The Contrarian's View
About The Contrarian's View
The Contrarian's View has been published since July 1986. Its author, Nick Chase, correctly anticipated the 1987 and 1997 stock-market Crashes and 1989 minicrash, and avoided the 1990 and 1994 bear markets (and bailed out much too early, missing the 1995-2000 bubble). If this is your first visit to The Contrarian's View, in addition to the information here you should also read: Hulbertmania, excerpted from the April 1992 issue; and
Debt Overhang, excerpted from the January 1993 issue.
(If you have visited this page before, use this shortcut sentence to get to the
latest posted issue or to the
computer warmline.
Each paper issue of The Contrarian's View usually contains the following features:
- An "essay", in which Nick attempts to peer into the future;
- A Stock Market Outlook, where Nick expresses his opinion on the trend of stock market prices for the next three to six months;
- Three real portfolios;
- Timer's Trend for the NYSE and NASDAQ, Nick's short-term buy/sell indicators (based on advancing and declining stocks),
charted with the past few months' Dow Jones Industrial or NASDAQ averages.
Things you will not find in each issue of The Contrarian's View are:
- Specific stock recommendations. Nick says, "I have no idea what your investment objectives are, or whether they
mesh with mine. I prefer not to lead you down the garden path, so I am not going to tell you what you
'should' be doing. I will tell you what situations I like, and would probably buy if I had the money. If, after
investigating further you concur, you may choose to indulge; but I assume no responsibility for your actions. I
certainly would never blindly follow someone else's advice; I don't expect or want anybody else to ever blindly
follow mine."
- Model portfolios with hundreds of stocks that would take a zillion dollars to purchase. Nick's portfolios are
all of modest size, and all trades shown are real trades.
- Charts showing "head and shoulders" formations, "double tops", "necklines", "pennants" and other
technical gobbledygook. If your psyche needs to be assuaged with arcane, inscrutable and ineffectual terms,
Nick suggests you visit your local astrologer. (However, technical indicators which measure investors' sentiment
may have considerable value.)
- Abstrusely-worded predictions of future stock prices which are so convoluted they're almost impossible
to decipher; but when you do decipher them, they say "The market will go up, unless it goes down".
- Any pretensions to clairvoyance. Nick says, "If I truly knew what the future will bring, and when, I'd be composing
this from my villa on the Riviera. The best I can do is tell you what I think the odds are for certain events
occurring in the future, and why I think so."
The investment philosophy you will find throughout The Contrarian's View stock portfolios can be summed into two words:
BUY CHEAP
(and its corollary for short sales, sell dear). You may never need sell at all.... particularly after taking taxes
into consideration.... as long as your holdings continue to be satisfactory, provided you bought them at bargain
prices in the first place.
Other investment advisory services have "hotlines", phone numbers you
can call for the investment advisor's opinion between issues of the
letter. Nick is not so presumptuous to assume that his opinions are
"hot" material, but he is usually at least lukewarm in the correctness
of his expectation of what the stock market will do next. Thus we have
the computer warmline, which displays Nick's current opinion
for the intermediate- and long-term direction of the stock market, the
current status of Timer's Trend with the most recent buy and sell signals,
portfolio changes (if
any) and any further comments he may choose to make. The computer warmline is
updated whenever Nick feels the urge, but usually at least once every other month.
When you click on any highlighted computer warmline, you will be reading the latest warmline; older versions are discarded.
In contrast, many of the back issues of The Contrarian's View will eventually be available; select them first by year, then the issue you want to read in that year:
Click here to read the most recently-posted issue.
This page was last updated October 12, 2007 by Nick Chase (onashi@charter.net).