contrarian

Contrarian

An investment style that goes against prevailing market trends by buys assets that are performing poorly and selling when they perform well.

Notes:

A contrarian investor believes that the people who say the market is going up do so only when they are fully invested and have no further purchasing power. At this point the market is at a peak. On the other hand, when people predict a downturn, they have already sold out, at which point the market can only go up.

Contrarian investing also emphasizes out-of-favor securities with low P/E ratios.

See also: Buck the Trend, P/E Ratio, Style, Value Stock

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Contrarian

An investment style that leads one to buy assets that have performed poorly and sell assets that have performed well. There are two possible reasons this strategy might work. The first is a mean-reversion argument; that is, if the asset has deviated from its usual level, it should eventually return to that usual level. The second reason has to do with overreaction. Investors might have overreacted to bad news sending the asset price lower than it should be.

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contrarian

An investor who decides which securities to buy and sell by going against the crowd. For example, a contrarian would tend to purchase the stock of steel companies when steel stock prices are depressed and most investment counselors are advising against them. Contrarians operate on the premise that when stocks are very popular they are overbought and when they are very unpopular they are oversold.