Peter Lynch ran the Fidelity Magellan Fund for more 20 years, during which time Magellan was the number one ranked general equity fund in America. His books One Up on Wall Street and Beating the Street are filled with his accumulated wisdom and in Beating the Street he gives a fairly detailed account of how he did his analysis.

The first thing that will strike new investors as strange is that Lynch's methods are actually so simple that mostly an amateur could use them entirely unchanged and with the same results. Lynch does not use any gimmicky computer programs, either to pick stocks or optimize the portfolio for volatility. Each and every company invested in by Magellan was considered on its own individual merits, and the managers of Magellan generally did their very best to completely avoid investing in anything that consensus opinion from the average Wall Street analyst declared was a good thing.

Lynch sums up his points in Beating the Street with a number of humorous "Peter's Principles", which appear here. Do take the time to read Beating the Street in its entirety though, as he makes a number of very interesting points throughout.

It is amazing to reflect how little systematic knowledge Wall Street has to draw upon as regards the historical behavior of securities with defined characteristics. We do, of course, have charts showing the long-term price movements of stock groups and individual stocks. But there is no real classification here, except by type of business. Where is the continuous, ever growing body of knowledge and technique handed down by the analysts of the past to those of the present and future? When we contrast the annals of medicine with those of finance, the paucity of our recorded and digested experience becomes a reproach. We lack the codified experience which will tell us whether codified experience is valuable or valueless. In the years to come we analysts must go to school to learn the older established disciplines. We must study their ways of amassing and scrutinizing facts and from this study develop methods of research suited to the peculiarities of our own field of work. — Ben Graham, 1946.

What Works on Wall Street, by James P. O'Shaughnessy has been around only since 1998, but has already been hailed as one of the great classics of investment. O'Shaughnessy was the first person not an employee of Standard and Poors to gain access to the S&P Compustat Database, the most important and complete repository of fundamental and technical stock data in the world. The project that inspired this book was to computer backtest the data using various fundamental formula searches in order to find out what styles of investment have actually made profits in the last 50 years or so. It is a huge book, 366 pages long, so this little summary here hardly does it justice. This book is not just good, it is downright momentous, an amazing book that cuts through a century of Wall Street lore to show exactly what techniques pay off, you absolutely must get a copy and read it!!! In very brief form, this is what O'Shaughnessy found.

The high-profile implosions of America’s top corporations like Enron, and the questionable accounting methods of Arthur Andersen, forces investors to become wary of a company’s ethical standards, and creates a need for clear warning signals and information to be able to protect oneself. Digging deep into the footnotes of annual reports, and searching for the true story of what really went on with those inflated numbers, this book educates the investor in the complicated game of deception played by the inner circle of this giant. The bigger they are, the harder they fall indeed.

This book is a guide to help procrastinators, the financially challenged, and every one who worries about investing their money to create a nest egg for retirement or for sending children to college. Dr. Paul B. Farrell describes the simple no-hassle, low stress, time-saving way of successful investing in lazy portfolios that work in the background allowing most people to do more important things. This book tells the reader why he does not need a stockbroker or even a financial planner; that there is the couch potato type no-brainer easy to understand investment techniques; why the reading investor never have to pay a brokerage commission again; how the reader can use as few as two mutual funds to manage the reader’s investments and virtually forget it; and how to adjust the reader’s investments once a year in less time than it takes to microwave a potato.

A great number of people today venture into real estate the way millions of people flocked to the gold rush at the beginning of the century. We've seen and heard how many of them dramatically made millions, even billions, after some time. Interestingly enough, we've also seen and heard about how some of them emerged from the business, broke and practically wiped-out. It was inevitable that hearts would go out to those unfortunate souls. The question remains, “What went wrong?”

This inspiring new book is for all those who have dreamed of becoming a pro in real estate and make millions. This book is also for those people who merely wish to do something profitable and worthwhile during their spare time. Based on the ideas and techniques gathered in real estate investing, and conducting seminars, authors Mike Summey and Roger Dawson offer step-bystep, doable, and practical guidance on how to become a hapless victim in the game of real estate investing. No matter what age group or class would-be investors belong to, Summey and Dawson believe that with right knowledge and the right attitude, it is never too late to get started on the way to becoming the next weekend millionaire and eventually achieve financial freedom.