Learn to Earn (Peter Lynch, John Rothchild) 0 comments

Although this book bears the name of the legendary investing guru Peter Lynch as one of its co-authors, he is referred to in the third person within the book; also the style of writing is more the John Rothchild of "A Fool and His Money" than the Peter Lynch of "One Up on Wall Street".

The book is for the really greenhorn investor starting out and wishing to have a good perspective of the business world and the (really) basics of investing. I got this book at a fire sale and realised soon after that the investing portion was really quite basic and did nothing for the reader who had consumed Lynch's "One Up". The investing portion is found in one chapter (out of four), where various investment instruments (money market, bonds, real estate, shares) and various ways of investing in stocks (mutual funds, personal investing) are introduced, followed by some stockpicking tips. Hardly enough for the knowledge-hungry reader.

The good part of the book is in its description of business history. In particular, look for Chapter 1 which describes the evolution of business and the stock market through the ages and covers the major manias (eg. South Sea), crashes (eg. the Great Depression), and major personalities who had shaped the evolution (Adam Smith, the robber barons etc). John Rothchild (I believe) has crafted a closely-knitted tale of how each major market collapse has led to improvements and increased regulation of the system eg. the monopolies and massive trusts of the early 20th century led to the enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act; the Great Depression led to the setting up of the SEC for investor protection and to government commitment to increase liquidity (and hence demand) in future market panics.

The book is rather readable and in Chapters 3 and 4, one gets a feel of general business operation, the evolution of a typical company and finally some real-life examples of companies that have soared and of others that have fallen. Strictly this is not an investing book, it is more a book on business (though not business management). Good for bedtime reading, but not for deriving new investing insights.