SUBSCRIPTION INCLUDING UPDATES AND TWICE-WEEKLY LIVE ZOOM COMMENTARY FOR $179.50/YEAR OR $75/QUARTER

In August 1996 I began using the internet to express my analysis of the global financial markets, focusing on stocks and bonds in those sectors which are likely to be the most profitable for investors. Since February 2006, subscribers have been receiving several or more updates each month, listing specific ladders of orders to buy and sell assets which have become especially undervalued or overpriced. These updates include principles of contrarian value investing and how to apply them. Each update includes charts and links to financial data and opinions which highlight critical points that are usually overlooked by mainstream Boglehead and momentum methods which have become so popular in recent years. These updates closely examine historic patterns which have repeated themselves with surprising consistency through the decades. While most subscription services overemphasize asset selection and magical market timing, we will primarily focus on how much to allocate to each of our recommended orders for buying and selling, and how to place all trades to continually adjust to changing circumstances.

For the past five years we have featured two Zoom meetings each week, each one lasting for 70 minutes. During these meetings, all participants are encouraged to make comments and ask questions. We have hardly missed any meetings even when we are traveling. We also have videorecordings of all of these meetings which can be supplied upon request. During each meeting I show all trades which have been recently filled as well as all orders which remain unfilled, so that attendees will know exactly what we have been buying and selling and what we are planning to trade in the future.

If you have questions or comments, click here to contact me or email me at stevenjonkaplan@gmail.com . If you prefer, you can telephone or text me any time at (917) 697-4765.

If you wish to subscribe for one year, you can send me a check or money order for $179.50 U.S. dollars from any bank in the world, payable to Steven Jon Kaplan. My address is 300 Beech Street, Kearny, NJ 07032, USA. If you prefer to use an automatic bank transfer (ACH) from any bank in the world then email me and I will give you my routing number and account number. You can use Zelle if you have a U.S. bank account; include the email stevenjonkaplan@gmail.com . Please give me your email address regardless of how you subscribe, so that I know where to send your updates.

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Contrarian investing is not simple and it is not some kind of automatic road to riches involving brilliant market timing and/or scintillating asset selection. It requires a high level of discipline and the ability to gradually purchase the least popular assets while selling the trendiest ones. Much of the time you will be told on a daily basis by the mainstream financial media why you are doing the wrong thing and why those trends where the most investors have eagerly jumped aboard will continue indefinitely. My primary purpose is to point out patterns which are occurring now that in past decades have most consistently been followed by certain kinds of subsequent market behavior. Being a contrarian is not about finding a majority opinion and doing the opposite, but acting only when a majority has become a nearly unanimous consensus. Proper contrarian investing requires putting the primary emphasis on gradually opening any position rather than doing lump-sum guesses, because no one can magically divine when any given asset will reverse direction or at what price it will do so. Contrarian investing demands maintaining a strict asset allocation at all times.

Investing, like most other worthwhile pursuits, is inherently complicated. Some analysts and advisors attempt to remedy this situation by oversimplifying or by trying to focus too narrowly on certain concepts while losing track of the big picture. When I write my updates, each one is like an episode of a soap opera. If you watch just one random selection of a soap opera or a long-running series for the first time, you will be confused why Julia is angrily slapping Paul's face, or why Tricia is delighted about Michael's odd remark. However, over a period of months, you will gradually understand the dynamics of the players and how everything is interrelated with everything else. The same is true with successful investing. Nothing in the global economy happens in a vacuum; all assets are connected in ways which cannot be quickly explained in a few paragraphs. My objective will be to present you with a unified theory about what is happening, and I will let you know when certain facts don't seem to fit my hypotheses. The markets are always evolving, so keeping track of what is most important is a real challenge. I will try to always be honest and direct about my opinions and the logic behind them.

Being a successful investor over a period of decades requires monitoring the mood of the market, and how people are feeling at any given time about a wide range of securities. If people are becoming increasingly bullish toward any asset, especially one which had been trading near a multi-decade bottom, then it will likely continue to climb for an extended period of time as the mood progressively shifts from very bearish to very bullish. Eventually, if that asset begins to slow its ascent, and particularly if it has been struggling to reach previous highs while investors are becoming increasingly optimistic and confident, then that is when a reversal becomes more likely to occur. Reversals don't happen often, so it is important to be patient and to wait for a combination of signals to conclude that a trend has become exhausted and is likely to make a meaningful move the opposite way. These signals should emphasize the activity of the most knowledgeable investors, including top corporate insiders and commercials, versus the least knowledgeable participants who will usually do the wrong thing at the worst possible time.

Being a contrarian investor has a lot in common with being a value investor, since one important step in formulating a coherent theory is being able to estimate fair value for anything. This is not simple: it can involve computing a typical ratio of prices to household incomes for real estate, and it can incorporate price-earnings ratios and annualized profit growth for stocks. However, these can also be misleading when taken in isolation, and they don't necessarily tell you what will happen next. This is one reason that I study a variety of information which I believe to be important and which is not usually tracked carefully by most of those who participate in the financial markets. The commitments of traders, the degree of insider buying and selling in any industry, investor inflows and outflows, media and investor sentiment, and divergences between assets often send useful clues especially when these and other signals which have proven themselves through the decades are considered in combination.

