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Peter Lynch

The Limited
NYSE:LTD
1979-1987
Industry: Clothing Retailer
Category: Cutting-Edge Fashion

The Story
The story goes, a wife discovers this great store, The Limited, while shopping for her daughter.
The place is mobbed with customers, the salespeople are friendly, the bargains are terrific.
The husband ignores the wife, as he is caught up in disk drive equities.
As the disk drive companies get slaughtered due to high competition, the Limited goes from 50 cents in Dec 1979 to $9 in 1983.
He continues to ignore it as it goes to $52.875 in 1987. When it hits 52.875, he hears about it from his broker and on TV, and buys it.
The wife tells him The Limited is now overpriced and no longer unique.
The stock drops to $16.

Result
The Limited was an 18x from 1979 to 1983, which is a 160% CAGR.
The Limited was a 6x from 1983 to 1987, which is a 45% CAGR.
The Limited was a 105x from 1979 to 1987, which is a 80% CAGR.

Notably
Lynch is the basically character in the story.
Lynch didn't buy any shares on the way up, and Lynch's wife saw the crowd at the shopping mall.
He inevitably bought the story when it got popular and the fundamentals began to deteriorate.
He is still holding onto a loss at time of publishing (1989).