Learn to Earn: A Beginner's Guide to the Basics ofInvesting and Business - Hardcover

Lynch, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471180033 ISBN 13: 9780471180036

Verlag: Wiley, 1997

Inhaltsangabe

LEARN TO EARN

"Public companies are everywhere, and they surround you from morning to night. . . . Nearly everything you eat, wear, read, listen to, ride in, lie on, or gargle with is made by one. Perfume to penknives, hot tubs to hot dogs, nuts to nail polish are made by businesses that you can own." ―from the Introduction.

McDonald's, The Gap, Circuit City, Gillette, CBS, and thousands more . . . anybody can own part of big and small companies. As companies grow and prosper, you can too. Whenever burgers are eaten, sweaters are purchased, batteries are used, and faces are shaved, you've got a piece of the action. From Alexander Hamilton to Warren Buffett, people have been making big money by investing in the corporations and institutions around them.

Mutual-fund superstar Peter Lynch and author John Rothchild explain what's not normally taught in high school ―how the stock market helps you and how it helps the country. By understanding how and why the stock market works when you buy a share of a company or purchase a mutual fund, you can make informed ―and profitable ―decisions. Whether you're saving for college, a house, a trip, or retirement, there is no better method to secure a sound financial future than to invest. Young or old, there is no better time to start investing than now.

"Investing is fun. It's interesting.

It can put you on the road to prosperity for the rest of your life. . . ."

Learn to Earn gives you the expert guidance you need to make the right start. Lynch and Rothchild cover the gamut on investment fundamentals and principles, from choosing stocks, to picking a broker, to reading an annual report. Learn to Earn reveals how to decipher the stock pages and how to evaluate the pros and cons of the five basic investment vehicles ―savings accounts, collectibles, houses or apartments, stocks, and bonds. Yet, there is much more to investing than just the principles, and there is much more to Learn to Earn than just the fundamentals. Opportunity comes in many forms, from many sources, with many histories. Brimming with stories and parables, Lynch and Rothchild also explain:

• Why the world as we know it would collapse without investors . . .
• How capitalism, from the time of the American Revolution on, has shaped the past, and how that affects us today . . .
• How Coke, Campbell's Soup, Ben & Jerry's, Microsoft, and other big companies got started, who gets rich from them, and how they got that way . . .
• How to know the real story behind the price of a stock

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

PETER LYNCH is the former manager of the Fidelity Magellan Fund andthe coauthor of the bestsellers One up on Wall Street and Beatingthe Street, both of which he wrote with John Rothchild.

JOHN ROTHCHILD is a columnist for Fortune magazine and the authorof A Fool and His Money.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

LEARN TO EARN

"Public companies are everywhere, and they surround you from morning to night. . . . Nearly everything you eat, wear, read, listen to, ride in, lie on, or gargle with is made by one. Perfume to penknives, hot tubs to hot dogs, nuts to nail polish are made by businesses that you can own." —from the Introduction.

McDonald's, The Gap, Circuit City, Gillette, CBS, and thousands more . . . anybody can own part of big and small companies. As companies grow and prosper, you can too. Whenever burgers are eaten, sweaters are purchased, batteries are used, and faces are shaved, you've got a piece of the action. From Alexander Hamilton to Warren Buffett, people have been making big money by investing in the corporations and institutions around them.

Mutual-fund superstar Peter Lynch and author John Rothchild explain what's not normally taught in high school —how the stock market helps you and how it helps the country. By understanding how and why the stock market works when you buy a share of a company or purchase a mutual fund, you can make informed —and profitable —decisions. Whether you're saving for college, a house, a trip, or retirement, there is no better method to secure a sound financial future than to invest. Young or old, there is no better time to start investing than now.

"Investing is fun. It's interesting.

It can put you on the road to prosperity for the rest of your life. . . ."

