While listening to Rob Arnott on a recent Morningstar podcast, I became enamored with something that Arnott was emphatic about. He pointed out that the structural advantage of being a contrarian isn’t being smarter. Every winning purchase in the stock market comes as an opportunity cost to the seller. In aggregate, the non-passive portion of the market will look like the respective index. Arnott asked the question, “Who are you trading against?” In other words, who is on the other side of your transactions in the stock market?
It’s a very interesting question to ask