Peter Lynch on iPods, The Big Short, and Artificial Intelligence || Q&A Transcript (2025)
"You look dumb in this business," said Lynch. "You are terrific if you’re right 6.5 times out of 10. That’s a great score."
In October 2025, legendary investor Peter Lynch sat down with host Josh Brown for a special episode of The Compound & Friends podcast.
Over the course of this wide-ranging conversation — recorded before a crowd of Fidelity employees and clients — Lynch reflected on timeless lessons from his storied career and shared thoughts on the most pressing issues facing investors today. Enjoy!
Note: I condensed and summarized some of Josh Brown’s questions for space and clarity — but all of Peter Lynch’s comments are presented in full.
Josh Brown: Peter Lynch needs no introduction, of course, but I am going to give him one anyway. Peter is vice chairman of Fidelity Management & Research, the investment advisory firm of Fidelity Investments, where he has worked since 1969.
He is also president and chairman of The Lynch Foundation, which supports programs that focus on education, cultural and historic preservation, health care, and medical research. From 1974 to 1977, Peter was director of research at Fidelity and from 1977 until his retirement in 1990, he was manager of the Magellan Fund at Fidelity. During his tenure at the Magellan Fund, Peter averaged a 29.2% annual return, consistently more than doubling the S&P 500 market index, making it the best performing mutual fund in the world and the best 20-year return of any mutual fund ever. During that time, Magellan’s assets under management increased from $18 million to $14 billion. Ladies and gentlemen, Peter Lynch.
There are a lot of reasons why you are on the Mount Rushmore of the greatest investors of all time. One of them is obviously your track record. Another is how much wisdom you were willing to share with everyone else via books and interviews. But, among your greatest achievements, is the fact that you went out on top — literally at the height of your popularity and your performance — in 1990. That was 35 years ago. You were 46 years old at the time.
I wanted to start by asking you about that decision.
Peter Lynch: I loved the firm. I still love the firm. It’s the best ever put together. My father died at 46 — and I was 46. I remember that number. I was in the office every Saturday at seven o’clock. We said at Fidelity we could get up a basketball game on Saturday and at Wellington they couldn’t play double solitaire on Saturday.
Every day, I enjoyed it. The people were fantastic. We had three daughters and I just wanted to spend more time with my wife and three daughters. And I was lucky enough that Fidelity said, “Just stay on and we’ll give you a role here working with young analysts and fund managers.” So it’s been great. A great company. The best.
Did you ever think about getting back into the game?
I had all of these offers to do a closed-end fund. $1 billion, $2 billion, with 2% fees. The market is up thirty-fold — thirty-fold — since I left. So if I just did average, it would be a $60 billion fund.
The temptation was never great enough, though?
No. I still would be working those same hours. Because one out of every 100 Americans was in Magellan Fund.
Is that right?
One out of every 100 Americans was in Magellan Fund. These are people that $5,000 or $10,000 was very meaningful.
Did the weight of that get to you at all?
Yeah! I had a perfect record. I think the market went down ten times in those thirteen years — and I went down more every time than the market. Every time.
But you somehow managed to get through those moments when you were down. How did you do that?
In ’87, I got letters from people saying, “Hang in there. It will be great. Don’t worry about it.” It was amazing.
Were there ever moments where you looked at something that was happening in the market and said to yourself, “If I were at Magellan, I know exactly what I would be doing right now with this opportunity”? Have you had those moments?
Yeah, I did have that moment when Pets.com came public.1
Pets.com?
I said, “This makes no sense at all.” And then it went up. (Laughs) I can’t short, but there were so many companies of no value and, fortunately, Fidelity didn’t own those damn things. That was a period to say, “Wow! What’s wrong here?!?”
Who are the professional investors or the corporate leaders that you either admire most today or that you learned from during your tenure at Magellan?