Learn to Earn gives you the expert guidance you need to make the right start. Lynch and Rothchild cover the gamut on investment fundamentals and principles, from choosing stocks, to picking a broker, to reading an annual report. Learn to Earn reveals how to decipher the stock pages and how to evaluate the pros and cons of the five basic investment vehicles —savings accounts, collectibles, houses or apartments, stocks, and bonds. Yet, there is much more to investing than just the principles, and there is much more to Learn to Earn than just the fundamentals. Opportunity comes in many forms, from many sources, with many histories. Brimming with stories and parables, Lynch and Rothchild also explain:

• Why the world as we know it would collapse without investors . . .
• How capitalism, from the time of the American Revolution on, has shaped the past, and how that affects us today . . .
• How Coke, Campbell's Soup, Ben & Jerry's, Microsoft, and other big companies got started, who gets rich from them, and how they got that way . . .
• How to know the real story behind the price of a stock

Aus dem Klappentext

LEARN TO EARN

"Public companies are everywhere, and they surround you from morning to night. . . . Nearly everything you eat, wear, read, listen to, ride in, lie on, or gargle with is made by one. Perfume to penknives, hot tubs to hot dogs, nuts to nail polish are made by businesses that you can own." —from the Introduction.

McDonald's, The Gap, Circuit City, Gillette, CBS, and thousands more . . . anybody can own part of big and small companies. As companies grow and prosper, you can too. Whenever burgers are eaten, sweaters are purchased, batteries are used, and faces are shaved, you've got a piece of the action. From Alexander Hamilton to Warren Buffett, people have been making big money by investing in the corporations and institutions around them.

Mutual-fund superstar Peter Lynch and author John Rothchild explain what's not normally taught in high school —how the stock market helps you and how it helps the country. By understanding how and why the stock market works when you buy a share of a company or purchase a mutual fund, you can make informed —and profitable —decisions. Whether you're saving for college, a house, a trip, or retirement, there is no better method to secure a sound financial future than to invest. Young or old, there is no better time to start investing than now.

"Investing is fun. It's interesting.

It can put you on the road to prosperity for the rest of your life. . . ."

Learn to Earn gives you the expert guidance you need to make the right start. Lynch and Rothchild cover the gamut on investment fundamentals and principles, from choosing stocks, to picking a broker, to reading an annual report. Learn to Earn reveals how to decipher the stock pages and how to evaluate the pros and cons of the five basic investment vehicles —savings accounts, collectibles, houses or apartments, stocks, and bonds. Yet, there is much more to investing than just the principles, and there is much more to Learn to Earn than just the fundamentals. Opportunity comes in many forms, from many sources, with many histories. Brimming with stories and parables, Lynch and Rothchild also explain:

• Why the world as we know it would collapse without investors . . .
• How capitalism, from the time of the American Revolution on, has shaped the past, and how that affects us today . . .
• How Coke, Campbell's Soup, Ben & Jerry's, Microsoft, and other big companies got started, who gets rich from them, and how they got that way . . .
• How to know the real story behind the price of a stock

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Learn to Earn

A Beginner's Guide to the Basics of Investing and BusinessBy Peter Lynch

John Wiley & Sons

Copyright © 1997 Peter Lynch
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0471180033

Chapter 1

A Short History of Capitalism

The Dawn of Capitalism

Capitalism happens when people make things and sell them for money. Or if they don't make things, they provide services for money. For much of human history, capitalism was an alien concept, because the bulk of the world's population never got their hands on money. Over thousands of years, the average person lived out his or her life without buying a single item.

People worked as serfs, slaves, or servants, for masters who owned the land and everything on it. In return, the workers were given free room in a hut and a tiny plot of ground where they could grow their own vegetables. But they didn't get a paycheck.

Nobody complained about working for zero pay, because there was no place to spend it. Once in a while, a pack of traveling salesmen would come through town and set up a market, but a market was an isolated event. The kings, queens, princes, princesses, dukes, earls, and so forth, who owned all the property -- buildings, furniture, animals, ox carts, everything from gold jewelry to pots and pans -- kept it in the family. It wouldn't have occurred to them to sell off a piece of land, even if they could make a big profit and have less grass to mow. There were no "for sale" signs in front of castles. The only ways to acquire real estate were to inherit it or to take it by force.

In many parts of the world, since the earliest days of Judaism and continuing with Christianity, business for profit was an X-rated activity and lending money and charging interest could get you kicked out of the church or the synagogue and guarantee you an eternal spot in hell. Bankers had an unsavory reputation, and people had to sneak around and visit them on the sly. The idea of benefiting from a transaction, or getting ahead in life, was regarded as selfish, immoral, and counter to God's plan for an orderly universe. Today, everybody wants to improve his or her lot, but if you had lived in the Midge Ages and you said your goal was to "get ahead" or to "better yourself," your friends would have given you blank looks. The concept of getting ahead didn't exit.

