After numerous recommendations finally yesterday I got myself the investing bestseller by Peter Lynch named One Up On Wall Street. I have only read first few pages but I must say that it really is quite educational yet entertaining reading.

For those of you who don’t know Peter Lynch, he was the man behing the success of Fidelity Investmnets fund and his long term investing approach is not entirely unlike the value investing way of Warren Buffett. What struck me the most so far is the way Lynch describes the day trading for living phenomenon:

“…the odds against making a living in the day-trading business are about the same as the odds against making a living at racetracks, blackjack tables, or video poker. In fact, I think of day trading as at-home casino care. The drawback to the home casino is the paperwork. Make twenty trades per day, and you could end up with 5,000 trades a year, all of which must be recorded, tabulated, and reported to the IRS. So day trading is casino that supports a lot of accountants.â€?

Of course Lynch is a well known long term investor (which is why I picked up his book after all) so such views could be expected, however given his investing track record, these opinions are also hard to disregard. For me personally this works as yet another confirmation that a patient, long term investing approach is the best investing direction one can take.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 29th, 2007 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Miscalleanous, My View. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.