William Green chats with Joel Tillinghast, an investment superstar who manages about $70 billion at Fidelity. Peter Lynch, who hired Joel at Fidelity, has described him as “one of the greatest, most successful stock pickers of all time.” In this rare, in-depth interview, Joel shares invaluable lessons from a dazzling career in which he’s beaten the market by a stunning 3.7 percentage points a year since 1989.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:40 - How Joel Tillinghast fell in love with investing as a boy of eight or nine.
00:05:55 - What he learned from his first investment, which he’s (so far) held for 54 years.
00:07:16 - Why it’s critical not to overpay, even when you’re investing in a superb business.
00:09:15 - How his approach differs from the strategy of another Fidelity legend, Will Danoff.
00:13:50 - What Joel admires about Cathie Wood.
00:18:56 - What he learned from a disastrous macroeconomic bet using borrowed money.
00:29:56 - Why it’s important to invest in “adaptive companies.”
00:31:20 - How he was hired at Fidelity after cold calling Peter Lynch.
00:37:04 - How young people can break into the investment business at a firm like Fidelity.
00:42:46 - What qualities made Peter Lynch a wildly successful stock picker.
00:53:07 - Why Joel avoids biotech stocks.
00:53:39 - Why it’s critical to know yourself & stick to games where you truly have an edge.
00:56:11 - How he thinks about diversification & why he owns a huge number of stocks.
01:08:05 - How he made more than 1,000 times his money investing in Monster Beverage.
01:15:56 - How emotional exhaustion led him to announce his retirement next year.
01:21:49 - How he was affected by a terrifying experience of an earthquake in Japan.
01:26:39 - How to handle adversity by letting go of what we can’t control.
01:28:50 - What he’s trying to teach Fidelity’s next generation of fund managers.
01:32:24 - What gives Joel satisfaction as he looks back on his extraordinary career.
01:35:45 - What he learned from his beloved father.