Contrarian From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Philosophically, a contrarian is a person who tends to take positions that flout the conventional wisdom. In finance a contrarian takes the view that widespread pessimism tends to lead to market rallies and that widespread optimism tends to lead to market slumps. Contrarians are sometimes thought of as perma-bears—market participants who are permanently biased to a bear market view. However, the contrarian is not biased specifically towards a negative view of the price trend in a market, but rather takes a contrary position to the prevailing market trend, whether that trend is positive or negative. The generally positive trend in U.S. and world financial markets since World War II has left contrarians holding a net position that has been negative more often than positive for most of the past 60 years. In Sociology, the term can be understood as an attitude of going against the establishment in terms of the social mores of the time. A social contrarian attempts to show to others, like Plato through Socrates, that there is something inherently wrong with their limited world view.