he achieved a 29 annual return absolutely crushing the stock market over 13 consecutive years during that period he managed to grow the fund size from 18 million to 14 billion dollars afterwards he retired early at 46 years old and now mr lynch is sharing with us how to make millions during a stock market crash a very important thing to know in today's economic conditions you should study history and history is the important thing you learn from what you learn from history is the market goes down it goes down a lot the math is simple there's been 93 years a century this is easy to do the markets had 50 declines of 10 or more so 50 declines in 93 years but once every two years the market falls 10 we call that a correction that means that's a euphemism for losing a lot of money rapidly we call it a correction and uh uh so 50 declines in 93 years about once every two years the market falls 10 all those 50 declines 15 have been 25 or more that's known as a bear market we've had 15 declines in 93 years so every six years the market's gonna have a 25 decline that's all you need to know you need to know the market's gonna go down sometime if you're not ready for that you shouldn't own stocks and it's good when it happens if you like a stock at 14 it goes to six that's great you understand the company you look at the balance sheet they're doing fine you're hoping to get to 22 with it 14 to 22 is terrific 6 to 22 is exceptional so you take advantage of these declines they're going to happen no one knows when they're gonna happen it would be very people tell you about it after the fact that they predicted it but they predicted it 53 times and uh so you can take advantage of the ball to the market if you understand what you own one of the things i find a rule like a couple rules i want to throw up that i find useful excuse me is a lot of times people buy on the basis the stock has gone down this much how you know how much further gonna go down i remember when polaroid went from 130 to 100 people said here's this great company great record if it ever gets below 100 you know just buy every share you know and it did get below 100 a lot of people bought on that basis saying look it's got 135 to 100 it's not 95 what a buy within a year it was 18 and this is coming with no debt i mean as it comes it was just so overpriced it went down uh i did the same thing in my uh i think my first or second year fidelity kaiser industries had gone from 26 a share to 16. i said how much lower can it go it's 16. so i think we bought one of the biggest blocks ever on the new york on the american stock exchange of kaiser industries at 14.

i said you know it's gone from 26 to 16. how much lower going to go well at 10 i called my mother and said mom you got to uh look at this kaiser industries i mean how much lower can it go it's gone from 26 to 10. well it went to six it went to five it went to four and went to three and uh now i understand rapidly i would probably be still caddying or being working at the stopping shop but i it happened fast i was able to this was compressed and at three i figured out you know there's something very wrong here because kaiser industries owns forty percent of kaiser steel they own forty percent of kai's aluminum they own thirty two percent of kaiser cement they own kaiser broadcast and they own kaiser santa gravel kaiser engineers they own jeep they own business after business and they had no debt now i learned this very early this might be a breakthrough for some people it's very hard to go bankrupt if you don't have any debt it's tricky some people can approach that it's a it's a real achievement but they had no debt and the whole company at three was selling at about 75 million and that point it was equal to buying one boeing 747 i said there's something wrong with this company selling for 75 million i was a little premature at 16 but i said everything's fine and eventually this worked out and they what they did is they gave away all their shares to their shareholders they passed out shares and kind of meant they passed their chairs and caused aluminum they passed out their public shares and kaiser steel they sold all the other businesses and you get about fifty dollars a share and but if you didn't understand the company if you're just buying on the fact the stock had gone from 26 to 16 and then it got to 10 what would you do when it went to nine what would you do when went to eight what would you do one went to seven this is the problem that people have is they sell stocks because they didn't know why they bought it then it went down and they don't know what to do now if you flip a coin you walk around the block you know what do you do are you concerned about the volatility in the financial markets today do you think something needs to be done to reduce it i i love volatility i think i remember when 1972 the market went from uh down dramatically and taco bell went from 14 to one they had no debt they never had a restaurant close and uh i started buying at seven but i kept on to it and it went to one and uh it was the largest position of magellan in 1978 was bought out for by 42 dollars by pepsi cola i think would have gone to 400 if they didn't buy it out i think volatility is terrific i think it is very i think these callers are very important i don't think the market going up 80 points one day and down 80 the next uh is a good thing for the public i think that's not a very good thing but i think all these callers and all these other things to keep the volatility down each day is important but the market's going to go up and down the human nature hasn't changed a lot in 25 000 years and some event will come out of left field and uh the market will go down or the market will go up so volatility will occur and markets will continue to have these ups and downs i think that's a great opportunity if people can understand what they own if they don't understand what they own they know mutual funds trying to figure out mutual funds they own and keep adding to it over basic corporate profits have grown about eight percent a year historically so corporate profits double about every nine years the stock market ought to double about every nine years so i think the next market's about 3 800 today 3 700 i'm pretty convinced the next 3 800 points will be up it won't be down the next 500 points the next 600 points don't know which way to go so the market ought to double in the next eight or nine years it ought to double again in eight or nine years after that because profits will go up eight percent a year and and stocks will follow that's all there is to it october has always been a special month i remember in 1987 i was very uh you know i was very convinced that mark was not not in trouble and i didn't worry about things and karen and i had planned this great uh golf vacation to ireland and we're gonna visit one course and save a little house and there's another go along the west coast of ireland play golf and we left on a thursday night and the market went down 55 points that day which was not too good and the next day we got to ireland because the time difference we'd complete our day and i got back to hotel they called in the market going down 112 on friday i said to carolyn uh you know i think if the if the market goes down on monday uh you know we're gonna have to go back and uh and so we might as well we stayed there for the weekend and uh and on monday the market went down 580 points and my fund went from uh i think 12 billion to 8 billion and uh that gets your attention you know two working days you know i said at the end of this week i'd be uh have no fun now there wasn't a lot i could do i mean here i was on monday because the market uh didn't open you know by 12 o'clock it was in ireland it was still uh seven o'clock in new york so we did spend that day and we uh we did we played around golf in the morning then we went somewhere and so watched the market uh deteriorate and um and uh i did come back there wasn't nothing i could do i mean just uh nothing i do about it but i think my shareholders they called up and they said what's lynch doing they say well he's on the sixth hole and he's uh you know he's even parked now but he's in a trap this could be you know this could be a triple bogey here this could be a could be a beginning and uh i don't think i don't think that's exactly what they want to hear that so i could do something about this damn thing so i came back home and i suffered with everybody else and and uh fortunately uh i was very consistent uh my uh the market went down when i ran magellan on 13 years the market went down nine times and every time the mark went down magellan went down i was nine for nine and uh you know because it's great it's very important it's another one of these numbers you got to write down if you put a thousand dollars in a stock all you can lose is a thousand i've done that several times and uh but if you're right you can make five thousand ten thousand twenty thousand so this business you don't have to be right one out two times you can be right one out of four it's a long time the times you're right you know the company's doing well you know they're doing a great job and you add to it or at least you don't sell it which is a terrible tragedy so you can make more money on the upside so i just i just roll those out and i'll now flip a coin to tell you where the market will go to 4 000.