The Powerful Chart That Made Peter Lynch 29% A Year For 13 Years

6/26/2013 

In his excellent book One Up on Wall Street, Peter Lynch, the best mutual fund manager ever, revealed a powerful charting tool that helped him to achieve a gain of 29.2% in his portfolios for 13 years. In this chart, Peter Lynch drew the stock price and the earnings per share together and aligned the value of $1 in earnings per share to $15 in stock price. He wrote in pages 164-165 of the book:

“A quick way to tell if a stock is overpriced is to compare the price line to the earnings line. If you bought familiar growth companies – such as Shoney’s, The Limited, or Marriott – when the stock price fell well below the earnings line, and sold them when the stock price rose dramatically above it, the chances are you’d do pretty well.”

To see how this Peter Lynch Chart works, we applied it to the top holdings of Warren Buffett, the most successful investor ever: Wells Fargo (WFC), Coca-Cola (KO), IBM (IBM), American Express (AXP) and Wal-Mart (WMT). The Peter Lynch Chart of Wells Fargo is below, where the green line is the Price Line, and the blue line is the Peter Lynch Earnings Line. When the Price Line is well below the Peter Lynch Earnings Line, the stock is a buy.

Among these top five holdings of Warren Buffett, we found that Wells Fargo is the most undervalued. Wal-Mart and IBM are about fair valued. We then compared this result with the trading activities of Warren Buffett. To our surprise, we found that Warren Buffett was buying Well Fargo heavily and adding to Wal-Mart and IBM.

Is this just a coincidence? Does Warren Buffett only buy the stocks that are undervalued as measured by the Peter Lynch Chart? Is Warren Buffett using this powerful tool, too?

We don’t know the answer to the question. But we know that great minds think alike!

Now this powerful charting tool is available at GuruFocus.com. You can create it in just two clicks for any of the more than 50,000 stocks covered by GuruFocus.com.

We applied this tool to the portfolios of George Soros, Carl Icahn and other investment Gurus tracked at GuruFocus.com. We even developed a screen for this strategy that makes it easy to find stocks that are traded well below Peter Lynch’s Earnings Line.

Certainly buying stocks that are traded well below their Earnings Line is not the only criterion Peter Lynch used to achieve his 29%-a-year results. We also added his other requirements such as strong balance sheet and solid growth into the screener. When I limit my Peter Lynch screen to only the stocks that are owned by Warren Buffett, I found eight other companies that Warren Buffett owns and Peter Lynch would be buying. All of these eight companies have strong balance sheet, solid growth and reasonable valuations. One of them is of course Wells Fargo. Warren Buffett loves it so much that he made it his largest holding.

Now both Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch are working for me! I have added these stocks to my watch list.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gurufocus/2013/06/26/the-powerful-chart-that-made-peter-lynch-29-a-year-for-13-years/

Arithmetic vs logarithmic: Difference between charts plotted using these two scales

Narendra Nathan, ET Bureau Aug 27, 2012,

When data is plotted as a chart, it can be done using two types of scales—arithmetic or semi-logarithmic. The difference in scale can completely alter the shape of the chart even though it is plotted using the same set of data. Consider the three charts given below, which use theSensex data since its inception in 1979 till now. But why does one need to use the semi-logarithmic scale when arithmetic scale is commonly used for plotting charts. This is in order to overcome the inherent weakness of the arithmetic charts.

Arithmetic charts

In arithmetic or linear charts, both X and Y axes scales are plotted at an equal distance. For instance, the Sensex movement from 15,000 to 16,000, that is, an increase of 1,000 points, is treated as equal to the Sensex movement from 16,000 to 17,000, which is another 1,000 points.

This works fine when the data range is small, but will distort the picture when the range is big. Consider the Sensex movement from 20,000 to 21,000, which was a mere 5% increase, but the movement of the first 1,000 points in the Sensex, that is, from 100 to 1,100, was a whopping 1,000% increase. By treating them as equal, the arithmetic chart distorts the picture. This explains why it seems as if the Sensex was almost flat for the first 10 years of its existence in the arithmetic chart.

Logarithmic charts

Logarithmic charts are commonly used in science and engineering when you need the data to be displayed accurately. This is also a necessity when the data that needs to be plotted varies widely. In such charts, the logarithm of the data value (Sensex in the given example) is used as a base to fix the gaps between each data points on the Y axis. This process makes sure that the percentage increase between two data values is depicted clearly. To understand this in a better manner, consider the logarithmic charts given below. Note that the gap between 100 and 200 (100% increase) is equal to the gap between 200 and 400 (next 100% increase). The same gap is maintained for the Sensex increase from 1,000 to 2,000 or from 10,000 to 20,000. Semi-logarithmic charts

In logarithmic charts, both the X and Y axes are plotted using the logarithmic scale. Since there is no possibility of distortion in the X axis (where the date range is plotted), we can continue to use the arithmetic scale while plotting the share price data. In other words, the logarithmic scale is used only along one axis, that is, the Y axis, and therefore, these charts are called semi-log charts.

