Good Contrarian Websources???

[ringledman]

Can anyone recommend any good contrarian investment websites?

The type that look for future trends and do the opposite of what the general financial press believe in or what financial advisors usually recommend (i.e. trends that are nearing the end of their asset boom!).

A few I know -

www.marketoracle.co.uk
www.zealllc.com


Cheers.

 

[Damian85]

Two contrarian websites which spring to mind are

www.europac.net

www.jasonhartman.com

Europac - Operated by Peter Schiff. He has several reports and articles on investing in precious metals, foreign stocks, and the downfall of US (bit doom and gloom but seems to be accurate in his predictions). He has podcast archives of his weekly radio show going back to 2004. Maybe a bit too US focused.

Jason Hartman - Operater of Platinum Properties Investment Network. Jason has been operating a podcast series going back to 2006. Although fairly US and real estate focused, many of the podcast episodes deliever some interesting food for thought. He interviews many sound investment advisors on his show. Many worthwhile articles and videos on the website also.

You might also check out www.chrismartenson.com . Chris has an excellent 'Crash Course' which is a 3.5 hour educational video on the current state of the world economy. Very interesting and the videos are split into 20 chapters which range from 3 mins to 25 mins

 

[cpt_boom]

I find www.investmentu.com really good.

They do a newsletter sent out a couple of times a day. Recently they called Treasuries and Gold as being over-valued in the short-term, which is fairly contrarian. Mainly US focused.

 

[george.shaw]

Very good and important question.

Lots of faux contrarians in Ireland who were never contrarian re Irish and international property and equities and yet they are now 'contrarians' on gold because it is just above the nominal price it was 29 year ago of $850/oz - which is a bit like being bearish on US equities in 1982 when the Dow Jones went over 1,000 after being at that level back in 1968 !

The overwhelming consensus today amongst the media and the general public is that "cash is king". The bubble today is in cash and deposits due to the current deflation but real contrarians see inflation as a real threat to cash (as per Buffett's warnings of the "onslaught of inflation").

Good websites are
www.moneyweek.com
www.marketwatch.com

[broken link removed]
www.goldseek.com
www.silverseek.com
www.seekingalpha.com

 

[ringledman]

Cheers all,

Good list keep it coming!

So what do we see as the contrarian plays at the moment?

I am a long term investor and still see commodities as being the asset to boom over the next decade.

The general press is still apathetic to commodites despite the supply / demand constraints of a growing global population. Commodities have been hit this past 6 months but I see this as a cyclical downturn in a secular bull market.

The other area I am extremely keen on long term are the emerging markets. Again these markets have taken a hit recently as the US pulls their funds out to cover losses at home.

Nonetheless the long term FUNDAMENTALS of these markets are strong, which is not the case for the US, UK, Ireland, Spain and other Western markets.

By strong fundamentals I mean positive growth, growing middle classes, high education, growing consumerism, etc.

I truely believe the East will decouple from the West at some point but it will take 20 or so years to do.

The general press and people I know are again so apathetic to emerging markets. There is almost a disbelief that the Chinese, Brazilians, Indians etc could possible match our standard of living one day.

These markets have taken a much larger downward hit against the western stock markets and are currently priced at some very good P/E ratios for the long term.

So agree / disagree with the above?

Any other overlooked contrarian markets out there???

Which contrarians do you follow / agree with? Myself - Jim Rogers, Mark Shipman and more recently Marc Faber talks a lot of sense.

Cheers.

 

[PMU]

I am a long term investor and still see commodities as being the asset to boom over the next decade. So what do we see as the contrarian plays at the moment?

I think we’re all (or should be) contrarians now.

The Credit Suisse Global Returns Yearbook:
(which we’ve all read, haven’t we?) points out that the equity risk premium, i.e. the extra investors expect to get for holding equities over the next less risky investment will likely decline from 4.2% to 3.5% in the future as opportunities now exist for risk to be diversified away. This would point to a need to invest in a more diversified asset classes than the traditional equity / bond portfolio.

So diversification to other asset classes like commodities, emerging markets, global property, etc. should be given serious consideration by amateur investors (and you can now do this via ETFs and some QL, NI and Eagle Star funds) but do your research carefully.

On web sites, essential reading is Merbane Faber’s site: World Beta (geddit ?) http://www.mebanefaber.com and his paper ‘A Quantitative Approach to Asset Allocation’ A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation’ http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=962461