'Being a contrarian is as mad as running with the herd'

European Wealth Management's investment strategist Richard Stammers talks to Alasdair Pal about contrarian investing, how he views the UK market and the problems of accessing commodities.

How do you view market events of the past few months? We try to avoid being short-termist. We do not necessarily do things different from other people, but we try and do them very consistently. So much today is about people being caught up in the sentiment. There seems to a huge number of advisers that are. Emerging markets are a good example of where valuations are compelling but sentiment is against them. Commodities are the same. The collapse in asset prices after the Fed’s tapering talk was one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen – arguably, Bernanke’s comments were dov...