Justin Baer - House of Fidelity

A Book with Legs

Smead Capital Management

Investing, Business, Management

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2026

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How did one family build Fidelity into one of the most powerful forces in American investing, and what allowed it to endure across three generations?

In the latest episode of A Book with Legs, Smead Capital Management CEO and Portfolio Manager Cole Smead and Analyst Will Keenan sit down with journalist and author Justin Baer to discuss his book, titled "House of Fidelity: The Rise of the Johnson Dynasty and the Company That Changed American Investing."

Cole and Will explore the 80-year rise of Fidelity with Justin, tracing three generations of the Johnson family and the various investing styles of Fidelity leadership throughout the years. They also discuss the closed-door battles that shaped the firm's direction, the rise and legacy of Peter Lynch, and what this story tells us about active management businesses that last.

Justin Baer is an award-winning journalist and an editor for The Wall Street Journal. In a career that includes stints at the Financial Times and Bloomberg News, he has covered almost every significant financial event over the past two decades, including the dot-com bubble, the 2008 financial crisis and the economic fallout from the pandemic. Along the way, Baer has chronicled the ups and downs of such major institutions as Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

Purchase “House of Fidelity: The Rise of the Johnson Dynasty and the Company That Changed American Investing” here: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/justin-baer/house-of-fidelity/9781538766958/

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to A Book with Legs, a podcast presented by Smead Capital Management.
0:07.9	At Smead Capital Management, we advise investors who play the long game.
0:12.3	You can learn more at Smeadcap.com or by calling your financial advisor.
0:22.9	Welcome to a book with Legs podcast.
0:26.9	I'm Cole Smead, CEO and portfolio manager here at Smead Capital Management.
0:32.6	At our firm, we are readers, and we believe in the power of books to help shape informed investors.
0:36.0	In this podcast, we speak to great authors about their writings.
0:40.8	The late, great Charlie Munger prescribed using multiple mental models and analysis.
0:45.4	We analyze their work through the lens of business, markets, and people.
0:50.4	Hosting this episode, along with me, is my colleague and an analyst here at me, Capital Management.
0:52.3	Will, thanks for joining me.
0:54.0	My pleasure, Cole. Great to be with you.
0:58.4	What are you looking forward to today? I have some things I'm looking forward to, but you know, you brought this book, so I got to give you a lot of credit, you know, hence why
1:01.8	you're sitting here with me. But, you know, is there anything in particular that you're
1:05.1	excited to talk about with Justin? As a employee and at a long duration-owned active management business, I'm curious to get Justin's thoughts on how we too can build a long-duration, durable franchise in the investment business owned by a family.
1:22.0	Yeah, I thought about that too.
1:24.6	If I asked Abby, is that why a family starts with an F?
1:29.3	So we'll get rolling here.
1:32.5	Today we will discuss the rise of one of the most influential financial institutions in American history and the family that built it.
1:39.4	We will explore how Fidelity helped invent modern retail investing as we know and practice today.
1:45.1	You know, we'll talk about things like the secular market cycles that shaped its strategy
1:48.9	during its history as a business and the succession dynamics that define three generations
	...

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