Investing for the Long Term: My Experience as an Investor

Reviewed by Diario de un Inversor · UpdatedJune 13, 2026

Our review

«Investing for the Long Term» is the investment memoir of Francisco García Paramés, the Spanish fund manager who built one of Europe's best-performing equity funds over decades at Bestinver. The book combines autobiography and investment manual: Paramés recounts how he discovered value investing through Peter Lynch's work, how he developed his process in the context of the Spanish and European market, and how he applies the principles of Graham, Buffett, and the Austrian School of Economics to stock selection. The book's value lies in its specificity — it is not a rehash of Anglo-Saxon ideas but the voice of an investor who applied them with concrete success over more than twenty years in a European context. The limitation is that the economic section — a defence of Austrian thinking — may feel more ideological than analytical for readers with orthodox economic training. For those studying value investing from a practitioner's perspective, this book offers insight that is hard to find in the Anglo-Saxon literature: the thinking of a fund manager who lived it from inside the European market.

Key takeaways

• Value investing does not require an Anglo-Saxon market to work — Paramés applied it with sustained success for decades in Spain and Europe.
• The stock selection process combines qualitative business analysis with rigorous quantitative valuation based on normalised cash flows.
• Patience — holding positions through market declines that others cannot endure — is the hardest competitive advantage to build and the most valuable.
• The Austrian business cycle framework shapes Paramés's macroeconomic outlook, distinguishing him from purely bottom-up value investors.

Fact

Paramés managed Bestinver for 25 years (1989–2014); during that period, the Bestinfond fund achieved an approximate annualised return of 15%, outperforming the European benchmark index.