“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,” grimaces Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone in one of the few highlights of The Godfather Part III, widely seen as the cinematic disappointment of 1990.
That was the same year in which the scion of another dynasty, Peter Lynch, bowed out of Fidelity’s Magellan Fund, having notched up one of the most impressive runs in investing history: a compound return rate of 29.2 per cent a year, over 13 years.
A year ago, I thought it might be time to dispense with our own attempt to mirror Lynch’s process. Our Stalwarts screen, which first debuted in April 2012, seeks to identify a type of company that Lynch was particularly fond of: those possessing strong balance sheets, good medium-term growth opportunities and products that are always in demand.