Multi-baggers

  
 Pter Lych's Interview with PBS



You originated the expression "four bagger", "five bagger" et cetera. What's that mean exactly?


I've always been a great lover of baseball. I mean if you grew up in Boston, you know that the last time we won the World Series, Babe Ruth pitched for us. It was 1918. So it's been a long drought here. So I've always loved baseball and the ten bagger is two home-runs and a double. It's you run around a lot, so it's very exciting.



You made ten times your money. Is a ten bagger.








That's pretty good.



Excellent. You don't need a lot in your lifetime. You only need a few good stocks in your lifetime. I mean how many times do you need a stock to go up ten-fold to make a lot of money? Not a lot.

(CW8888 is doing somewhat differently by including dividends to reach 10 bagger. OK. Cheating a bit. LOL!)


Was that your secret?

Well, I think the secret is if you have a lot of stocks, some will do mediocre, some will do okay, and if one of two of 'em go up big time, you produce a fabulous result. And I think that's the promise to some people. Some stocks go up 20-30 percent and they get rid of it and they hold onto the dogs. And it's sort of like watering the weeds and cutting out the flowers. You want to let the winners run. 

When the fun ones get better, add to 'em, and that one winner, you basically see a few stocks in your lifetime, that's all you need. I mean stocks are out there. When I ran Magellan, I wrote a book. I think I listed over a hundred stocks that went up over ten-fold when I ran Magellan and I owned thousands of stocks. I owned none of these stocks.

I missed every one of these stocks that went up over ten-fold. I didn't own a share of them. And I still managed to do well with Magellan. So there's lots of stocks out there and all you need is a few of 'em. So that's been my philosophy. You have to let the big ones make up for your mistakes.

In this business if you're good, you're right six times out of ten. You're never going to be right nine times out of ten. This is not like pure science where you go, "Aha" and you've got the answer. By the time you've got "Aha," Chrysler's already quadrupled or Boeing's quadrupled. You have to take a little bit of risk.