The Contrarian Investor: Boring, bust, and a brilliant bet?

CONTRARIAN INVESTOR

Regular readers of my column might know that I take a dim view of France as an investment opportunity.

Over the past few weeks, the French naysayers have been handed some valuable new tools, involving lousy long-term stock returns and a fast approaching demographic problem. But maybe the contrarians will want to take a different tack, with evidence accumulating that boring and bust countries are a better bet than we think.  First though, let us tackle those ‘challenges’. I will start with the always excellent London Business School academics Professors Paul Marsh, Elroy Dimson and Mike Staunton. Tucked deep inside their latest Credit Suisse Yearbook of data is the observation France ha...