Nothing is certain about the financial markets, and I am always suspicious of those who confidently state price or time targets for anything. There is never any way to know how extreme anything will become in either direction, and with the invention of the internet it has become so easy to trade most securities that herd behavior can often cause astonishing highs and lows. Even for illiquid assets like real estate and collectibles, the past two decades have experienced unprecedented fluctuations in both directions. This situation is not likely to change any time soon. It is therefore necessary to keep track of how people are behaving emotionally under any given set of circumstances. While fair value can be estimated with some kind of educated guess, over relatively short time periods the financial markets are primarily driven by psychology. People often buy specific stocks not because they have carefully analyzed their long-term profit potential, but because people they know are bragging about how much money they're making by owning them. People often sell a security not because it is compelling to do so, but because it has been in an extended bear market with repeatedly negative media commentary, and people can't emotionally envision that a strong rebound is possible.

There is also a proven tendency for investors to be eager to own whatever has recently been enjoying the smoothest uptrends, while selling whatever has been moving up and down with dramatic percentage moves and overall recent losses. People instinctively like calm and what appears to be predictability, while shying away from whatever seems unreliable and risky. The catch, of course, is that the best bargains almost always behave in a way which makes them seem to be too dangerous, while the most overpriced assets with the greatest risk of loss will often behave in a deceptively placid manner. For example, when the S&P 500 was below 900 in its early 2009 bottoming cycle, it experienced wild gyrations which discouraged almost everyone from buying it when it was most worthwhile. When the S&P 500 was approaching its early 2025 all-time record peak, it experienced an extended calm period where many eagerly flooded into index funds based upon it. Similarly, gold's frequent all-time highs in the final months of 2024 and the early months of 2025 created the illusion that it would continue this behavior indefinitely, thereby encouraging far too many participants to flood into this sector at the worst possible time. Academic studies have shown that investors repeatedly buy high and sell low, and don't even realize why they are following this pattern. Whenever something is really worth buying, almost all investors will be afraid to do so because of the scary way it will act on a daily or weekly basis, and because almost everything they read in the media will be warning them to stay away or to "wait for clarity."

My updates will consist of several different kinds of analysis. Each week, I will report on the traders' commitments and which ones are giving the most important warnings of likely price behavior. I will sometimes include charts, but not for the reason that you will often see charts included in an analysis. I don't believe that the past activity of any asset by itself will be able to forecast what it will do in the future. Instead, a chart is an excellent way to examine how anything has behaved over an extended period of time. When this information is combined with patterns which have proven themselves repeatedly through the decades, a coherent picture can begin to be formed.

In other updates, I will discuss some aspect of behavioral analysis, emphasizing the kinds of human behavior which are likely to occur even though they may be irrational. Since we are human, we do everything as humans do, including investing. We don't behave like the dispassionate Vulcan "Mr. Spock" on Star Trek. Many investors are irrationally obsessed with how much money they are making or losing on any given trade and will make decisions to close out their trades based upon this information rather than whether it is timely to be buying or selling. Many people buy out of excitement or sell out of disappointment, both of which are usually serious mistakes. Therefore, the collective behavior of investors will rarely track fair value and will often end up with the most confident buying near a top and the most despondent selling near a bottom.

There are numerous other topics which I will cover periodically. Brokers often have ways in which you can trade commission-free, although they are not always advertised. More investors have learned about exchange-traded funds in recent years, but many fail to take advantage of one of their most worthwhile features which is the ability to create ladders of orders to gradually buy or sell them. Even fewer investors are familiar with closed-end funds which can trade above or below their net asset value, which thereby provide buying opportunities whenever their discounts are unusually above their average levels and good chances to sell when these discounts narrow or disappear entirely--or they even trade at a premium above net asset value. It can often be worthwhile, especially near major turning points, to take advantage of opportunities outside of regular trading hours. There are often funds with low management fees which aren't as well known as nearly identical funds with higher fees. I also discuss real estate and its role in your portfolio. Some analysts overlook major asset classes such as U.S. Treasuries and other U.S. government bonds including TIPS and I Bonds which periodically provide compelling opportunities with low risk and tax advantages.

The media often give very useful clues to making trading decisions, but not because they accurately tell you when to act. Instead, they tend to become convinced as a group that a particular theory is correct whenever it is most likely to be proven to be the end of a trend. If you scan any major web site about the financial markets, there will sometimes be disagreement about the future behavior of a given asset. When that happens, it is usually best to do nothing. Whenever everyone is certain that interest rates will continue falling, or that the U.S. dollar will keep going higher, or that the U.S. stock market will extend its recent sharp correction or surge, and nearly identical sentiment is repeated on dozens of web sites, then that is when it becomes most likely that being a contrarian will be worthwhile.

The value of doing nothing is underestimated. Many people believe they are only accomplishing something as an investor when they are actively buying or selling. Most of the time, it is best to watch rather than to trade. I call this "being a proud couch potato" since it is usually derided. Many investors wrongly believe that real traders shouldn't "just sit there," but that is usually what you should be doing (or not doing).

If you haven't fallen asleep by this point, then perhaps you may be interested in subscribing to my True Contrarian updates. If you subscribe and you later change your mind, then you can receive a refund for the pro-rated portion of the remainder of the subscription.

Thank you very much for considering a subscription. Enjoy the rest of your day unless you have other plans.