If you want more details about what life was like before there were markets and before people worked for a paycheck and had the freedom to spend it, read the first chapter of Robert Heilbroner's classic book The Worldly Philosophers. It's a lot more fun than it sounds.

By the late 1700s, the world had opened up for business with brisk trade between nations, and markets were cropping up everywhere. Enough money was in circulation and enough people could buy things that merchants were making a nice living. This new merchant class of shopkeepers, peddlers, shippers, and traders was becoming richer and more powerful than princes and dukes with all their real estate and their armies. Bankers came out of the closet, to make loans.

Our Pioneer Investors

The history books give many reasons for America's great success -- the favorable climate, the rich soil, the wide-open spaces, the Bill of Rights, the ingenious political system, the nonstop flow of hardworking immigrants, the oceans on each side that protect us from invaders. Backyard inventors, dreamers and schemers, banks, money, and investors also deserve a place on this list.

In the opening chapter of our story as a nation, we read about native Indians, French trappers, Spanish conquistadores, sailors who sailed in the wrong direction, soldiers of fortune, explorers in coonskin caps, and Pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving dinner. But behind the scenes, somebody had to pay the bills for the ships, the food, and all the expenses for these adventures. Most of this money came out of the pockets of English, Dutch, and French investors. Without them, the colonies never would have gotten colonized.

At the time Jamestown got started and the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, there were millions of acres of wilderness land along the eastern seaboard, but you couldn't just sail there, pick your spot, clear a space out of the forest, and start growing tobacco or trading with the Indians. You had to have permission from a king or a queen.

In those days, the kings and queens ran the whole show. If you wanted to go into business in the royal lands, which was most of the land on earth, you had to get a royal license, called a "charter of incorporation." These licenses were the forerunners of the modern corporation, and business people couldn't operate without a charter or a piece of somebody else's charter.

Religious groups such as the Quakers in Pennsylvania got charters. So did groups of merchants, such as the ones that founded Jamestown. And once you had the royal permit to settle the land and start a colony, then you had to look for the financing. That's where the earliest stock market comes into play.

As far back as 1602, Dutch people were buying shares in the United Dutch East India company. This was the world's first popular stock, sold on the world's first popular stock exchange, which operated from a bridge over the Amstel River in Amsterdam. Crowds of eager investors gathered there, trying to get the attention of a stockbroker, and when their pushing and shoving got out of hand, police were called in to restore the peace. The Dutch spent millions of guilders (their version of the dollar) for the privilege of owning shares in United Dutch East India, which today, with so many companies known by their abbreviations, might well be called UDEI.

In any event, the Dutch company took these millions of guilders raised in the stock sale and used the money to outfit a few ships. These ships were sent off to India and points east to bring back the latest Far Eastern merchandise, which was the rage in Europe at the time.

While optimists paid higher and higher prices for the shares of United Dutch East India, figuring the company would make them a fortune, the pessimists bet against the stock through a clever maneuver called "shorting," which was invented in the 1600s and is still being used by the pessimists of today. In the case of United Dutch East India, the optimists turned out to be right, because the stock price doubled in the first years of trading, and the shareholders got a regular bonus, known as the dividend. The company managed to stay in business for two centuries, until it ran out of steam and was dissolved in 1799.

No doubt you've heard how Henry Hudson sailed his ship, the Half Moon, up the Hudson River in what is now New York, looking for a passage to India, thus repeating the navigational mistake made by Christopher Columbus. Have you ever wondered who paid for this wild goose chase? Columbus, we all know, got his financing from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, while Hudson got his from the aforementioned United Dutch East India Company.

Another Dutch enterprise, the Dutch West India Company, sent the first Europeans to settle on Manhattan Island. So when Peter Minuit made the most famous real estate deal in history, buying Manhattan for a small pile of trinkets worth sixty guilders (twenty-four dollars in our money), he was acting on behalf of the Dutch West India shareholders. Too bad for them the company didn't stay in business long enough to get the benefit from owning all that expensive downtown New York office space.

Seeing how the Dutch financed their New World adventures, the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Wiley
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1997
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0471180033
• ISBN 13: 9780471180036
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 275
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Wiley-VCH GmbH; product_safety@wiley.com; ; Boschstrasse 12; Weinheim; 69469; Deutschland