I have spent the past month reading critical editorials of my favorite investors. I wanted to see if there were any holes in my thinking that I could address by segregating the best philosophical contributions of my favorite investors from their editorial asides that do not hold up well to scrutiny.

One of Peter Lynch’s famous ideas, expressed in his book “One Up on Wall Street” and subsequent public appearances, is that you should “buy what you know.” It is a notion that drew considerable criticism from Stephen Taub in his April 18, 1989 review of the book in Financial World titled “Peter Lynch’s ‘10-Bagger’ of Wind.”

Taub’s review included the following: “C’mon, Peter, you know it’s not that easy. Otherwise, in 1984 I would have bought and taken a beating on Pizza Time Theatre after visiting a crowded, noisy franchise in the D.C. suburbs several weeks before Pizza Time … Read the rest of this article!