Advantages

The semi-logarithmic charts can be of immense help while plotting long-term charts, or when the price points show significant volatility even while plotting short-term charts. This is because the chart patterns will appear as more clear in semi-logarithmic scale charts. For example, the very long-term uptrend line in the Sensex is clearly visible in the semi-logarithmic chart (see Semi-logarithmic scale with trendline), not in the arithmetic chart. Similarly, the Sensex was constrained in a slightly upward moving channel for 13 years in the middle, that is, between 1992 and 2005, and this is clearly visible only in the semi-logarithmic chart (see Semi-logarithmic scale with channel). One can plot the charts in the semi-logarithmic scale to easily identify several other chart patterns, some of which we shall explain in the coming weeks.

 

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-08-27/news/33425208_1_charts-sensex-arithmetic

Semilogarithmic-scale line graphs

If we use a logarithmic scale on the y-axis and if the x-axis remains the same (arithmetic scale), we create a semi-logarithmic scale line graph. With a logarithmic scale on the y-axis we represent the relative change of y over time rather than its absolute change over time. Semi-logarithmic scale line graphs are used to present and interpret rates of change over time rather than magnitude of change. They also allow showing very different magnitudes and ranges of rates between two lines (e.g. high incidence and low mortality rates for the same disease).

Semi-logarithmic scale paper:

• On the y-axis, intervals are logarithmic and no longer arithmetic.
• There are several cycles of tick marks on the y-axis. Each corresponds to an equal distance on the y-axis.
• The values of one cycle are 10 times greater than the values of the previous cycle.
• Within a cycle the 10 tick marks are not equally distant (distance from 2 to 3 is different than distance from 3 to 4). Their progression is geometric, not arithmetic.
• The y axis can cover a large range of y values.

The following characteristics are noteworthy:

• The slope of the line indicates the rate of change (the relative change) of y over time.
• A horizontal straight line indicates no change.
• An upward or downward straight line slope indicates a constant rate of increase or decrease in the measured indicator (e.g. rate) over time.
• Two parallel lines indicate similar rate of change over time.

What every investor must know about stock market charts

March 23, 2010
Posted by: Pat McKeough Filed in: Market Analysis

Technical analysis (or reading stock market charts) can be a useful tool for picking stocks. However, some investors choose to make investment decisions based solely on charts. That’s when technical analysis can lead you to make poor (and sometimes disastrous) choices.

Technical analysis is the process of analyzing a stock’s price movements in an attempt to determine its future price. It focuses on how a stock has behaved in the past, and the clues that could offer about future price movements.

It’s crucial to keep stock market charts in perspective

We always look at stock market charts when we select stocks to recommend in our newsletters and investment services. And some successful investors find it helps to know a little about charts. But if you rely on charts at all, you should view them as just one of many things to consider when you make investment decisions. Here are two reasons why:

1. Technical analysis zeroes in on share prices: The main problem with chart reading is that it is based entirely on a stock’s past price movements. It’s not concerned with other crucial parts of a company’s business, such as financial statements, management strength or conditions in the company’s industry. In fact, an investor who relies solely on charts might buy and sell a stock while knowing little or nothing about the underlying company.

2. Technical analysis is not as consistent as it appears: The appeal of technical analysis is that it often seems to work, at least in small ways, but this may be an illusion. You may only remember your successful chart interpretations. More important, technical analysis tends to work in spurts. The risk here is that you may find it leads you to make five or even 10 small wins, then steers you wrong at the worst possible moment. That next mistaken trade may cost you much more than your winnings to date.

Stock market charts should support — not determine — your view of a company

The key to profiting from technical analysis is to avoid looking to the pattern on the chart for a prediction of what’s going to happen. Instead, see if the chart seems to support your view of the stock, based on its finances and other fundamentals.

It’s encouraging if your analysis and the chart seem to match. But sometimes they don’t. If a stock looks promising, but its chart shows a lengthy falling trend, insiders may know something you don’t. That’s when you have to dig deeper, and perhaps wait until the situation clarifies itself.

http://www.tsinetwork.ca/daily/market-analysis/what-every-investor-must-know-about-stock-market-charts/