Ep. 27 – Mark Hulbert – What it Means to Be a Contrarian

What is a contrarian way of thinking, and how can it change your approach to investing? While it’s easy to get caught up in the mainstream news and financial shows, they aren’t always the best way to get information on your investments.

A contrarian way of thinking is a different and interesting approach that gets away from what you hear in the news and starts to drill into the numbers. It’s been Mark Hulbert’s focus for his 40+ year career, so we invited him to share his thoughts in this episode.

Mark is a columnist for MarketWatch, Callaway Climate Insights, and TheStreet and has also been featured in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times business section. Previously, Mark founded the Hulbert Financial Digest, which tracked the performance of stock market investment newsletters for 36 years. He is fascinated by market trends and strives to figure out how the world works by understanding differences and regularities in the market.

In this episode find out:

  • How tracking investment performance has changed over the last 40 years
  • How Mark’s contrarian perspective has shaped his career
  • What drew Mark to analyzing investment newsletters
  • Why Mark believes you can’t ignore different approaches to investment analysis
  • The system that Mark uses to model portfolios and track their performance
  • What realization triggered Mark’s contrarian thinking
  • Mark’s thoughts on the market changes due to COVID-19, The Federal Reserve’s actions, and the presidential election
  • Why Mark created The Hulbert Stock Newsletter Sentiment Index 

Tweetable Quotes:

“The economy responds to uncertainty”

“The next couple of years are far riskier than I think the market right now is betting”

“I always bet that the market will probably be a bit higher because historically, that’s the most intelligent bet”

Important Links & Mentions:

Resources:

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