Contrarians are investors who deliberately focus on doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing with their money. Some US analysts suggest this was probably one of the best years for contrarians with the huge swings in international markets handing them some great investment opportunities.

Last April, for example, the big market news was the astounding runup in stocks of tiny companies that had some link to the Internet. A contrarian could have viewed that widespread nuttiness over marginal Net-related stocks as a powerful signal that the market overall was in a speculative "blow-off" - the end of a bullish phase rather than the start of one. It would have been a brilliant call: April 21st was the day of the peak in the Russell 2,000 index of smaller stocks. The next day, the index began the long decline that took it down 37 per cent to its recent low reached on October 8th.

April 21st wouldn't have been a bad day to take some profits in blue-chip stocks, either: The Dow closed at 9,184.94 that day. The index would gain only 1.7 per cent between then and its ultimate peak of 9,337.97 on July 17th, before the harrowing late-summer plunge.

Of course, in retrospect it's easy to say that market signals were obvious. It takes great courage to be a true contrarian and go against the tide.