What type of contrarian are you?

CONTRARIAN

Time for a touch of ‘biscuit tin self-analysis'. What would a contrarian investor be up to in these topsy-turvy markets?

The answer is of course never quite as simple as we would like to think. This is largely because there are in reality three different types of investor. They are all called ‘contrarian’ but all have very different investment ideas and philosophies. The first and most obvious is the ‘be damned to the consensus’ contrarian who looks at the fund and asset class flows and then proceeds to do the exact opposite of what everyone else is doing.  In reality it is remarkably difficult to actually run any kind of big professional mandate with this attitude, so this form of contrarian tends t...