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Whatever the rules say and the herd expects, you can bet the markets won’t do. But that doesn’t mean the opposite outcome happens!

Think back to our clock analogy. If everyone expects the hand to land on 1, the curmudgeon bets close to 7. The real contrarians remember markets are efficient, so they know the clock probably won’t land between about 11 and 3 – it would be too near where most folks expect. The contrarian can effectively rule out four possibilities. But there are still eight hours’ worth of potential outcomes.

For example, if most expect stocks to rise 10 % in a year, true contrarians bet stocks probably won’t land in the 5 % to 15 % range. But that still leaves a big up year, flat returns or down.

Understanding how markets discount known information helps you narrow the range of possibilities. It doesn’t tell you what will happen – that’s where curmudgeons get messed up – it just tells you what probably won’t happen and frees you to contemplate what might happen and improve your odds.

To narrow the field, the contrarian looks for things the herd and curmudgeons ignore – they branch out. Or they look at the same things but see them differently. Both actions let them find the risks and opportunities most others miss.