To fidelity's 15 million customers, jeffrey n. vinik is a name synonymous with screwing up. He's the lucky fellow who at the age of 33 ascended to the job of running Magellan, the fund Peter Lynch made famous. Three years later Vinik gave a magazine interview in which he touted Micron Technology, a comment that came back to haunt him because he soon switched to selling the stock; reporters pounced on this sequence of events and said the Securities & Exchange Commission suspected it constituted market manipulation. Vinik was eventually vindicated at the SEC, but not long after that embarrassing incident, he made another false step. In late 1995 he took 30% of the giant fund out of the stock market and put the money into cash and bonds. The market kept going up, and over the next five months Magellan lagged by seven points. A competing fund family poked fun. Its ads taunted: "There are stricter labeling laws for a $2 container of cottage cheese than a $2 billion mutual fund."
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