The late great Sir John Templeton, who was a pioneer in global investing and the manager of the Templeton Growth fund from 1954 to 1992 once said “It is impossible to produce a superior performance unless you do something different from the majority.”
Templeton was a contrarian. His contrarian investment strategy led to one of the most impressive performance records in mutual fund history. A $10,000 investment in the Templeton Growth Fund in 1954 would have turned into $3 million at Templeton’s retirement in 1992.
How can you best invest like a contrarian?
Here is a good place to start. I give you a list of the most hated stocks in the S&P 500. These are the companies in the S&P 500 with the lowest Bloomberg analyst recommendation consensus. If the majority of Wall Street Analysts following these stocks hate them, chances are good that most of the bad news is already priced in. Two out of the ten are already on our buy list.
| Name | Market Cap | Total Return YTD |
| Campbell Soup Co | 14,028,834,816 | 5.7 |
| Bemis Company | 4,060,100,608 | 0.5 |
| Torchmark Corp | 7,204,621,312 | 5.9 |
| Newmont Mining Corp | 13,506,392,064 | 17.5 |
| Cincinnati Financial Corp | 7,860,166,144 | (6.2) |
| Agl Resources Inc | 6,313,246,208 | 14.9 |
| Southern Co/The | 39,519,031,296 | 11.5 |
| Hudson City Bancorp Inc | 5,237,416,960 | 5.6 |
| Diamond Offshore Drilling | 5,994,647,040 | (18.8) |
| Leucadia National Corp | 9,161,675,776 | (12.2) |
Jeremy Jones, CFA
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